Johnston’s bluff flummoxed Halleck and Buell, but Grant and Smith did not buy it, nor did George Thomas. Imperturbable and phlegmatic—“Old Slow Trot” he had been called in the 2nd Cavalry—Thomas was moving steadily against Zollicoffer and on January 19, 1862, at Mill Springs, Kentucky, he met and routed the Confederate force, totally destroying its combat effectiveness. Johnston’s right flank collapsed. Thomas’s troops poured through the Cumberland Gap and would have taken Knoxville had their supplies not given out.11
At the same time Thomas was rolling over Johnston’s right, Grant and Smith were probing the Confederate left. Halleck was dragging his feet launching an offensive to support Buell—“To operate on exterior lines against an enemy occupying a central position will fail, as it has always failed, in 99 cases out of 100,” he wrote the president12—but after continued prodding from Lincoln and McClellan13 he eventually ordered Grant to conduct a demonstration in the direction of Columbus to prevent Polk from sending reinforcements to Bowling Green. “Make a great fuss,” Halleck told Grant, “and by all means avoid a serious engagement.”14
Grant needed no prodding. Halleck’s instructions were virtually identical to those he had received from Frémont two months earlier, yet this time Grant stayed within the letter of the order. On January 14, 1862, he moved with 9,000 men down the left bank of the Mississippi, supported by a flotilla of gunboats under Commodore Foote. Simultaneously, Smith moved up the Tennessee from Paducah, buttressed by two additional gunboats. Grant’s cavalry engaged rebel pickets three miles from Columbus, while he and Foote took the naval vessels under the guns of the citadel. After making a personal thirty-five-mile survey on horseback of the roads leading to the Confederate stronghold (“sloppy, miserable, and virtually impassable at this time of year”), he returned to Cairo on January 20.15
Grant had a field soldier’s contempt for making an empty show of force, but in his report to Halleck he put on a good face. “The expedition, if it had no other effect, served as a fine reconnaissance.”16 To his staff he was more candid. “This sloshing about in mud, rain, sleet and snow for a week without striking the enemy, only exposing the men to great hardships and suffering in mid-winter, is not war.”17
Smith returned to Paducah the following day and filed a glowing report about the prospect of quick success. Grant had come to consider Smith, who was sixteen years his senior, a personal tutor in the art of war. Smith said his troops had approached within two and a half miles of Fort Henry, and the defensive layout corresponded to the sketch he and Grant had reviewed. The garrison consisted of 2,000 to 3,000 men, but the works were incomplete and because the Tennessee River was at flood stage, many of the gun emplacements were underwater. “I think two ironclad gunboats would make short work of Fort Henry.”18
Grant was delighted. Fort Henry and Fort Donelson were the key to Johnston’s position. Their capture would not only open the Tennessee and the Cumberland to Federal gunboats, but would drive a wedge between the Confederate forces at Columbus and those at Bowling Green. Polk’s fortress on the Mississippi would be outflanked and Hardee’s Army of Central Kentucky would be dangerously exposed. A rebel withdrawal would become inevitable; the state of Kentucky would be back in Union hands, and it would be doubtful if Johnston could hold central Tennessee. Grant immediately transmitted Smith’s report to Halleck, and requested permission to visit St. Louis headquarters.19
Grant’s request landed on Halleck’s desk just as he received word of General Thomas’s victory at Mill Springs. The rivalry between Halleck and Buell now worked to Grant’s advantage. Unless Thomas’s victory could be offset, Buell could easily emerge as the overall Union commander west of the Appalachians. Halleck told Grant to report to St. Louis immediately.20
Grant believed the opportunity to move south was at hand. On the eve of his departure for St. Louis he shared his enthusiasm with his sister Mary. “I now have a larger force than General Scott commanded” in Mexico, he wrote. “I do hope it will be my good fortune to retain so important a command for at least one battle. I believe there is no portion of our whole army better prepared to contest a battle than there is within my district.”21
But Grant’s meeting with Halleck went poorly. The commanding general and his Cairo subordinate had not served together previously and had little more than a nodding acquaintance.22 Halleck graduated from West Point in 1839—the spring before Grant entered—and during the Mexican War he was with General Kearny in California. He was practicing law in San Francisco when Grant was stationed at Fort Humboldt and was privy to the gossip surrounding his resignation. When Halleck assumed command of the Missouri Department in November he had been skeptical of Grant’s ability,23 and was still not sure what to make of him. An inspection team dispatched to Cairo in December reported favorably on Grant’s command—one of the few bright spots in the department24—and Grant’s promptness in carrying out orders recommended itself. He rarely complained, never asked for reinforcements, and went ahead and did the job with whatever resources were available. Accordingly, on December 20, 1861, Halleck had enlarged Grant’s Cairo command to include the troops under C. F. Smith at Paducah.25 This was a logical move given the lines of communication from St. Louis.26 Nevertheless, Halleck remained uncomfortable with Grant. To some extent, it was the inevitable tension between a man of words and a man of action. Halleck was a superb administrator, but he did his best soldiering at army headquarters. He was cautious and out of place in the field, while Grant was just the opposite.
On his part, Grant was awed by Halleck’s reputation as a military thinker. Old Brains was considered a powerful intellect and Grant rarely traveled in such company.27 Consequently, both men were awkward and ill at ease when they met. The initial awkwardness between Grant and Halleck was something the two men never overcame. For the next three and a half years they would work together in a one-two relationship, one man’s strength complementing the other’s weakness. Almost in spite of themselves, they made an effective combination: Grant in the field; Halleck at headquarters. Old Brains was the senior of the two until March 1864 when Grant was appointed general in chief and became Halleck’s superior. But regardless of who was in command, the relationship—beneficial though it was for the Union—was never an easy one.
Grant wrote later that at his initial meeting with Halleck he was “received with so little cordiality that I perhaps stated the object of my visit with less clearness than I might have done, and I had not uttered many sentences before I was cut short as if my plan [to capture Fort Henry] was preposterous. I returned to Cairo very much crestfallen.”28
Grant did not remain crestfallen for long. On January 27 President Lincoln, thoroughly frustrated at the failure of Union commanders to assume the offensive, took the unprecedented step of issuing the “President’s General War Order No. 1.” It ordered a general advance of the land and naval forces of the United States within the month and threatened to hold all commanders strictly accountable for carrying out the order. Lincoln did not announce a specific plan of battle, but called explicitly for advances by the Army of the Potomac, Buell’s forces in Kentucky, the naval units on the Gulf Coast, and “the Army and Flotilla at Cairo.”29 His purpose, he told a friend from Illinois, was to give a jolt to the military, a warning they must act.30
Grant recognized opportunity when he saw it. He perceived the leverage the president’s order provided and, with characteristic persistence, immediately resumed his effort to move south. “With permission I will take Fort Henry on the Tennessee and hold and establish a large camp there,” he telegraphed Halleck on January 28.31 Since Lincoln mentioned the navy contingent at Cairo in his order, Grant roped in Flag Officer Andrew Foote to support the plan. “Grant and myself are of the opinion that Fort Henry on the Tennessee can be carried with four Iron-clad Gunboats,” the commodore cabled Halleck. “Have we your authority to move for that purpose?”32
Grant pressed the issue hard—scarcely what a dutiful subordinate turned down so abruptly less than a week earlier would have done, except that the president was on record demanding action. The next day he filed a more extensive request with Halleck.
