The Battle of Island Number Ten was an engagement at the New Madrid or Kentucky Bend on the Mississippi River – forming the border between Missouri and Tennessee – during the American Civil War, lasting from February 28 to April 8, 1862.

It was an excellent site to impede Union efforts to invade the South by the river, as ships had to approach the island bows on and then slow to make the turns.

Over the next three weeks, the island's defenders and forces in the nearby supporting batteries were subjected to a steady bombardment by the flotilla, mostly carried out by the mortars.

At the same time, the Union forces at New Madrid were digging a canal across the neck of land east of the town to bypass Island No.

Only three weeks later, New Orleans fell to a Union fleet led by David G. Farragut, and the Confederacy was in danger of being cut in two along the line of the river.

An evanescent product of the river, it was an enlarged sandbar, roughly 1 mi (1.6 km) long and 450 yd (410 m) wide at its maximum width, and standing about 10 ft (3.0 m) above low water.

The mainland behind the island on the south side was connected to the town of Tiptonville, Tennessee, by a good road on the natural levee of the river.

This was the only approach to the island on dry land through Tennessee, as the region is otherwise a mixture of lakes, sloughs, and swamps, with the nearest high ground nearly 10 mi (16 km) to the east.

The water was nowhere very deep, so individual soldiers could cross it by wading or using makeshift rafts, but an army trying to do so would not be able to move its heavy equipment, and also would lose cohesion.

The river banks, about 30 ft (9.1 m) above low water, were only about one-third as high as the bluffs that had aided the Confederate defense against gunboats at the Battle of Fort Donelson.

During the first year of the war, the Confederate forces in the West went through a series of command changes that are often confusing, and left responsibility for particular actions hard to pin down.

[10] Through all of these command changes, the vessels of the Confederate States Navy along the entire length of the Mississippi were led by Flag Officer George N. Hollins.

[12] The warships employed in the campaign were part of the Western Gunboat Flotilla, led by Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote.

[13] The widespread publicity given to Union General in Chief Winfield Scott's Anaconda Plan made the Confederate government aware of the threat that would be posed to the Mississippi Valley by a water-borne invasion along the course of the river.

Among them were Fort Pillow, 40 mi (64 km) north of Memphis, and extensive works at Columbus, Kentucky, both of which positions were important in relation to Island No.

Columbus was cut off from rest of the Confederate Army, and faced capture by Union troops advancing overland from the Tennessee River to the Mississippi.

It was common practice at that time to go into winter quarters and await the arrival of good weather in the spring, but Pope soon had his army, which at this early stage of the campaign numbered 10,000 men,[20][21][22] on the march, corduroying roads when necessary.

[23] The gunboats under Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote were not ready to cooperate with the Army of the Mississippi at this early date, as the damages they had received at Fort Donelson were still being repaired.

[24] Unwilling to waste his troops in an assault on the forts at New Madrid, Pope sent a brigade under Colonel (later Brigadier General) Joseph B. Plummer to occupy the town of Point Pleasant, Missouri, on the right bank of the river almost directly opposite Island No.

They effectively closed the river to the unarmored gunboats, and prevented reinforcement of the artillery companies at New Madrid by shifting troops from Island No.

There was some confusion (which seems to have been exaggerated in Pope's reports), and the departure was so sudden that the guns in the forts had to be spiked and left behind, but most of the troops were successfully removed and redistributed.

[27] Following the loss of New Madrid, some of the units at the bend were withdrawn to Fort Pillow, not quite 70 air miles (113 km) to the south, but almost twice that by the river.

Foote was hampered by ambiguous or even contradictory orders from Halleck, who was distracted at the time by preparations for the advance along the Tennessee River that soon culminated in the Battle of Shiloh (or Pittsburg Landing).

As early as March 17, Pope was asking that two or three gunboats run past the Confederate batteries, to enable him to cross the river and trap the entire garrison.

[32] For the next two weeks, fighting consisted of bombardment of the island at rather long range, mostly conducted by the mortars, and occasionally replied to by the Confederate batteries.

The most significant damage incurred in this period was in fact self-inflicted: during a bombardment on March 17 in which the gunboats took part, a gun on USS St. Louis exploded, killing three members of the crew and wounding a dozen others.

This time, Commander Henry Walke, captain of USS Carondelet, thought that the risk was worth the candle, and volunteered to take his boat through.

[36] To reduce the danger as much as possible, a raid by sailors in the flotilla and soldiers from the 42nd Illinois Infantry, under Colonel George W. Roberts overran Battery No.

[47] About 1,400 of the captured Confederate soldiers (many from the 1st Regiment Alabama Infantry) were transported by railroad to what was previously a Union Army training field in Madison, Wisconsin.

In addition, the impact of season and weather should also be recognized for aiding Union efforts; if the federals had arrived later in the summer after the spring freshet of high water, then their naval options would have been much more limited, no back channel could have been carved out, and Confederate chances for defense or withdrawal likely much improved.