Aaron Sheehan-Dean

speaker

924 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 24 Aug

Aaron Sheehan-Dean’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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American History Hit · Battle of Baton Rouge: Civil War on the Mississippi · 5 Feb 2026 podcast

It's Winfield Scott's idea.

And it actually the anaconda captures it because what Scott says and Scott, remember, had been the general in command of U.S.

forces of the Mexican-American War.

He's by far the most distinguished and lauded military mind.

He is also viewed by many as old and doddering and out of touch.

I mean, he is a corpulent man, as they said in the 19th century.

Well over 300 pounds had to be sort of winched onto his horse for parades.

But he actually has a pretty acute sense here, which is that this war is going to take years and that the most effective way to pursue this is to send forces along the rivers and along the coast and confine the Confederacy and then squeeze resources moving inwards.

And initially, as I say, a lot of Northerners are impatient and they reject that idea.

But by 1862, it's quite clear that the war will last for years, possibly.

And so the effort then is to really try to cut the Confederacy in two by capturing control of the Mississippi River, leaving the trans-Mississippi states of Texas and Arkansas and Louisiana, big beef producers, resources for those Eastern soldiers, leaving those isolated on the western side of the Mississippi River.

So controlling that whole river is really key, and it starts at New Orleans and then begins moving up.

But southern Louisiana is among the wealthiest sections of the United States, and certainly in the south.

So controlling that is really an essential objective.

So the real defense, New Orleans, at the time when the Union arrives downriver, they only have about 8,000 soldiers in the city itself.

And the city has 160,000 residents.

So it is pretty clear to everybody that the actual soldiery is totally insufficient to protect the city.

The real defense lays downriver.

There's a long channel from New Orleans that's about 60 miles to the Gulf.

And there are two forts at a narrow point in that area.

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