In view of the large force now concentrating in this District and the present feasibility of the plan I would respectfully suggest the propriety of subduing Fort Henry, near the Kentucky and Tennessee line, and holding the position. If this is not done soon there is but little doubt that the defenses on both the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers will be materially strengthened. From Fort Henry it will be easy to operate either on the Cumberland, Memphis, or Columbus. It will besides have a moral effect upon our troops to advance them toward the rebel states.33
Grant dropped his customary deference and spoke in army lingo Halleck could appreciate. “The advantages of this move are as perceptible to the General Commanding the Department as to myself therefore further statements are unnecessary.”34
With the president’s directive hanging over him, Halleck could not help but see Grant’s plan in a new light. Earlier he had told McClellan it would require at least 60,000 men to move up the Cumberland.35 Grant had barely one third that number. But if Grant, Foote, and C. F. Smith were unanimously recommending action, Halleck decided it was a risk he must take. “Make your preparations to take and hold Fort Henry,” he telegraphed Grant on January 30. “I will send you written instructions by mail.”36
Halleck’s follow-up letter was brief and to the point. Grant was told to move by steamer up the Tennessee as far as possible and, because of the weather, to rely on the roads no more than he had to. “Fort Henry should be taken and held at all hazards.” The railroad bridges upstream were to be rendered impassable but not destroyed. Halleck said he was informed by Washington that General P. G. T. Beauregard, the hero of Fort Sumter and Bull Run, was on his way from Virginia with fifteen regiments to reinforce Johnston. Accordingly, “you will move with the least possible delay.”37
Telling Grant to move with the least possible delay was like lighting a short fuse to a charge of dynamite. “Will be off up the Tennessee at six o’clock,” he wired Halleck from Paducah on the morning of February 3. “Command twenty-three regiments in all.”38 That was it. Grant had a talent for understatement. The great Union offensive in the West was launched with a telegram of fourteen words. In three days Grant organized his command for battle, issued rations and ammunition, provided for resupply, procured river transportation, and coordinated the movement of seven Union gunboats, four of which were ironclads.39
The army Grant led against Fort Henry numbered approximately 15,000 men, all of whom (except for C. F. Smith) were volunteers, primarily from Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa.40 Grant divided it into two divisions, the first commanded by Brigadier General John A. McClernand, a former congressman from Illinois who had served as deputy commander at Belmont, and the second by Smith. McClernand shared date of rank with Grant, had practiced law alongside Lincoln in Springfield, and had a sharp eye for personal advancement. Brave but unaccustomed to the military way of doing things, his political ambition lurked dangerously close to the surface—a fact of which Grant was acutely aware.
McClernand required watching, but Grant was more concerned about Halleck. As the troop convoy cast off from the dock, Grant’s staff noticed he seemed tense and kept looking back at the wharf boat, as if he feared a last-minute recall might arrive from St. Louis. When the flagship finally turned upstream and Paducah fell from sight, Grant became a new man. He clapped John Rawlins, his aide from Galena, on the shoulder—a surprising act, to Rawlins, for Grant habitually showed no emotion—and said: “Now we seem to be safe, beyond recall. . . . We will succeed, Rawlins; we must succeed.”41
Grant’s concern about Halleck was not misplaced. The commanding general had never participated in a major offensive and, according to his principal biographer, as soon as Grant moved out Halleck was gripped with panic.42 He anxiously asked Buell to launch a diversion toward Bowling Green and then wired McClellan for reinforcements.43 In the space of two days, Halleck, Buell, and McClellan exchanged twenty-two telegrams with respect to Fort Henry. The result was that Buell eventually dispatched a green brigade to Grant, though it arrived too late to be of use.
Halleck’s nervousness worked in Grant’s favor. Concerned though he was, Halleck was too experienced to second-guess his deputy in the field. He believed “a general in command of an army is the best judge of existing conditions” and that it would be disastrous for him to dictate to his field commander on the basis of incomplete information.44 Accordingly, he set about to do everything he could to insure Grant’s success. The unthinking teamwork between the two men sprang into place. Halleck stripped the immediate St. Louis area to rush four more regiments to Cairo and he ordered Pope and Curtis to have additional reinforcements ready. He also sent his chief of staff, Brigadier General George W. Cullum, to Cairo to expedite the movement of men and supplies. Cullum was authorized to issue orders in Halleck’s name to make certain Grant got what he needed. “Time now is everything to us,” Halleck told Cullum. “Don’t delay one instant.”45
Along with Cullum, Halleck dispatched Lieutenant Colonel James B. McPherson to serve as Grant’s chief engineer, and William Tecumseh Sherman to command Grant’s rear area. Sherman had come a cropper while he briefly commanded Union forces in Kentucky, suffered what appeared to be a nervous breakdown, and had been relegated to a training command at Benton Barracks in St. Louis. Halleck, who in 1846 had been a wardroom companion of Sherman on the six-month voyage of the frigate Lexington from New York to San Francisco, was one of the few military men who retained confidence in his old friend. By sending Sherman to Grant, Halleck was giving him a second chance. McPherson, who graduated first in his class at West Point in 1853, was regarded as “a very clever young officer” with a brilliant career ahead of him.46 In addition to his duties as chief engineer, Halleck instructed McPherson to observe conditions downriver closely and to keep a special eye on Grant. Rumors concerning his drinking were prevalent in St. Louis and Halleck wanted a firsthand report.47
Already Grant’s momentum was attracting the resources of the Union. But for the time being he made do with what he had. Grant’s fleet of nine passenger steamers was insufficient to transport his entire army, and so he moved by echelon from Paducah, McClernand’s division going first. The vessels traveled upstream at night, their running lights dimmed, escorted by the ironclads Essex and St. Louis. At 4:30 A.M. on February 4 the convoy hove to on the east bank of the Tennessee at Itra Landing and the troops went ashore. This was sixty-five miles above Paducah and eight miles from Fort Henry. Thus far Grant had maintained tactical surprise. The dark wintry night cloaked his movement and, almost miraculously, Confederate spies in Cairo and Paducah flashed no warning to Fort Henry.48 The transports returned to Paducah for Smith’s division, and Grant boarded the Essex for a reconnaissance upriver.
Grant’s task was to find a landing site as close to Fort Henry as possible, but beyond the range of its heavy guns. This was complicated by the fact that Panther Creek, a tributary of the Tennessee two and a half miles north of the fort, was hopelessly swollen because of heavy rains. Grant wanted to avoid having his infantry ford the deep, swirling waters of the creek, but landing between it and Fort Henry might bring the transports under Confederate artillery fire with resulting havoc and probably disaster. Grant decided to test the range of the guns at Fort Henry himself. He told Captain William Porter to take the Essex close in to the Confederate stronghold and draw its fire. The vessel steamed past Panther Creek, the guns of the fort opened up, and the initial volleys fell far short. Just as Grant was about to return to the bivouac area, confident his troops could land south of Panther Creek, a heavy six-inch rifled gun swung into action. The first shell landed well beyond the creek and the second hit the Essex squarely, passing uncomfortably close to where Grant and Porter were standing.49 Grant had the information he wanted. Essex limped back to Itra Landing, and Grant began preparations for the troops to debark at Bailey’s Ferry, a mile or so north of Panther Creek.
