Chapter 3

Breaking the River Barriers

AS PART OF THEIR line of defense, the Confederates erected fortifications at a series of strategic points stretching across Tennessee, Missouri, and Kentucky. The extreme left of the Confederate works was located at two points: New Madrid in the extreme southern portion of Missouri, and the second series of works at Island No. 10, in the Mississippi River, lying geographically south of New Madrid, but actually due to the river’s taking a sharp bend, in a more advanced position along the Tennessee-Kentucky state line. At Columbus, on the Mississippi River, just across the state line, was perhaps the strongest of the many works erected by the Southerners.

More than a hundred heavy guns, some accounts say one hundred and fifty, guarded the “Gibraltar of the West.” Farther east lay the vital Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. These two important waterways ran almost parallel to each other across the state of Kentucky and down into Tennessee, where they gradually split. At one point these waterways were within three miles of each other, but at the beginning of hostilities Kentucky had not been occupied by the Confederate army and the Southerners had chosen to erect their fortifications within the Tennessee state line, thus respecting Kentucky’s neutrality. Works had been started at points on the two rivers approximately twelve miles apart just across the state line. These works were Fort Henry and Fort Heiman on the Tennessee, and to the right, Fort Donelson on the Cumberland.¹

At Bowling Green, Kentucky, General Johnston’s main base of operations, the Southerners also erected some field fortifications. However, it was not necessary to erect river batteries, simply because there was no river running in that area. The only other fortifications in the region of any real importance were constructed at Fort Pillow along the Mississippi River, which had been set up to defend Memphis from attack.²

With the Confederate extreme right collapsed as a result of the Fishing Creek debacle, the positions at Fort Henry, Fort Heiman, and Fort Donelson took on increased importance. If Union naval and army forces could take these places, it would not only open up the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers to the Union, but it would also have the effect of outflanking both Columbus and Bowling Green, since Union forces would be south of them and in position to cut their communications with the Gulf region.

Even before Tennessee joined the Confederacy, Governor Isham Harris ordered Major Bushrod Johnson to lay out fortifications at some suitable point on the Tennessee River to protect the state from invasion along the route. The spot chosen was Fort Henry. It was not a terribly good choice, but probably the best under the circumstances, since work had to be begun at once and could not wait until Kentucky was occupied. Eventually seventeen guns were mounted in a fortified position on the east bank of the river. Eleven cannon commanded the river, while six were inside the works to help defend the landward side. To protect the fort from army assault, a line of trenches was dug some four hundred yards from the fort and some twelve thousand yards in length. Isolated rifle pits were scattered around the length of the works. The guns were a 10-inch Columbiad, two 42-pounders on barbette mounts, seven 32-pounders on barbette mounts, a 24-pound rifle, and six smaller pieces.³

Although of some use in disputing control of the river, the fort was weakened since it was on low terrain and was commanded by high ground on both sides of the river. Hence it would be readily possible for enemy forces to occupy the higher ground and shell the fort into submission. As a means of partly alleviating this situation, the Southerners began work on a smaller secondary work on the west side of the river. It was named Fort Heiman, in honor of Colonel Adolphus Heiman, a German-American who had served in the armed forces in a German state and had also acted as a lieutenant in a Tennessee regiment of volunteers in the Mexican War.⁴

The worst feature of Fort Henry was not the exposure to enemy attack but the exposure to the elements of nature, notably the waters of the Tennessee River. Captain Jesse Taylor of the garrison ascertained that at high water the highest point within the fort would be inundated by two feet. He related this fact to Tennessee state authorities, and was told to report to Major General Leonidas Polk with this news. Taylor checked with that Southern leader, who referred him to General A. S. Johnston, who dispatched an engineer, Major, later Colonel, Jeremy F. Gilmer, to investigate the situation, and it was he, who in an attempt to remedy it, began fortifying the heights of the west bank, Fort Heiman.⁵

Described by one of the authorities as a “bastioned earthwork of irregular trace,” Fort Donelson represented a somewhat different proposition. Located on a high bluff, the guns of the fort could shoot down, dropping projectiles with a plunging effect on enemy ships attempting to approach up the river. The fort was armed with ten 32-pound guns, two of them old carronades that would only be effective at practically point blank range, one 128-pound Columbiad, one 128-pound rifled gun, plus two 9-pound field pieces, presumably smoothbores.

