the merchants and steamboat owners of St. Louis were in sympathy with the secession movement, and in the early days of the blockade at Cairo numerous boats succeeded in passing safely down the stream, never to return. Gun-boats were hastily improvised and added to the efficiency of the blockade, and in the autumn of 1861 General Grant, who had been placed in command at Cairo, led an expedition for the capture of Belmont, a small town opposite Columbus. The Confederate camp at that point was captured and destroyed, but the Union forces were compelled to retreat owing to the fire of the heavy guns from the heights of Columbus, and the overwhelming number of troops that were sent across the river to reinforce the feeble garrison of Belmont. The losses on the Union side were about four hundred in killed, wounded, and captured, and about six hundred on that of the Confederates. The battle had no strategic importance, but it ranks in history as the first aggressive movement for the opening of the Mississippi.
The Confederate position at Columbus was on a high bluff commanding the river, and the batteries were so powerful and so well planted that their reduction by the gun-boats of the river was not a possibility. In the early part of 1862 the army and fleet were ready to move, but instead of making a direct attack as the Confederates had expected. General Grant proceeded to a flank movement up the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. Forts Henry and Donelson fell, and Columbus, no longer tenable, as it could be easily assailed from the rear, was evacuated by the Confederates, who took a new position at Island Number Ten, 25 miles farther down the river. The gun-boats and a strong land force assailed the batteries on this island, but were unable to capture it. It held out for nearly a month, and in the meantime the Confederates were assembling an army at Corinth, Mississippi, with a view to demolishing the forces of General Grant, who had