Unlike the Confederate citadel at Columbus, Fort Henry was a target waiting to be taken. The main position consisted of a series of earthwork revetments covering about ten acres. It was sited on low ground, dominated by the heights across the river, and subject to flooding when the Tennessee rose above its banks. In February 1862 the water was so high the decks of the Union gunboats actually rode above the level of the fort, allowing the gunners to pour a plunging fire into the rebel post. The decision to construct the fort had been taken hastily after Tennessee seceded from the Union in April 1861.50 The principal consideration was to locate it as close as possible to a corresponding fort to be constructed on the Cumberland (Fort Donelson). Unlike the Cumberland site, however, the land adjacent to the Tennessee River was flat bottomland on an alluvial floodplain. Engineers who surveyed the area concluded that no suitable location could be found for a fort on the right bank of the Tennessee, and the one they came up with was the best they could do.II Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman, a West Point classmate of Longstreet’s and John Pope’s who became responsible for the completion of Fort Henry, said later “the history of military engineering records no parallel to this case.”51
Aside from the unwisdom of its location, Fort Henry was undergunned and undermanned. Its armament consisted of seventeen pieces of heavy artillery (all but one of which were smoothbore), which were collected piecemeal from various depots and foundries throughout the South. Two were so poorly cast they exploded during an initial test firing and several others had to be condemned, leaving only eleven guns facing the river, of which only nine were equipped with shot and shell of the appropriate caliber. The garrison comprised six raw infantry regiments, two batteries of light artillery, and some irregular cavalry—a total of about 3,400 men. The best equipped unit, the 10th Tennessee, was armed with old flintlock “Tower of London” muskets that had seen service in the War of 1812. Other units made do with their men’s personal squirrel guns and fowling pieces.52 Confederate intelligence was so poor that Tilghman did not learn of the Union army’s approach until mid-morning on February 4 when Grant’s fleet appeared downriver and transports began disgorging their troops at Bailey’s Ferry. “Far as the eye could see,” wrote one Confederate survivor, “the course of the river could be traced by the dense volumes of smoke issuing from the flotilla—indicating that the longthreatened attempt to break our lines was to be made in earnest.”53
Grant’s intelligence was equally faulty. He had no way of knowing the size of the garrison, or whether Tilghman had been reinforced by troops coming overland from Fort Donelson, or by rail from Bowling Green and Memphis. But if Fort Henry could be taken by 15,000 men and seven gunboats, he intended to do so.54 His battle plan was simple enough. Incorporating the lessons he learned from Belmont, Grant instructed C. F. Smith to take his division and seize the high ground on the west bank of the Tennessee opposite Fort Henry. McClernand’s 1st Division would move forward simultaneously, angle its way around the head of Panther Creek, cut the road to Fort Donelson, and wait “in readiness to charge and take Fort Henry, by storm, promptly, upon the receipt of orders.”55 At the same time, Commodore Foote would engage the enemy with his gunboats. The combined movement was to commence at 11 A.M. on February 6. Grant hoped the late hour would give the saturated countryside additional time to dry.
Throughout Wednesday, February 5, Smith’s 2nd Division shuttled across the river in full view of the Confederate garrison at Fort Henry. “All day long the flood-tide of arriving and the ebb of returning transports continued ceaselessly,” wrote Captain Jesse Taylor, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy who commanded the fort’s heavy artillery.56 That evening Grant wrote Julia, “the sight of our camp fires on either side of the river is beautiful and no doubt inspires the enemy with the idea that we have full 40,000 men. Tomorrow will come the tug of war. One side or the other must tomorrow night rest in quiet possession of Fort Henry.”57
The key to Grant’s attack was the firepower of Foote’s flotilla. Commodore Andrew H. Foote was a hard-bitten, sock-it-to-’em naval officer of forty years’ experience. His father, Samuel A. Foote, had been governor of Connecticut, and in 1822—the year of Grant’s birth—Foote was appointed a midshipman in the United States Navy.58 He served for years on the China station, chased slavers in the South Atlantic, and, puritanically religious, conducted a Bible school for his crew every Sunday from his quarterdeck. Foote was a man of pronounced opinions, especially on three subjects: alcohol, slavery, and how to fight. He considered it his calling to eliminate drunkenness at sea, and in 1845 his ship Cumberland became the first temperance vessel in the navy. His crusade against slavery was legendary, and his zeal commanding the Perry off the African coast from 1848 to 1850 effectively dried up the slave trade for almost two years. But fighting was Foote’s first love. In 1856 while evacuating the American garrison from Canton, his relief boat came under fire from Chinese barrier forts guarding the harbor’s entrance. Foote considered that an act of aggression. Without hesitating he brought his squadron to bear on the outermost of the forts, loosed a devastating broadside, and then led the storming party ashore to subdue the fortress. There were four barrier forts in all, and in two days Foote stormed all of them, capturing 176 pieces of heavy artillery and opening Canton to American trade.59 Grant had mixed feelings about slavery and had his own problem with alcohol, but his view of war coincided with Foote’s. They made a unique team, rising above service rivalry, and together pioneered the art of combined operations. The army and the navy, said Foote, “were like blades of shears—united, invincible; separated, almost useless.”60
As an example of what he meant, the gunboats Foote commanded were not of navy design but owed their construction to John C. Frémont, who envisaged them as mobile artillery to spearhead his drive down the Mississippi. They were built on army contract by St. Louis industrialist James B. Eads, who put 4,000 men to work around the clock and completed eight boats in 100 days. Designed for river warfare, they were 175 feet long and 50 feet across, with two-and-a-half-inch armor plate sloped at a 35 degree angle to deflect incoming artillery fire. They mounted thirteen guns apiece, and despite their weight were remarkably maneuverable. They drew only six feet of water, which meant they could go almost anywhere along the Mississippi and its tributaries. The boats were crewed mostly by volunteers from Grant’s command who had river experience, and the navy, which had been skeptical of the project at first, provided some of its best officers to command them. Except for the skirmish at Belmont—in which no ironclads participated—the ability of the gunboats to support ground troops was untested, and Foote planned to make an example of Fort Henry.
The Confederates meanwhile were getting ready. Tilghman chose not to contest Grant’s landing at Bailey’s Ferry, or the transfer of Smith’s division to the west bank of the Tennessee, but to consolidate his forces within Fort Henry’s trench line. Rather than hit the Union forces when they were most vulnerable, he would rely on the strength of his fortifications. Despite the lesson that should have been drawn from General Winfield Scott’s victory at Veracruz, it was the type of position warfare most West Pointers embraced, and against Grant and Foote it would prove to be a mistake. Tilghman withdrew the two regiments occupying the high ground across the river, sent his infantry to man the rifle pits, and braced to receive the Union attack. “If you can re-enforce [us] strongly and quickly,” Tilghman wired Johnston at Bowling Green, “we have a glorious chance to overwhelm the enemy.”61
It was not to be. No reinforcements were forthcoming and Grant launched his attack on schedule. Promptly at 11 A.M. on February 6, C. F. Smith’s 2nd Division set out to occupy the heights opposite Fort Henry. At the same time McClernand’s 1st Division moved to cut the Donelson road and invest the Confederate garrison. Smith encountered virtually no opposition and within the hour his cavalry patrols were resting on the high ground. The 1st Division did not have it so easy. It was not a matter of rebel resistance—the crossing of Panther Creek was uncontested—but the floodplain surrounding Fort Henry had turned into a waxy gumbo. The distance to be covered by McClernand’s men was less than five miles, but his lead elements were making less than one mile an hour, mired in deep Tennessee mud.
Foote, who was confident his gunboats would arrive first at Fort Henry, waited for an hour and then at precisely twelve noon hoisted his signal pennant to prepare for battle. The four ironclads—Carondelet, Cincinnati (Foote’s flagship), Essex, and St. Louis—came abreast to form a line of battle, followed in the second rank by the wooden vessels Tyler, Conestoga, and Lexington, each mounting twelve guns. At 12:30 the gunboat flotilla was one mile north of Fort Henry. Foote turned to the captain of the Cincinnati and ordered him to commence firing.III The other vessels joined in and the heavy guns of Fort Henry belched in reply. Captain Taylor called the Confederate volley “as pretty and simultaneous a ‘broadside’ as I ever saw flash from the sides of a frigate.”62 Initially the rebel gunners held the advantage. Their guns had been sited with care, and the ranges were predetermined, whereas on the Union side only the bow guns of the approaching vessels could be brought to bear on the fort. But Foote closed the distance rapidly. “It must be victory or death,” he told his captains that morning.63 At 600 yards the line of ironclads slanted diagonally to bring their full armament to bear. Cincinnati moved to within 400 yards of Fort Henry, while the three wooden gunboats took up a supporting position near the west bank of the river. For the next thirty minutes the firing was intense, and as one defender remembered, “as accurate as the heart could wish.”64 Cincinnati took the brunt of the rebel fire, sustaining thirty-two hits, her stacks, boats, and after cabin riddled with incoming rounds. Carondelet suffered almost as many hits, St. Louis somewhat less, and the luckless Essex received a shot to her boiler that rendered her powerless, and left thirty-eight men including Captain Porter scalded in the blast. Out of control, the ship swung broadside in the current and drifted downstream out of the fight.
