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23rd Annual Civil War Reenactment April 23 - 25, 2010
KEOKUK
IOWA
Saturday - April 24, 2010 Ladies Tea and Fashion Show
While in Rand Park, visitors can tour the camps,
Keokuk Area Convention & Tourism Bureau
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BACKGROUND: The Mississippi River was essential to the development of the United States as a nation and a world power. The great river system was the most dominant geographical feature in North America. Whoever controlled the Mississippi controlled the continent. Both the Union and Confederate governments made extensive military dispositions on the Mississippi and its tributaries.. Though overshadowed by the war in the Virginia theater, the war in the west, and in particular along the Mississippi River, became strategically decisive. The states of the upper Midwest depended upon the Mississippi river for trade, transportation, and commerce. Though the railroads were rapidly expanding into the interior of the nation, river transport was still the most efficient way to get agricultural products to world markets. River cities, such as Keokuk, could not thrive and prosper without free access to the river. When war broke out, tens of thousands of Iowans, many from Keokuk, volunteered and joined the union army. Their primary focus was to preserve the union, and gain open navigation of the Mississippi.
SPEAKERS:
Dr. Eugene Watkins, Curator and Chief Historian, Old Fort Museum, Fort Madison Iowa "Keokuk, Iowa and the Mississippi River on the eve of the Civil War"
Loren Horton, Senior Historian at the State Historical Society of Iowa "Training the troops, Iowa mobilizes for war on the Mississippi"
David Hinze, Historian and Author of Border War in Southwest Missouri, The Battle of Carthage, July 5, 1861 "James Buchanan Eads and the City Class Ironclads"
Brigadier General Parker Hills, U.S. Army (retired) "Guns on the Mississippi, Formation of the Western Navy to the Battle of Fort Donelson"
Richard L. Kiper, United States Army (retired)
"John Alexander McClernand"
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329 Main St. | Keokuk, IA 52632 800.383.1219 | 319.524.5599 info@keokukiowatourism.org |