Actually the term “fort” is a misnomer, for Donelson was rather a fortified encampment or position. On the slope of the ridge, which faced downstream from the position, the Confederates excavated two water batteries. Here the guns were protected on all sides by dirt works, thus it was virtually impossible to enfilade them with gunfire. The lower battery was about twenty feet above the river, and it was armed with the 10-inch smoothbore and eight of the 32-pounders. The other battery was perhaps fifty feet above the level of the water and had the one rifled 128-pounder and the two 32-pound carronades. Inside the fort itself, or what was known as the fort, was a bombproof, a nineteenth century bomb shelter where troops not actually required to man the guns could take shelter during enemy fire. This was connected with the batteries by a covered way, a sort of deep trench, similar to the communication trench of World War I.⁶

At the time fighting began in February, the fort covered an area of about sixty acres. The walls or parapets occupied a ridge conforming to the bank of the river for some distance, and then diverging southward, then east, and finally again north to the place where it began. Donelson was not a regular oblong square but was arranged following the contours of the ground in a kind of jagged zigzag. The ridge on which the parapets were located extended around Donelson, except at the southeast corner where the entrance was located.

The walls of the fort varied in height, conforming to the topography of the ridge, running from about eight feet to a little more than twenty, inside measure. The outside walls were naturally higher because the dirt from which they were constructed formed a deep ditch. Confederate soldiers had driven stakes and woven brush near the interior top of the wall, forming a platform for the men to stand on. On the various angles of the wall were located gun platforms.⁷

As of January 18, Donelson was provided with 904 rounds of 32-pound ammunition, 165 rounds of 12-pound cannon ammunition, a hundred rounds of 10-inch, 250 rounds of 12-pound howitzer, and 190 rounds of 6-pounders. The smaller caliber ammunition presumably referred to the presence of some field pieces at the fort. Besides the river batteries and the series of dirt works that formed the so-called fort, there was around and about it a series of rifle pits and gun positions. These pits were simply trenches with the dirt thrown up in the front to give the men protection from frontal fire, but not enfilading or flanking fire. There were provisions or positions for the establishment of eight field batteries in nine positions about the perimeter.⁸

Fort Donelson was begun later than Fort Henry, but it was reasonably complete by the time the fighting began at that point. It was actually not until late in the fall of 1861, after General Johnston had taken command, that work was begun. Some four hundred log cabins or crude barracks were constructed to house the soldiers, and preparations were complete or reasonably complete by February 5.

The Confederate commander was Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman, a forty-six year old native of Baltimore, Maryland. A graduate of West Point, class of 1836, Tilghman left the army soon after graduation, spending the next quarter of a century employed as a construction engineer in the South. During the Mexican War Tilghman entered the army for a short while, serving as an officer in the Maryland and District of Columbia Battalion of Volunteers.⁹ Commander Henry Walke, who met Tilghman after the fall of Fort Henry, described him as “a soldierly-looking man, a little above medium height, with piercing black eyes.”¹⁰ Personally unenthusiastic at being assigned to command what he considered a virtually hope less position, Tilghman still determined to hold Fort Henry as long as possible.¹¹

With only about two thousand five hundred men, Tilghman decided to abandon the incomplete Fort Heiman, trusting the bad terrain on the west side of the river would hinder a Federal advance from over there. On the night of February 4, the Confederates, excluding a simple force of cavalry left behind to act as scouts and skirmishers, evacuated the west side of the river, concentrating in and around Fort Henry. Unfortunately inside the fort the situation was rapidly deteriorating. The level of the Tennessee River rose constantly, flooding much of the fort and the surrounding countryside. The base of the fort’s flagstaff stood in two feet of water.¹² All day during the 5th, Tilghman and his officers nervously observed the movements of the enemy regiments and gun boats, but no land action developed, except the one with Webster’s reconnoitering party.