Nevertheless, the fifty-nine Union guns Foote leveled against Fort Henry proved overwhelming. One by one the Confederate cannons were disabled or destroyed, or malfunctioned. By 1:30 P.M. only four of Fort Henry’s guns were still firing, while Foote’s barrage continued unabated, the three remaining ironclads now at point-blank range. Recognizing that further resistance was useless, Tilghman hoisted a white flag and the firing ended. The navy took Fort Henry while McClernand’s 1st Division was still struggling against Mother Nature in the Tennessee countryside, unable to move forward quickly enough to block the Donelson road, much less join in the battle.
Grant, who positioned himself with McClernand’s division, arrived at the fort at 3 P.M. “Fort Henry is ours,” he wired Halleck. “The Gun-boats silenced the batteries before the investment was completed.” Grant was euphoric. “I shall take and destroy Fort Donelson on the eighth and return to Fort Henry,”65 he told Halleck. This time Grant did not ask permission. That night he wrote Julia “Fort Henry is taken and I am not hurt. This is news enough for tonight. I have been writing until my fingers are tired and therefore you must excuse haste and a bad pen. Kiss the children for me. Ulys.”66
What of the 3,400-man garrison at Fort Henry? Traditional Civil War historiography has accepted the revised rebel version that Tilghman ordered the men to Fort Donelson before the Union attack began. In reality, the troops were in the trenches when Foote launched his barrage and panicked at the destructive force of the incoming artillery. Discipline collapsed, and the men deserted their posts, desperate to reach the safety of Fort Donelson. The South could scarcely admit that after ten months of preparation its principal bastion on the Tennessee surrendered after only one hour, or that the garrison ran away; thus the story was concocted that Tilghman ordered the withdrawal and simply maintained a covering fire from the fort to let the garrison escape.67 Grant was perfectly happy to accept the revised version because he was embarrassed that the 1st Division had not moved quickly enough to cut the Donelson road.68 If the troops at Fort Henry had already departed, it freed him of blame for their escape. In effect, one hand washed the other. Grant trimmed the truth in his account of the battle of Belmont. At Fort Henry, he assisted Tilghman in doing so.
Grant’s demeanor in victory was captured by Captain Taylor, who represented Tilghman when the Union troops arrived. “Here I saw General Grant, who impressed me as a modest, amiable, kind-hearted but resolute man,” he wrote.
While we were at headquarters an officer came in to report that he had not as yet found any papers giving information about our forces, and, to save him further looking, I informed him that I had destroyed all the papers bearing on the subject, at which he seemed very wroth, fussily demanding, “By what authority?” Did I not know that I laid myself open to punishment, etc., etc. Before I could reply fully, General Grant quietly broke in with, “I would be very much surprised and mortified if one of my subordinate officers should allow information which he could destroy to fall into the hands of the enemy.”69
Grant billeted the captured Confederate officers on his headquarters steamer Tigress, and they took their meals with his staff. According to Taylor, Grant treated them with every courtesy.
The fall of Fort Henry galvanized public opinion in the North. Coming just two weeks after Thomas’s victory at Mill Springs, it provided hope that the tide was turning in favor of the Union. In St. Louis, Halleck was the first to take credit. He issued a statement to the press: “Fort Henry is ours! The flag of the Union is re-established on the soil of Tennessee. It will never be removed.”70 On Capitol Hill, Representative Charles Sedgwick read Commodore Foote’s official dispatch of the battle to the House, where it was received with tumultuous applause.71 The New York Times reported, “Talk of peace and a restoration of the Union has revived with the taking of Fort Henry.”72 Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune crowed, “A few more events such as the capture of Fort Henry, and the war will be substantially at an end.”73
In the South, Fort Henry’s surrender plunged Johnston’s headquarters into despair. The center of the Confederate line had been breached and the mighty Tennessee was now open to the Union advance. On February 7 Grant destroyed the railroad bridge linking Memphis and Bowling Green. Polk’s army at Columbus was now separated from that of Hardee. To add insult to injury, Commodore Foote, in a naval show of force, sent his three wooden gunboats 150 miles up the Tennessee to the head of navigation at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. For the gunboats it was a victory lap. They destroyed or captured six Confederate vessels, revived scattered Union sentiment along the way, and sowed fear in the heart of Dixie.74
On the afternoon of the 7th, Johnston met with Beauregard and Hardee at Bowling Green to fashion a response. As Halleck warned Grant, Beauregard had arrived from Richmond three days earlier, but instead of fifteen regiments he brought only a handful of staff officers with him. Now the trio of generals faced a dilemma. Johnston could make a stand in southern Kentucky or he could withdraw, save his army, and strike back at a time and place of his own choosing. Whatever they decided would be crucial to the Confederacy. Beauregard, flush with his victories in South Carolina and Virginia, was the most aggressive. He urged Johnston to leave a small force at Columbus and Bowling Green, concentrate both wings of his army at Fort Donelson, destroy Grant, and then turn on the slow-moving Buell and drive him back across the Ohio. It was a Napoleonic tactic the New Orleans Creole could not resist.75
Johnston and Hardee, instinctively more cautious than Beauregard, were not convinced. The risk of being trapped between Grant and Buell was too great. Johnston had already advised Richmond that Fort Donelson was “not long tenable.”76 He decided to leave a token force there to delay Grant and withdraw the bulk of his troops to a line anchored on Memphis. For the time being the two elements of the Confederate army would operate independently. Beauregard would take command at Columbus and pull back to Grand Junction, Tennessee, located on the main railroad line between Memphis and Charleston, South Carolina. Hardee would retire from Bowling Green to Nashville, and then to Decatur, Alabama— also on the Memphis–Charleston line. Johnston assumed Grant would continue to move south away from Buell. By using the Memphis–Charleston railroad Johnston could bring the two wings of his army together and crush Grant in southern Tennessee before meeting Buell. It meant surrendering Kentucky and most of Tennessee—with a deleterious effect on Confederate morale—but in a strategic sense it afforded Johnston the opportunity to mass his army near his base of supply, draw Grant away from his, and deliver a crippling defeat sufficient perhaps to end the war.
Certainly it was a viable option. Indeed, it was almost as daring as Beauregard’s proposal.77 But for reasons never adequately explained, Johnston began to temporize.78 Instead of defending Fort Donelson with all the resources of his command, or sacrificing the position in order to fight later, Johnston abruptly chose to reinforce the garrison and take on Grant with only a portion of his troops. With the advantage of hindsight, it is clear this was an error of catastrophic proportions. General J. F. C. Fuller, the British military analyst, attributed Johnston’s move to his shock at the fall of Fort Henry. The loss “was so unexpected that it completely bewildered him.”79 Whatever the reason, Johnston was compromising his plan to fight a decisive battle on his own terms far to the south. Between February 8 and February 12 he moved three of Hardee’s most effective brigades—commanded respectively by Generals John B. Floyd, Gideon Pillow, and Simon Bolivar Buckner—to assist in the defense of Fort Donelson. By dawn on February 13 the garrison numbered 17,000 men, slightly more than Grant was bringing against it.IV Johnston later wrote Jefferson Davis, “I determined to fight for Nashville at Donelson, and gave the best part of my army to do it.”80
In fairness to Johnston, his response was not as harebrained as it appears in retrospect. Donelson, unlike Fort Henry, was a formidable installation. Dominating the Cumberland from a bluff that rose abruptly 100 to 150 feet above the river, the fort embraced almost 100 acres. On the east, or water side, three tiers of heavy guns were emplaced, the lower one near the water, the second fifty feet above, and the third fifty feet above that. The guns were protected by earthen parapets sixteen feet thick and were sited with precision to control the river approaches—the Cumberland being far narrower and the current much swifter than that of the Tennessee.
