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| Reaching out for the river These busy scenes were enacted in the late spring of 1861, by five regiments under Brig.-General Swift, who had been ordered by Secretary of War Cameron to occupy Cairo at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and save it from the fate of Sumter, which it was anticipated the Confederate gunboats coming up the Mississippi might visit upon it, and thus gain access to the Ohio. It was tedious work for the men of the Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Illinois Volunteers, who, began the building of barracks, cleared parade grounds, mounted guns, and threw up fortifications against the attack which never came. In the upper pictures the men are at work rushing to completion the unfinished Fort Darling, which was situated to the left of the drill grounds seen in the lower panorama. In the latter we see one of the innumerable drills with which the troops were kept occupied and tuned up for the active service before them. Across the Mississippi was the battery at Bird's Point, on the Missouri shore. This and Fort Darling were occupied by the First and Second Illinois Light Artillery, but their labors were chiefly confined to the prevention of contraband traffic on the river. The troops at Cairo did not see any campaigning till Grant led them to Paducah, Ky., September 5-6, 1861. |