During the day the ironclad Essex steamed up towards the fort, firing a few rounds into the Confederates. The Southerners held their fire until the Essex completed her little mission and was heading back toward the rest of the fleet. Then the Confederate gunners fired a round from their single big rifle. The shot passed harmlessly overhead, but a second round struck the Essex damaging the captain’s cabin, “cutting the feet from a pair of his socks,” although fortunately the captain’s feet were not in the socks at the time.¹³ A few more shots were ex changed later in the day, both sides cautiously feeling the other out, but darkness caused an end to these activities. Sunrise the following morning brought only increasing gloom to Tilghman, who finally made a decision—evacuate the infantry and other personnel, all except the gunners for the fort’s big pieces, and save the garrison for a stand at the in finitely stronger Fort Donelson.

With about eighty men, Tilghman quietly awaited the Federal onslaught. Along the west bank of the river one of C. F. Smith’s brigades slowly sloshed across the flooded land toward the abandoned Fort Heiman. On the east bank Grant and the rest of the Union army painfully struggled to make their way around behind Tilghman’s position, but the advance was much slower than planned because of the flooded condition of the terrain, heightened by a heavy rainfall the night before.¹⁴

At 11:00 a.m., Foote’s seven warships, the Essex, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Carondolet leading, with the wooden gunboats Tyler, Lexington, and Conestoga close behind, began steaming toward the Confederate position. About one mile from the fort the warships opened fire, the flagship discharging her bow guns first. Slowly steaming onward, the Federals maintained a steady and accurate fire, Tilghman’s little band of gunners, flooded fort and all, pouring it right back. For almost forty-five minutes the Union and Confederate gunners exchanged shots, and then Tilghman’s big rifle exploded, killing or injuring all of his crew. Just minutes later the big 10-inch Columbiad was accidentally jammed, putting it out of action. A Federal shell passed through an open embrasure, exploding against one of the 32-pounders, killing or mangling the gun crew. Shells and solid shot spattered all over the Confederate position, adding to the confusion. Tilghman personally helped work one of the remaining guns. An officer suggested surrender, but Tilghman replied, “I shall not give up the work.”¹⁵

The fight was not all one-sided, for a cannon shot tore through the Essex’s boiler, disabling her and scalding thirty-eight officers and men, including Commander W. D. Porter.¹⁶ The six remaining warships continued to fight until after 1:00 p.m. Finally Tilghman, who was by this time reduced to two workable guns, decided further resistance was useless. Lieutenant Colonel Milton Haynes asked him if he was going to surrender. He replied, “Yes, we can not hold out five minutes longer; our men are disabled, and we have not enough to man the two guns.”¹⁷

At 1:50 p.m., the Confederate commander grabbed up a flag of truce and began waving it from the parapet, and just minutes later the captain and crew of the gunboat Cincinnati accepted the fort’s surrender.¹⁸ Besides the Essex’s casualties there was also one man killed and nine wounded on board the Cincinnati.¹⁹

Sailors from the St. Louis were the first to land and enter the fort, followed in a few minutes by the personnel from the other warships. About 3:00 p.m., a somewhat muddy General Grant and his staff rode into the fort and assumed command. Foote, Grant, and the senior army and navy officers walked around inspecting the battle area. Some of the Confederate army barracks in the rear of the fort were still smoking, Foote’s sailors having put out the flames only minutes earlier. The natural feeling of exaltation on the part of Grant and his officers was considerably lessened by the sight of the carnage inside the fort. Some of the Confederate gunners had been buried alive by the tremendous debris thrown up by Northern naval gunfire.²⁰ Confederate losses, according to Commander Henry Walke of the Carondolet, were five killed, eleven wounded, five missing, and a total of ninety-four prisoners, including the sick and wounded.²¹