The north side of the fort was protected by Hickman Creek, a tributary of the Cumberland that was deep and wide, flooded with backwater from the river. To the south, Indian Creek, another tributary clogged with backwater, protected the approach. On the west, running between Hickman and Indian creeks, a continuous line of rifle pits had been constructed, running generally in an arc along a crest of high ground for about three miles. If Fort Donelson was to be assaulted by land, the attack would have to be mounted against this western perimeter and it would not be easy. The ground was broken and wooded, the trees outside the rifle pits had been cut down for a considerable distance to provide a clear field of fire for the defenders, and an extensive abatis had been constructed in front of the entire line. A deep ravine, running north and south well beyond the trench line, completed the position. Troops attacking the fort would have to charge up the side of the ravine to reach the rebel rifle pits. Johnston may well have decided that Donelson, properly reinforced, was invulnerable. He now provided twenty-eight infantry regiments to defend it, along with Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry and six batteries of field artillery. With 17,000 men under arms at Donelson there was every reason to believe the garrison could hold its own.
Grant meanwhile was delayed. On the 7th he issued warning orders to McClernand and Smith to have their divisions ready to move against Fort Donelson the following morning.81 But first the weather intervened, making movement impossible, and then Foote’s gunboats disappeared. The three timberclads were chasing rebels on the upper Tennessee, while the ironclads returned to Cairo for refit. Grant dispatched cavalry patrols each day to reconnoiter the approaches to Donelson, and on February 9 he joined them, but it was not until the next afternoon that he called his officers together and instructed them to move forward. Foote’s gunboat flotilla was not yet reassembled, but Grant anticipated it would join him on the Cumberland. In any event he was tired of waiting. “I intend to keep the ball moving as lively as possible,” he wrote his sister Mary. “By the time you receive this you will hear, by telegraph, of Fort Donelson being attacked.”82
In St. Louis, Halleck became increasingly concerned. Unlike Grant, Old Brains was consumed with worrying what the Confederates might do. According to classic military theory, Grant’s army between the two rivers was dangerously exposed. The approved solution was to dig in, solidify your base, and wait for reinforcements. Rather than building on the momentum that had developed, Halleck thought defensively. “Hold on to Fort Henry at all hazards,” he telegraphed Grant on February 8. “It is of vital importance to strengthen your position. Impress slaves of secessionists in vicinity to work on fortifications. Shovels and picks will be sent you.” Grant was told to mount his artillery on the land side of Fort Henry to resist a rebel attack. “Keep me informed of all you do, as often as you can.”83
Halleck was not alone in his concern. A generation of American officers had been schooled to believe the art of generalship required rigid adherence to certain textbook theorems. Buell thought Grant would either be forced out of Fort Henry or his army would be captured.84 McClellan was so worried he wired Halleck that either he (Halleck) or Buell should go immediately to Fort Henry and take command.85 Assistant Secretary of War Thomas A. Scott, who was inspecting installations along the Mississippi, told Washington that Grant was “in extreme danger of being cut off by Beauregard.”86
Halleck began working both sides of the street. He continued to rush reinforcements to Grant, but maneuvered feverishly to replace him. First he requested Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to recall Major General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, an elderly figure from the Mexican War, to active duty to take command of Grant’s forces.87 Then Halleck offered the post to Sherman.88 Finally, he dangled the opportunity before Buell. “Why not come down and take the immediate command of the Cumberland column yourself? If so, I will transfer Sherman and Grant.”89 Hitchcock, who was then sixty-four, declined. Sherman said he preferred serving under Grant, even though he ranked him,V and Buell made no reply.90
Grant paid no attention. He had no knowledge of Halleck’s efforts to replace him, and if the commanding general wanted to send picks and shovels to the front that was fine. But organizing a defensive position would have to wait. “There are no Negros in this part of the Country to work on Fortifications,” he reported on February 11. Otherwise, Grant made no response.91 Instead, he issued marching orders to McClernand and Smith. The division commanders were instructed to move out along separate roads in the direction of Fort Donelson as rapidly as possible and to take up a position two miles from the fort, forming a continuous line facing the enemy. Grant said reports of rebel strength varied so greatly “it is impossible to give exact details of attack but the necessary orders will be given on the field.”92 Grant wanted his troops on the move and presumably out of reach of headquarters in St. Louis. He would sort things out once his forces were in place.
The nature of Grant’s greatness has been a riddle to many observers. The evidence begins with the assault on Fort Donelson. Grant did not hedge his bets but on his own authority moved immediately against an enemy occupying a powerful fortified position. In so doing he disregarded explicit instructions to entrench at Fort Henry, ignored Halleck’s order to prepare to receive a Confederate attack, and took virtually all of his command with him. Grant was in the heart of enemy country, facing a hostile force at least as large as his own, with nothing to fall back on in case of disaster. He was violating every maxim held dear by the military profession. But the fact is, Grant was adding a new dimension to Civil War generalship: the ability to learn from the battlefield. He wrote later that he never recalled having read Jomini,93 and at West Point he finished near the bottom of his class in tactics. But Grant had served with distinction in Mexico, and had seen how Taylor and Scott carried the fight to the enemy in similar circumstances. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Grant learned from Mexico—not just small-unit tactics and battlefield bravery, but the essence of strategic warfare. He developed great respect for the Mexican army, and never sold their soldiers short. Yet he saw how time and again Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott moved against a numerically superior foe occupying a fortified position, and how important it was to maintain the momentum of the attack. Grant put the matter succinctly. “I was very impatient to get to Fort Donelson because I knew the importance of the place to the enemy and supposed he would reinforce it rapidly. I felt that 15,000 men on the 8th would be more effective than 50,000 a month later.”94 One of the tests of military greatness is the ability to recognize and respond to opportunities presented. By moving quickly against Fort Donelson, Grant was demonstrating just that.
By the afternoon of February 12 Grant’s army was arrayed before the Confederate stronghold. A holiday mood gripped the marching columns as troops made their way up from the Tennessee lowlands. Regimental bands tooted the songs of an army on the move, and Grant was caught up in the festive spirit. When Surgeon John Brinton’s powerful black stallion pressed ahead of the rest, Grant joked, “Doctor, I believe I command this army, and I think I’ll go first.”95 Throughout the march discipline was lax. As the sun rose higher and the terrain got steeper, young soldiers shed what they could spare. The telegraph road between Henry and Donelson was littered with discarded blankets and overcoats not needed on a warm winter day in Dixie.
As the march column approached Fort Donelson, Grant deployed McClernand’s division to the right toward Indian Creek, and Smith’s division to the left toward Hickman Creek. Both divisions took up strong positions along the crests of ridges. The rebel fortress was invested, but the Union line was stretched thin. Grant actually had fewer men surrounding Fort Donelson than were present for duty inside. That night the troops slept on the ground in sight of the Confederate trench line. Grant had an aversion to digging in, and waited for the arrival of Foote’s gunboats to repeat the magic of Fort Henry. In retrospect, it seems curious that the rebel commanders at Fort Donelson made no effort to impede Grant’s deployment. Like Tilghman at Henry, they buttoned up inside the fort and waited for the Union attack.
