Cairo (I)

DESCRIPTION: "There's a place out West where the Union troops Take toll from Rebel ships and sloops... She must recognize a custom house at Cairo." The Southerners will have a hard time taking Cairo, the key to Mississippi navigation. Prentiss and Lane will stop them
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1861 (Songs for the Nation for 1861, according to SilberCivWarFull)
KEYWORDS: Civilwar river
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Silber-SongsOfTheCivilWar, pp. 248-249, "Cairo" (1 text, 1 tune)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The White Cockade" (tune) and references there
NOTES [710 words]: Silber ascribes this to an 1861 source, and it certainly fits the contents of the song. Cairo, Illinois is located where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi River, and it is a very strategic point, because the two rivers were among the most important Union transportation arteries. Cairo was never a particularly large town, but if the Confederates could control it, or simply put enough guns on the south bank of the Ohio (there or a short ways upstream, say at Paducah, Kentucky), it might do enough damage to Union logistics to win the war. "As a place of habitation Cairo had little to recommend it; as a river base it was all-important. It was situated at the tip of a delta where the Ohio and the Mississippi joined. Any force that occupied the town could control passage on both rivers" (Fowler, p. 131).
James Eads, who became famous for building warships that sailed the Mississippi and its tributaries, called Cairo a "tollgate" (Fowler, p. 132). Obviously it isn't much of a stretch to get from that to the song's description of Cairo as a "custom house."
And there seemed to be a real threat of that. The state of Kentucky, early in the war, tried to declare itself neutral. But on September 4, 1861, in a move almost all military historians have condemned as extremely foolish, Confederate general Leonidas K. Polk occupied Columbus, Kentucky, less than twenty miles from Cairo (Boatner, p. 6580. The lynchpin of he river system was under threat.
And there was a genuine fear that the people in the area would welcome the invaders. That part of Illinois had voted overwhelmingly against Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1860 (though most of its votes had gone to Stephen A. Douglas, who was Unionist, rather than the southern presidential candidate John C. Breckinridge). In fact, a few dozen men from the area had actually signed up to join the Confederate army (Hicken, p. 13).
But by the time Polk moved, Cairo was ready. Illinois politicians had already nominated a number of prominent leaders for generalships in the Union army. Several of these men were commissioned brigadier general (Hicken, p, 12), although only Ulysses S. Grant ever amounted to much, and he received his general's star only because Congressman Elihu Washurne was owed a special favor. Another one of the officers named in this batch was Benjamin Prentiss (1819-1901). When the Union War Department became concerned about Cairo, they asked Illinois governor Richard Yates to send troops there. He quickly sent several companies; soon after, Prentiss brought more troops and took command. He strengthened the position, and soon was able to declare that he would hold the town until "hell freezes over." I'm not sure the place was actually all that secure, but as it turned out, Cairo was never threatened.
Prentiss is of course the "Bold Prentiss" of the last verse of Silber's text. Silber thinks the "prime Jim Lane" of the next line "is probably Brigadier-General James H. Lane, at that time the commander of a Kansas Brigade in Fremont's department." Of this I am dubious. Lane was primarily a politician -- he was a general of the Kansas Militia in the Bleeding Kansas period, but Warner's list of Union generals omits him, and his biography in Boatner (p. 471) lists him as a Senator in 1861. His entry in DAB (Volume V, p. 577) credits him with raising and commanding two regiments as a brigadier general (I think the contradiction here is that he was never confirmed as a general by the Senate), but says he fought in western Missouri, not near Cairo. And his Kansas service had rendered him extraordinarily controversial. I can't prove it's not him, but I doubt it, though I have no alternative to offer. Perhaps some Illinois colonel?
Prentiss would go on to be a division commander under Grant at Shiloh, where he was forced to surrender after his men had held gallantly the "Hornet's Nest" for many hours (Boatner, p. 667). Exchanged in October 1862, he was promoted Major General later that year, but he did not hold a front-line command again (I suspect because someone in the War Department did not approve of his fighting at Shiloh). Probably miffed by his treatment, he resigned from the army in late 1863 and went back to his law practice. - RBW
Bibliography

Boatner: Mark M. Boatner III, The Biographical Dictionary of World War II, Presidio Press, 1996
DAB: Dumas Malone, editor, Dictionary of American Biography, originally published in 20 volumes plus later supplementary volumes; I use the 1961 Charles Scribner's Sons edition with minor corrections which combined the original 20 volumes into 10
Fowler: William F. Fowler, Jr., Under Two Flags: The American Navy in the Civil War, 1990 (I use the 2001 Bluejacket Books/Naval Institute Press paperback)
Hicken: Victor Hicken, Illinois in the Civil War, with a Foreword by E. B. Long, second edition, 1966; second edition, University of Illinois Press, 1991
Warner: Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders, Louisiana Status University Press, 1959 (I use the 1995 hardcover printing)

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File: SCWF248

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