While Grant and the others inspected their prize, Federal cavalry was busy pursuing Tilghman’s retreating soldiers. Late in the afternoon the Northern troops caught up with the tail of the retiring Confederate column, killing one man and capturing thirty-eight others. With the Yanks on their heels, the Rebels abandoned six field pieces in the mud (Captain Jacob Culbertson’s Battery), plus a considerable quantity of other supplies. Darkness brought an end to Federal pursuit, and the Confederates soon straggled into Fort Donelson, wet, filthy, and disheartened.²²

Even while his cavalry was chasing the fleeing Confederates, General Grant dictated a short victory notice to General Halleck, proclaiming that “Fort Henry is ours. The gunboats silenced the batteries before the investment was completed.”²³

Back at army headquarters Halleck, who had been anxiously awaiting news, probably breathed a great sigh of relief as he read the first two sentences of Grant’s victory message, but as his eyes scanned down the missive, his cautious heart must have given a big jump, for Grant casually remarked, “I shall take and destroy Fort Donelson on the 8th and return to Fort Henry.”²⁴ Nervous or not, Halleck quickly wired a bombastic message to General McClellan, in Washington, telling him of the capture, and saying that “the flag of the Union is re-established on the soil of Tennessee. It will never be removed.”²⁵

With his superiors propitiated, Halleck decided to let Grant have his lead in regard to the Donelson matter, and he ordered Foote to send gunboats up the river to cut up the various railroad bridges and interfere with Confederate communications.²⁶ On the same day, February 7, Halleck began sending out urgent pleas for reinforcements to bolster Grant’s army and make possible more extended operations once Donelson was under the Union flag.²⁷

But Grant did not wish to wait for any reinforcements. He wanted to immediately advance and assault Donelson before the Confederates regrouped after the Fort Henry debacle. Unfortunately the program of capturing the second Confederate strongpoint on the eighth was completely unrealistic. For one thing, by his own orders, the Union regiments were limited to four wagons per unit, a manifestly inadequate amount of transportation to launch an overland invasion. Furthermore there was a paucity of information concerning the exact state of the Confederate defenses. The only reliable information on Fort Donelson was that obtained by Lieutenant Ledyard Phelps on his reconnaissances toward Donelson with his gunboat Conestoga, and the last of these had been made on January 3.²⁸

General Grant seems to have forgotten or overlooked conferring with Foote about the proposed expedition. Foote was simply not in a position to support an attack on Donelson on the eighth. In order to get at the second Confederate position the Federal warships had to proceed back up the Tennessee River to Paducah, and then ascend the Cumberland. In any event the Essex and the other warships also needed some time to repair the damage worked by Tilghman’s gunners.

Foote also had to execute General Halleck’s order to destroy the Confederate Tennessee River bridges. The Lexington, Tyler, and Conestoga were sent on a rampage along the river, ripping up bridges and burning Confederate steamers. The Federals captured the half-completed Confederate gunboat Eastport in Hardin County, Tennessee, and then proceeded all the way up to Florence, Alabama, before returning to Fort Henry on February 10 without meeting any opposition, save an occasional burst of buck and ball from behind trees along the path of advance and retreat.²⁹

To add to General Grant’s difficulties, any hope of “taking Donelson on the 8th” was dispelled by the bad weather and subsequent high water. On the very day he had told General Halleck he would capture Donelson, Grant found himself writing his superior that “we are perfectly locked in by high water and bad roads, and prevented from acting offensively as I should like to do.”³⁰