Grant spent Thursday, February 13, filling the gaps in his line. He ordered the last 2,500 troops up from Fort Henry, while McClernand and Smith launched probing attacks against what they thought were weak spots in the Confederate line. Both were repulsed with heavy losses. A cold front came in that evening and the balmy February weather turned raw. Freezing rain turned to snow, and the temperature dropped to 12 degrees Fahrenheit. The exposed Union troops—many now without overcoats or blankets—endured as best they could. “There was much discomfort and absolute suffering,” wrote Grant.96 Newsmen covering the war were as miserable as the troops. “Writing is something accomplished with great difficulty,” said the correspondent of the New York Tribune. “Our hands are often so cold that we cannot move our fingers to form legible characters. Campaigning in winter in this portion of Dixie is as gloomy as Pluto.”97
St. Valentine’s Day dawned gray and overcast. Foote came up early in the morning with four ironclads and the wooden gunboats Tyler and Conestoga. Accompanying him was a convoy of twelve transports carrying a brigade of Nebraska infantry—troops Halleck rushed forward from St. Louis. Grant put them into line between Smith and McClernand, added the reinforcements from Fort Henry, and created a 3rd Division under the command of Brigadier General Lew Wallace. By noon the troops were in position and Grant requested Foote to commence his bombardment. The plan was for the three Union divisions (Grant now enjoyed slight numerical superiority) to hold the rebels in place and prevent their escape while the gunboats closed in and blew Fort Donelson apart.
Confident of an easy victory, Grant positioned himself on the bluff overlooking the river to watch the battle.98 The gunboats Cincinnati and Essex, heavily damaged at Fort Henry, had been replaced by their sister ships Louisville and Pittsburgh. The timberclad Lexington leaked so badly it could not move upriver, leaving only two wooden gunboats to provide fire support. Foote would have preferred more time to prepare, but with Grant urging an immediate assault he put his ships into line of battle. At 3 P.M. the flotilla moved to the attack. It came on as it did at Henry, the four ironclads out in front, Tyler and Conestoga 1,000 yards astern. At a mile and a half the big guns of the fort opened fire. Foote closed more slowly this time, the swift current of the Cumberland retarding the flotilla’s progress. The narrow channel also kept the gunboats bunched, and the rebels enjoyed the height advantage. From the battlements at Donelson they poured a plunging fire into the ironclads, “tearing off the side armor as lightning tears the bark from a tree.”99 Nevertheless, the gunboats came on confidently. At a mile’s distance Foote’s flagship, St. Louis, opened with its bow guns, the other vessels following suit. At a quarter of a mile Foote thought he saw signs of panic among the gun crews on the bluff. The fire from the fort slackened, and in fifteen minutes, the commodore wrote, Donelson would have fallen.100
Foote was denied those fifteen minutes. A solid shot ripped through the pilothouse of the St. Louis mortally wounding the pilot and catching Foote in the ankle. The flag officer seized the wheel and made a game effort to guide the craft when additional incoming rounds blew away the steering mechanism.101 St. Louis faltered, unable to maintain its course against the current. It drifted downstream out of the fight. Louisville was next to go, its tiller ropes shot away by rebel gunners. Pittsburgh, hit repeatedly between wind and water and in danger of sinking, broke off the engagement because its crew could not serve pumps and guns at the same time. That left only the Carondelet, commanded by Captain Henry Walke. Hit repeatedly along the waterline, it too dropped downriver, firing as it withdrew.102 Union losses were heavy. Aside from damage to the vessels (St. Louis had taken fifty-nine hits, the others almost as many), fifty-four sailors were killed or wounded. Confederate losses were minimal. There was some damage to the fort’s earthen parapets and gun portals, but not one man had been killed or one gun disabled.
The repulse of Foote’s flotilla was a bitter pill for Grant. Fort Henry showed what the gunboats could do; Fort Donelson showed what they could not.103 Grant did not inform Halleck of the defeat, and filed only a minimal report with Cullum in Cairo. “Matters here look favorable in one sense. We have the works of the enemy well invested and they do not seem inclined to come out.”104 That evening he wrote Julia, “The taking of Fort Donelson bids fair to be a long job. The rebels are strongly fortified and are in very heavy force. When this is to end is hard to surmise but I feel confident of ultimate success.”105
Despite the defeat on the 14th Grant held an intangible advantage over the defenders of Donelson: He knew what he wanted. Inside the fort, the rebel command was racked with indecision. Thus far the garrison had done well. They had driven back the probes of McClernand and Smith, and routed the Union gunboats. But already the elation over the afternoon’s success had turned to despair. The fort was besieged, Grant was believed to have something over 40,000 men—with additional reinforcements arriving daily, and the Union navy, setback or no, retained control of the river. There were two alternatives: wait and hope for a relief column, or fight their way out and rejoin the Confederate army at Nashville. Albert Sidney Johnston provided little guidance. Informed of the victory over Foote, he replied enigmatically, “If you lose the fort, bring your troops to Nashville if possible.”106 No instructions, no orders, an implicit suggestion to hold out, but an acknowledgment that it might not be possible.
Johnston’s message placed the decision in the hands of the trio of brigadiers in command at Donelson. For the Confederacy, it was an illchosen triumvirate. John B. Floyd, the ranking officer, a veteran Virginia politician who had served as James Buchanan’s secretary of war (and who, during his last days in office, attempted to transfer federal ordnance to arsenals in the South), lacked military experience and was out of his depth. A patronage appointee of the governor of Virginia, his seniority came by accident. Gideon Pillow, second in date of rank, had made a fool of himself in the Mexican War by building a parapet with the ditch on the wrong side, and was one of the few general officers, North or South, for whom Grant openly expressed contempt.VI Like Floyd, Pillow was a planter and politician by profession. But he had served for years in the Tennessee militia and considered himself an expert at leading men in battle. He was, however, one of the few who held that view. Third in seniority was Simon Bolivar Buckner, the only trained soldier among the three. Buckner was a reluctant rebel—he had hoped his native Kentucky could remain neutral—and like Grant, he despised Pillow for his martial pretensions. The bad blood between the two dated back to the Mexican War and, if anything, their relationship had deteriorated further during the intervening years. When Pillow sought election to the United States Senate in 1857, Buckner wrote a series of scathing letters to the Nashville Republican Banner belittling his service in Mexico and mocking his claims of valor. Pillow lost the election and held Buckner partially responsible.107
Unsure what to do, Floyd called a council of war the evening of February 14 to ask his subordinates’advice. Pillow, who commanded the Confederate left (opposite McClernand), advocated a breakout led by the troops under his command to open the route to Nashville. Buckner questioned its possibility for success but agreed it was the best alternative. His division (opposite C. F. Smith), would slip left behind Pillow and hold the shoulder of the breakout while the remainder of the garrison was evacuated. The meeting broke up at 1 A.M. with the attack set for dawn—meaning the men would get little or no rest that night as they moved into position. No one discussed what would happen if the breakout succeeded. Pillow assumed the attack would be so successful, and the defeat of Grant’s army so complete, the troops could return to the fort to retrieve their possessions and whatever equipment was left behind. Buckner believed no one would return after the battle and instructed his men to take everything with them. Floyd, his inexperience showing, made no provision one way or the other and thus sowed the seeds for the Confederate undoing.108
At about the time the rebel war council was breaking up, Commodore Foote dispatched a note to Grant requesting he come to the flotilla anchorage four miles north of Donelson to discuss their next move. Foote said he ordinarily would have called on Grant, but his wounds prevented him from leaving his flagship. “I at once made my preparation for starting,” wrote Grant. “I directed my adjutant-general to notify each of the division commanders of my absence and instruct them not to bring on an engagement until they received further orders, but to hold their positions.” Grant said later he had “no idea that there would be any engagement on land unless I brought it on myself.”109
Shortly before dawn on February 15 Grant, accompanied by a single orderly, rode out over the icy roads for the steamboat landing where the battered Union gunboats bobbed at anchor. Three miles to the south of Grant’s headquarters, Pillow continued to mass his division for the assault on the Union right. Altogether it was seven miles from where Foote’s flotilla lay to the point the rebels would attack, but as Grant said, he did not anticipate that the Confederates would come out of their entrenchments. At first light, and with Grant riding in the opposite direction, skirmishers from the 26th Mississippi made contact with Union outposts along the river road leading to Nashville. The weight of Pillow’s division, some 8,000 to 10,000 strong, then fell on the Union right. By 8 A.M. McClernand’s division was in trouble. By late morning the Confederates had rolled up the Union flank and the road to Nashville lay open. “On the honor of a soldier, the day is ours,” Pillow wired Johnston.110
Grant was unaware a battle was taking place. A strong north wind blew the sound of the fighting away and kept him ignorant of what was happening at the far end of the Union line. Sitting in the wardroom of the St. Louis, Foote told Grant the ironclads were no longer seaworthy and he wanted to take the entire flotilla back to Cairo for repairs. That would take about two weeks, said Foote, and he urged Grant to entrench and await his return.111 Grant recognized the vessels needed repair, but suggested Foote remain a few days longer while the army tried its hand against Donelson. Eventually a compromise was reached. Foote would take the two worstdamaged vessels to Cairo, leaving the rest to support the ground forces as best they could. Grant agreed to entrench partially, and ordered the picks and shovels Halleck had sent to be unloaded from their transports and shipped forward.112 At noon the conference ended and Grant was rowed ashore. As he stepped from the boat an ashen-faced aide rode up bringing word the Confederates had come out from their lines in force and attacked McClernand’s division, which was in full retreat.
