[DoodleDawg]

Your comment about Mobile and New Orleans raises an interesting point. I’ve always assumed that the growth of commerce on the Mississippi River system played a much bigger role in the Civil War than most people realize.

Rivers were still the easiest way to move goods in bulk at the time. New Orleans was the logical point of export for cotton and other agricultural goods grown in Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana. Mobile handled Alabama.

[Alberta's Child]

More importantly, the Union couldn’t trade freely through the Mississippi River system without passing through Confederate states.