But if a big push were out of question, Grant decided to use the delay to obtain vitally needed information about a workable route to Fort Donelson. His chief engineer officer, Lieutenant Colonel James B. McPherson, personally led a force of cavalry to within a mile of the Confederate stronghold, driving in the Confederate pickets in the process.³¹ Aboard his headquarters ship Tigress, tied up at Fort Henry, Grant and his staff worked on plans for a new target date, February 12, one which would fit in with Foote’s operations.³²

Receiving word of the fall of Fort Henry, General Johnston immediately ordered newly appointed forty-four year old Brigadier General Bushrod Rust Johnson to assume command of Fort Donelson, replacing Tilghman, now a prisoner of war.³³ The fall of Fort Henry punctured a deep hole in the en tire Confederate defensive arrangement in the West. With only about forty-five thousand men available in Kentucky and Tennessee, and with his position now sliced in two, Albert S. Johnston’s entire defensive system threatened to collapse.³⁴

On the morning following Fort Henry’s fall, General Johnston called a top level military conference at the Covington House in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Major General Hardee was there, as was the newly arrived hero of Sumter and Manassas, P. G. T. Beauregard. As a result of this meeting it was decided to adopt a new plan of strategy for the future. Realizing that the Kentucky-Tennessee line could no longer be held, General Johnston decided to withdraw all Confederate forces south of the Cumberland River. Fort Donelson, Bowling Green, and Columbus were to be evacuated; and if it proved impossible to organize adequate defensive works at Nashville, then even that prime center was to be abandoned. The two separate wings of the Confederate forces in Kentucky were to operate independently under Generals Polk and Hardee until they could be united at some undetermined spot southward. The eastern portion was to fall back on Nashville and if necessary to take the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad to Stevenson, Alabama. The western force was to withdraw to Humboldt, Tennessee, and then to Grand Junction in order to cover Memphis. Confederate naval forces, under George N. Hollins, were to cooperate in a series of rear guard actions at Columbus, Island No. 10, Fort Pillow, and at Memphis if necessary.³⁵

Johnston’s decision was a bold one. Its execution would mean the loss of Kentucky and much of Tennessee, besides the terrible morale effect of the withdrawal on the North and South. The most controversial part of the decision concerned the evacuation of Columbus. General Polk argued that a holding force of five or six thousand men should be left to garrison the fortress and stand a siege if necessary. Polk reasoned that the tremendous fire power of Columbus could delay a Union advance for an extended period of time, but Johnston and Beauregard wanted to save the garrison. The guns from Columbus were transferred to Island No. 10 and New Madrid, which were appreciably weaker positions than the Kentucky fort. In the long run the South lost an even larger garrison when the two latter points fell, while not obtaining any particular strategic advantage. The decision was Johnston’s and he overruled Polk’s objections. On February 11, the Confederate army at Bowling Green began its withdrawal.³⁶ Having made his decision to withdraw, General Johnston al most immediately began nullifying it.

On February 7, General Johnston ordered Brigadier General Gideon Pillow to take his command and proceed to Fort Donelson. Lacking faith in Donelson as an impregnable bastion, the Confederate commander told Pillow to hold it as long as possible and then fall back to Charlotte and finally to Nashville. Arriving at the fort on the 9th, Pillow energetically went to work propping up the only partially completed defenses and attempting to restore the morale of the garrison.³⁷

Pillow, a graduate of the University of Nashville, was fifty-five years of age. Entering into a law partnership with James K. Polk in Columbus, Tennessee, Pillow eventually played a very important role in both state and national politics. He claimed the major responsibility for Polk’s nomination for the presidency of the United States in 1844, and in 1852, played a significant role in the nomination negotiations which resulted in Franklin Pierce’s nomination for the presidency. In 1846, he was appointed a brigadier general of volunteers, and during the Mexican War fought at Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Contreras, and Chapultepec, being twice wounded. After bitterly quarreling with General Winfield Scott, the testy Tennessean was whitewashed by an investigating group. When Tennessee seceded, Pillow was appointed senior major general of state forces, and later a brigadier general in the Confederate army. He fought at the Battle of Belmont, where he achieved a sort of drawn battle with General Ulysses S. Grant. Although Pillow’s military career had been checkered and highly controversial, at least he had the virtue of combat experience in the field.³⁸