Grant was riding his favorite stallion, Jack, that day. Though not a large horse, Jack was reliable and surefooted. He would gladly do whatever Grant asked and the two set out at a gallop over the frozen, treacherous roads of mid-February. General Philip H. Sheridan’s 1864 ride to Winchester became a Civil War legend, immortalized in the poem of Thomas B. Read. But it was Grant’s seven-mile dash to the fighting at Donelson that changed the course of the war. It can be argued that Grant should not have left the field to meet with Foote, that he should have anticipated a Confederate breakout, and that he should have left his division commanders with crisper instructions. All of that may be true. But confronted with disaster on the Union right, Grant hastened to the front to take command.
It was close to one o’clock when Grant reached Smith’s division at the north end of the Union line. Everything appeared quiet. Grant told his old mentor what had been reported and instructed him to prepare for action. Next in line was Lew Wallace’s division. Grant found it too was quiet and in place. Wallace, on his own authority, had sent his Nebraska brigade to support McClernand, and it was holding firm when Grant arrived. With McClernand’s division it was a different matter. The Confederate attack had subsided and a lull had settled over the battlefield. But the 1st Division was in disarray. Troops had run out of ammunition, unit cohesion had evaporated, and casualties were heavy: over 1,500 killed, wounded, or missing. Worse still, the Union position blocking the Nashville road had been lost. Grant found men standing in clusters, talking excitedly, with no idea what to do. “No officer seemed to be giving any directions.”113
Grant rode on. He discovered tons of ammunition lying about in boxes; the problem was that inexperienced brigade and regimental commanders had not recognized the need to keep their men resupplied. He heard men say the rebels had attacked with their haversacks filled with rations. “They seemed to think this indicated a determination to stay out and fight as long as the provisions held out.” Grant drew a different conclusion. The rebels were attempting to break out from Donelson but had been unsuccessful and had fallen back. They must be at least as demoralized as McClernand’s men, he told his staff. “The one who attacks first now will be victorious, and the enemy will have to be in a hurry if he gets ahead of me.” Grant’s presence had a tonic effect. Riding alongside the knots of stragglers he told McClernand’s men, “Fill your cartridge boxes, quick, and get into line. The enemy is trying to escape and he must not be permitted to do so.” Grant wrote later, “This worked like a charm. The men only wanted someone to give them a command.”114
Grant found McClernand and Wallace sitting on horseback discussing the situation. After receiving their report, he told McClernand to re-form his division behind Wallace’s line, and told Wallace to muster all of the troops he could and prepare to attack. Wallace remembered Grant was in total control. He wasted no words. “Gentlemen, the position on the right must be retaken.”115 With that, Grant turned and galloped off toward the other end of the Union line where C. F. Smith was waiting. Somewhere along the way Grant dispatched a message to Flag Officer Foote requesting that whatever gunboats were available put in an immediate appearance and lob a few shells from long range. Grant said he did not expect the boats to go into battle, but the sound of naval gunfire would have a salutary effect. “A terrible conflict ensued in my absence, which has demoralized a portion of my command. I think the enemy is much more so.”116
The lull in the fighting Grant observed was attributable to incredible Confederate misjudgment. At 1:30 P.M., just as Grant was approaching McClernand’s division, Pillow ordered his troops to break off contact and return to Fort Donelson. Rather than pursue the defeated enemy, the Confederate soldiers were instructed to consolidate, pack their gear, load the supply wagons, retrieve the fort’s heavy artillery, and prepare for an orderly departure for Nashville. Pillow had been swept away by the stunning victory that morning. He believed the Union army was in full retreat and that his troops could depart the fort at their leisure.117 When Buckner protested and urged that the army march immediately to Nashville, Floyd overruled him. The road out of Donelson was relinquished, and the Confederate troops returned to the lines they held before the battle began.
To give Pillow his due, a Union commander less dogged than Grant might not have exploited the situation. It would have been tempting to fall back and regroup, and perhaps Pillow should not be blamed for assuming that is what the Union army would do. Certainly it would have done so if Halleck or McClellan (or even Sherman at that stage of the war) had been in command. It was Pillow’s ill luck to be facing Grant, and he had no reason to anticipate what happened next.
Brigadier General Charles Ferguson Smith sat under a tree, talking casually to an aide when Grant rode up. Smith had already reconnoitered the ground to his front, and for the past hour he had been moving his regiments into position. With the patience of an old soldier he waited for Grant’s orders, knowing he would be called on.118
“General Smith,” said Grant, “all has failed to our right. You must take Fort Donelson.”
It was as if C. F. Smith had been waiting for such an order all his life. “I will do it, General,” he replied, and rode off to start work. Smith was hard on his volunteers, but he had turned them into soldiers. They were brave men, he thought, and if properly led would storm the Gates of Hell. “Take the firing caps off your guns and fix bayonets,” he commanded. “No firing until inside the enemy’s works.” Smith was going to take Fort Donelson with a bayonet charge. It was something no other division commander would have attempted in the early days of 1862, and that few could have accomplished at any time.
Smith placed his favorite regiment, the 2nd Iowa, in the lead; four more regiments massed in column behind it. He rode across the Iowans’ front, pointed toward the high ground where the Confederates were entrenched, and said, “Second Iowa, you must take the fort. I will lead you.” Sitting high on his horse, “like a Marshal of France,” a brother officer recalled, Smith led the Iowans off the ridge top and toward Buckner’s works. Down the steep side of the ravine, through underbrush “too thick for a rabbit to get through,” across a small stream at the bottom, and up the opposite slope into the rebel abatis. They went on, through the fallen timber and up the ridge, enemy fire intensifying at every step. The Iowans wavered. “No flinching now, my lads, this is the way. Come on,” shouted Smith. Erect as if on parade, his sword aloft, he rode on, timing the gait of his horse to the movement of his colors.119 He was a conspicuous target and the air around him whistled with minié-balls, but he never flinched. “I was nearly scared to death,” a young soldier said afterward, “but I saw the Old Man’s white mustache over his shoulder, and I went on.”120 The rebel defenders were no match for Smith’s division. Union troops swarmed over the Confederate trench line and would have taken the fort itself if Buckner had not arrived with reinforcements. By 4 P.M. the fighting was over. Smith had cracked Fort Donelson’s outer defenses without firing a shot.121 Thirty minutes later Wallace’s division retook possession of the road to Nashville. Night came quickly in February and the Union army slept once again on the snow-covered ground, ready to assault Donelson’s inner works at daybreak.
