Map Showing the System of Rebel Fortifications on the Mississippi River at Island No. 10 and New Madrid also the Operations of the U.S. Forces under General John Pope Against these Positions.

The Union capture of Island No. 10 during the Civil War.

This fascinating battle plan presents the strategically vital Island Number 10, situated within the treacherous Kentucky Bend of the Mississippi River. Since the outbreak of the Civil War, Confederate forces had maintained formidable defensive emplacements there, effectively barring the Union from utilizing the river as a primary invasion route into the South. The map meticulously documents the coordinated amphibious campaign of March and April 1862, during which U.S. troops under General John Pope seized New Madrid while Union naval forces subjected the island to a relentless bombardment.

The geography highlights the dramatic “gauntlet” run by Union gunboats, which slipped past the Confederate batteries under cover of darkness to shield Pope’s crossing into Tennessee near Tiptonville. With their southern escape routes severed by the river and their eastern flank mired in impassable swamplands – graphically rendered through fine hachuring -the Confederate defenders were forced into a total surrender on April 8, 1862.

Produced at a generous scale, the map serves as a detailed tactical ledger, identifying troop and ship dispositions, gun batteries, landscape features, transportation routes, and the locations of individual homesteads (complete with owners’ names). This primary source was drawn by Captain William Hoelck and lithographed in Philadelphia by the renowned firm of Bowen & Co. It was originally issued in 1862 as a supplement to the Report of Major General John Pope to the Committee on the Conduct of the War