Brigadier General John B. Floyd was ordered to concentrate his command at Clarksville, and then to reinforce the Donelson garrison. From Clarksville Floyd moved to Cumberland City on the river sixteen miles south of Fort Donelson. Here he conceived the idea of making a defensive stand. Pillow objected and appealed to General Johnston, who ordered Floyd to proceed to Donelson with his own command and that of Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner. Arriving at the Fort on February 13, Floyd took command as senior officer. As General Johnston later wrote President Jefferson Davis, “I determined to fight for Nashville at Donelson, and gave the best part of my army to do it.”³⁹

The reversal of the original plan to retreat was not necessarily a bad idea, for by concentrating Confederate forces against Grant there existed a good chance for victory. Unfortunately President Davis’ old friend committed two glaring errors: he failed to order the other troops of his command to go to Donelson for an all out effort, but worst of all, he failed to take personal charge of the operation, as putting General Floyd in charge of an army of any size was merely inviting disaster.

Fifty-five year old Floyd’s military experience, aside from his controversial three and one-half years as Secretary of War to President James Buchanan, consisted of a short spell in the unhappy West Virginia operations of the summer and fall of 1861. Even the violent and petulant Pillow was a better choice for a commanding officer, but the Virginian’s commission in the Confederate army dated from May 23, 1861, while Pillow’s only went back to July 9.⁴⁰

The third of the Donelson generals, Simon B. Buckner, was even more junior, being appointed brigadier general on September 14, 1861. Under the law, Floyd’s seniority ranked him above the vastly more experienced Buckner and Pillow. Only by General Johnston’s coming out in person could the command of the Donelson army be placed in the hands of someone acquainted with military matters. Instead General Johnston foolishly chose to stay with Hardee’s wing of the army in the retreat from Bowling Green.⁴¹

With Foote’s warships heading for Fort Donelson via the Tennessee, Ohio, and Cumberland rivers, followed by strong infantry units on transports, Grant’s army of fifteen thousand men and eight artillery batteries began making final preparations for the advance on Donelson on the evening of February 11. Indeed, McClernand’s First Division started out on the journey late in the afternoon, moving about five miles before the Democratic general from Illinois ordered a halt.⁴² On the following day the entire army advanced forward, moving along both of the roads running from Fort Henry to Fort Donelson.

As the expedition began Dr. John H. Brinton, of General Grant’s staff, found it hard to control his high-spirited mount and the animal kept pushing in front of Grant and the others. Mounted on his favorite stallion, Jack, Grant spurred his horse forward. Passing Brinton, the general humorously remarked, “Doctor, I believe I command this army, and I think I’ll go first.”⁴³

Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest and a small force of Confederate cavalry skirmished with Grant’s advance elements, but before nightfall the Federals reached the Donelson area and began to surround it.⁴⁴

While the Federal soldiers slogged along the muddy roads toward Fort Donelson, the first of Foote’s warships, the Carondolet, appeared within sight of the Confederate strongpoint. Commander Walke arrived opposite the fort about 11:20 a.m., but could see nothing of any Federal troops in the area. To feel out the Confederate defenses and to let General Grant know the navy had arrived, Walke shelled the fort briefly before retiring down the river a short distance to await the arrival of the Union army.⁴⁵

On Thursday morning, February 13, Grant continued deploying his army to cut off Donelson from outside succor; but before the ringing of the fort could be completed General Floyd arrived with the remainder of his command, slipping into Donelson without incident. Grant’s officers had strict orders to stand on the defensive and not to bring on any kind of general engagement, for he hoped Foote’s gunboats could pound the Southerners into submission without an expensive army action. But events ruled otherwise. The Confederates also stood on the defensive, but their skirmishers and artillery soon began to harass the investing foe.