Robert Gudmestad

These are ironclad steamboats.

And they assist the Union government, the Union armies, in attacking Confederate locations along the rivers.

Because Confederates built a series of forts to try to prevent an invasion.

The Union built a series of steamboats

that would assist the armies in attacking these forts and penetrating Confederate territory.

The steamboat, as we think about it, this multi-tiered vessel,

When we think about the Mississippi River steamboat, it's uniquely American because no other country has the same combination of a massive river system, the Mississippi River system, that has this incredibly large economy tied to it, moving people up and down the river.

And the development of a boat that's going to carry both passengers and freight.

You don't have anything like this in Europe.

Now, you do have steamboats, but they're small.

And the rivers that they're on are not this large network.

And if you think about a large network river, maybe think of the Amazon, but then you don't have the industrial development.

So steamboats, as we think about them, are a unique thing to the United States.

And Mark Twain, I think, is also responsible for the mythology of the steamboat.

Yeah.

And he was no lost cause apologist.

But he, you know, through writing Tom Sawyer, of course, and Huck Finn, staples of American literature that a lot of Americans have read, those are deeply intertwined with steamboat, the idea of steamboats and what steamboats brought to American communities along the river.

I had fun.