Someone with imagination and the right kind of boat. In 1842, James B. Eads proved that he had both the imagination and the know-how to design such a boat.
Eads was born in 1820 in Indiana. His family moved around a lot as his father tried to earn a living. When the Eads family moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1833, James stopped attending school and found jobs to help support his family. In his free time, he read books about civil engineering and machinery. By the time he was 19, he had a job as a cargo clerk on the Knickerbocker, a river steamboat.
An accident on the steamboat got Eads thinking about salvage. He started with a flat-decked barge holding a derrick. A 40-gallon wooden barrel served as a makeshift diving bell. Lowered into the Mississippi River by the derrick, the diving bell allowed Eads to walk on the river's bottom. He spent hundreds of hours exploring. He observed that where the river ran fast, it scoured and deepened its channel. Where the river slowed, it deposited sediment that collected into sandbars.
By 1856, Eads was the respected captain of a fleet of salvage boats on the river. And his firsthand knowledge of the river became invaluable to him as he created monumental works of engineering that forever altered the Mississippi.
But the Civil War (1861-1865) initially put such projects on hold. The federal government asked Eads to build river gunboats for the Union. Eads built more than 30 ironclads, constantly incorporating improvements. The ironclads helped the Union win important victories on the Mississippi River and along the Gulf of Mexico.
Esta historia es de la edición April 2023 de Cobblestone American History Magazine for Kids.
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Esta historia es de la edición April 2023 de Cobblestone American History Magazine for Kids.
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Putting the Pieces Together
Americans needed to begin to put the past behind them, come together, and plan for the future in the spring of 1865. But Abraham Lincoln, the man best equipped to lead them and who had hoped to restore the country as smoothly and peacefully as possible, had been assassinated.
LAST SHOTS
The last Confederate forces in the Civil War didn’t surrender in the spring of 1865 or on a battlefield.
AND IN OTHER 1865 NEWS
A group of African Americans stop at the White House’s annual public reception on January 1, where they shake hands with President Abraham Lincoln.
A Plot to Kill President the
For several months, actor John Wilkes Booth’s band of conspirators had plotted to capture President Abraham Lincoln and hold him hostage in exchange for Confederate prisoners.
Let the Thing Be Pressed
In June 1864, Union Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant began a nearly 10-month campaign in Virginia.
HEALING THE NATION
President Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office for the second time on March 4, 1865.
A Helping Hand
The spring season is hard in any agricultural society. Plants and animals are too small to eat.
WAR SHERMAN-STYLE
As far as Union Major General William T. Sherman was concerned, the Civil War had gone on long enough.
PEACE TALKS
The fall of Fort Fisher made clear that the Confederacy’s days were numbered. Southerners were tired and hungry.
FORT FISHER'S FALL
Outnumbered Confederate soldiers inside Fort Fisher were unable to withstand the approach of Union troops by land and the constant Union naval bombardment from the sea.
