The Fall of Memphis( or the hidden earthquake)

     The geography of the Mississippi River Valley helped to influence the settlement and then the development of transportation in the region. During the American Civil war the area became pivotal in the efforts of the United States government to reassert control over the rebellious South.  The Confederacy had erected as series of defensive positions along the river starting at Island No. 10 near New Madrid and then followed by Fort Pillow, and finally the city of Memphis.  As the Union naval fleet advanced each one of the positions fell to the armada that was assembled to retake the river and return it to Federal control.
     The culminating battle to control the section of the river from the mouth of the Ohio to Vicksburg( the Confederate fortress town that would fall on July 4th 1863) occurred on the Mississippi river at Memphis on June 6, 1862.  There a Union flotilla of ironclads and steamboats converted to rams(boats that would ram to sink another boat) encountered a Confederate defensive fleet of improvised gunboats, some armored with compressed cotton bales to absorb cannon shot.  In the midst of the climatic battle a concussion was felt on shore that observers thought was the explosion of the powder magazine of one of the Confederate steamers.  In fact it was an earthquake that happened coincidentally with the battle.  This quake was felt in the middle Mississippi valley with reports noted as far north as Cairo, Illinois.
      It is not a well known quake as people were more focused on the war than on natural phenomena at the time.  In fact earthquake reporting during the war fell off, probably due to the fact that cannon fire and explosions would mask the shocks of earthquakes and people were too distracted by the war to try and discern the difference.