Combat· American Civil War
St. Louis river gunboat flagship
The Marine contribution to the opening of the western rivers.
In January 1862 one officer and twenty-seven enlisted Marines were assigned to the river ironclad USS St. Louis, the gunboat that served as Flag Officer Andrew Foote's flagship on the upper Mississippi. From her decks the Marines shared in the squadron's operations supporting Grant's drive that took Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers in February 1862, the breakthrough that cracked the Confederate defensive line in the West, and in the subsequent descent of the Mississippi. No casualties are recorded for this assignment. The detachment was small, but its presence aboard the flotilla flagship marks the Marine share in the river war, where the gunboats of the western flotilla, with their Marine guards among the crews, did as much as any army to split the Confederacy along the line of the great river.
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Record no. 441