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“Commodore Foote’s Game of Ten Pins with Beauregard”
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Cartoonist Justin Howard uses a sports analogy to praise Union admiral
Andrew Hull Foote's victories in the Mississippi River campaign.
His capture of Island Number Ten from the Confederates is represented as
a game of ten pins (a type of bowling).
Foote, the son of Connecticut governor and U.S. senator Samuel
Foot [sic],
was a career naval officer who had served off the coasts of Africa,
China, and the West Indies. His experiences capturing slave ships
were recounted in Africa and the American Flag (1854), which
influenced public opinion against the illicit international slave
trade. A temperance advocate, he convinced the Navy in 1862 to
repeal its alcohol ration to sailors.
When the Civil War began, Foote was given command of the Union
flotilla on the Mississippi River, where he oversaw the outfitting of
wooden and ironclad gunboats. His leadership was instrumental in
the eventual success of the Union's strategy to gain control of the
Mississippi River in order to restore free trade and split the
Confederacy in two.
In early 1862, Foote coordinated his efforts with General Ulysses S.
Grant for a series of Union victories in the West. Foote's
gunboats bombarded Fort Henry, on the Tennessee River, allowing Grant
and his men to take the fort on February 6 in the first major Union
victory of the Civil War. Many of the Confederate troops fled to
Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. Foote and Grant's men
captured that Confederate stronghold on February 12, clearing the way for
the Union advance to Nashville.
Despite being injured in the Fort Donelson battle, Foote continued in
his post and assisted in the capture of New Madrid (Missouri) on March 14 and
Island Number Ten in the Mississippi River on April 7. In this
cartoon, Foote, astride two Union gunboats, has just bowled over
"Island 10" and challenges Confederate general P. G. T.
Beauregard to "Set 'em up again Beauregard." Meanwhile,
President Abraham Lincoln adds "Island X" to the blackboard's
list of recent Union victories: "Donaldson" [sic],
"Columbus," and "New Madrid." Within a few
weeks after the capture of Island Number Ten, New Orleans and Memphis
came under Union control.
In June 1862, Foote was promoted to rear admiral and received the
official Thanks of Congress, but his injuries forced him to retire
temporarily from
combat duty. A year later, in June 1863, he was named to command a
fleet off Charleston, South Carolina, but he died while traveling to the
assignment. The goal for which Foote had fought so heroically was
accomplished when Vicksburg, Mississippi, surrendered after a long siege
to General Grant on July 4, 1863, thus securing the entire Mississippi
River for the Union.
Robert C. Kennedy
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