Riding back to his farmhouse headquarters, Grant passed numerous dead and wounded from both armies. He saw a Union officer and a Confederate soldier, both severely wounded, lying side by side. The officer was trying, without much success, to give the Confederate a drink from his canteen. Grant dismounted and asked his staff officers if anyone had a flask. One was produced and Grant gave each man a swallow of brandy. “Send for stretchers,” he called to Captain Rawlins. “Send for stretchers at once for these two men.” As the aidmen came up, Grant remounted, only to notice the stretcher bearers ignored the Southern soldier. “Take the Confederate too,” he ordered, “the war is over between them.”122
The men were borne away and Grant rode off with his staff. There were so many dead and wounded near the roadside that the horses shied repeatedly. Finally, Grant turned to his chief of staff, Colonel Joseph D. Webster: “Let’s get away from this dreadful place. I suppose this work is part of the devil that is left in us all.” Under his breath, barely audible, Grant recited the words of Robert Burns:
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.123
That evening Floyd convened another council of war. Mutual recriminations hung heavy in the air.124 Confederate losses were substantial: about 2,000 killed, wounded, or captured. Grant, it was believed, had received another 10,000 reinforcements, sent forward by General Cullum from Cairo.125 According to Floyd’s bloated estimate, that brought the Union force to eighty regiments—well over twice what was actually on hand. Gloom settled in quickly. Not only had the Nashville road been abandoned, but C. F. Smith’s artillery was now emplaced on the ridge dominating the rebel redoubt. At dawn the shelling would begin and it was simply a matter of time until the fort would be taken. The discussion was acrimonious, but the will to fight was lacking. It was agreed Donelson should be evacuated. Orders were issued for the garrison to march out before dawn and the meeting broke up to make ready.
The Confederate assumption was that the road to Nashville, though abandoned by Pillow’s division, was still open. Rebel pickets soon brought back news to the contrary. Not only was the ground reoccupied, but the Union army was there in greater numbers than before. A second meeting was called—one of the most bizarre in American military history—and the trio of brigadiers concluded they had no alternative but to surrender. Buckner said it would cost three quarters of their command if the army tried to fight its way out, and no general “had the right to make such a sacrifice of human life.”126
Donelson had to be surrendered, but no one wanted to take responsibility for doing so. Floyd, who should have done so, wanted to avoid being taken prisoner. He had been indicted in Washington for malfeasance as secretary of war and although the charge was nol-prossed, he feared it might be reopened. For personal reasons never completely explained, Pillow also wanted to avoid capture.127 That left Buckner. Trained at West Point, he recognized charges of treason were the likely penalty for rebellion but he believed a general should remain with his men and share their fate.
The author of a comic opera would have been hard pressed to construct such a scene:
“I turn the command over, sir,” Floyd told Pillow.
“I pass it,” Pillow told Buckner.
“I assume it,” said Buckner. “Give me pen, ink, and paper, and send for a bugler.”128
Floyd commandeered two steamboats and fled upriver with 1,500 men from his Virginia brigade. Pillow made his escape across the Cumberland on a small flatboat procured by his chief of staff. Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest, the fourth participant at the meeting, made no effort to conceal his disgust. He vowed he would never surrender and, with Buckner’s permission, led his cavalrymen out of Fort Donelson across an icy stream too deep for infantrymen to ford and escaped with the 700 troopers of his command.
Buckner would be the first Confederate general to surrender, and he remembered the generous terms Beauregard extended to Major Anderson at Fort Sumter. The garrison had been permitted to march out under arms, while the victors rendered a salute. Buckner also knew Grant was not a vindictive man. He may even have reflected on their last meeting in New York, eight years earlier, when he had guaranteed Grant’s hotel bill and helped him secure a railroad ticket home. He took pen and wrote: “In consideration of all circumstances governing the present situation of affairs at this station, I propose to the commanding officers of the Federal forces the appointment of commissioners to agree upon terms of capitulation of the forces and post under my command, and in that view suggest an armistice until 12 o’clock today.”129
It was shortly after 4 A.M. when a Confederate staff officer under a flag of truce approached Smith’s lines with Buckner’s message. Smith was sleeping on the snow with the 2nd Iowa that night, his head resting on his saddle. “I’ll make no terms with rebels with arms in their hands,” the old warrior told his staff when he read the message. “My terms are immediate and unconditional surrender.”130 But Smith knew it was not his decision to make. An orderly saddled Smith’s horse and he immediately rode to Grant’s headquarters, the Confederate officer in tow.
Grant was stretched out on a mattress on the kitchen floor of his farmhouse headquarters when Smith arrived. “There’s something for you to read,” said Smith, handing Grant the letter. Surgeon John Brinton, who was present, said Smith asked for something to drink. “My flask was handed to him and he helped himself in a soldier-like manner. The exposure of these nights must have told on him severely. I can almost see him now, erect, manly, every inch a soldier, standing in front of the fire, twisting his long white mustache and wiping his lips.”131
Grant read the message and looked up, surprised it came from his old friend Buckner and not Floyd or Pillow. “What answer shall I send to this, General Smith?”
“No terms with the damned rebels,” Smith replied.
Grant chuckled and began to write—one of the most famous dispatches in the history of warfare. When he finished he read it aloud.
Sir: Yours of this date proposing Armistice and appointment of Commissioners to settle terms of Capitulation is just received. No terms except complete and unconditional surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works. I am sir, very respectfully
Your obt. svt.
U.S. GRANT
Brig. Gen.132
Smith grunted, thought a moment, and said, “It’s the same thing in smoother words.” He took the letter, stalked out to deliver it to the waiting Confederate officer, then returned to his command. It was time to prepare. Grant’s threat “to move immediately upon your works” was not a bluff. Long before Buckner’s letter arrived, Smith had been instructed to renew his assault at daybreak, and McClernand and Wallace had been ordered to attack as soon as they heard Smith’s guns open up. Grant was going to take Donelson in the morning—one way or another.
Buckner was stunned when he read Grant’s reply. Aside from the personal friendship between the two men, the Civil War thus far had been waged beneath a facade of romantic chivalry. The myth of the gentleman warrior figured prominently in the mental makeup of the senior officers in both armies. Grant was changing the rules. A man who hated war and who could not bear to see the wounded suffer was driving the consequences of rebellion home to the South. Complete and unconditional surrender. The sentiment was that of Grant’s elderly role model, C. F. Smith, but it was Grant who put the thought into words for the nation to hear.
Buckner recognized he had no choice but to submit. Nevertheless, he was peeved Grant had treated him so brusquely. “The overwhelming force under your command, compels me, notwithstanding the brilliant success of the Confederate armies yesterday, to accept the ungenerous and unchivalrous terms which you propose.”133, VII It was sunup when Grant received Buckner’s reply. The divisions of Smith and Wallace were ordered to march in and take possession of Donelson, while Grant rode forward to accept the surrender.
Buckner and his staff were eating a breakfast of cornbread and coffee when Grant arrived. Their resentment faded quickly. Buckner reported that due to the departure of various troops with Floyd, Pillow, and Forrest, he could not tell with any degree of accuracy the number of men remaining at Donelson, but it was somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000. Grant did his best to put Buckner at ease. Soon they were bantering. Buckner said if he had been in command from the beginning, Grant would not have been able to get up to Donelson as easily as he did. Grant replied if Buckner had been in command, “I should not have tried in the way I did.”134 Buckner requested permission to send burial parties onto the battlefield and Grant agreed. The two commanders discussed the short rations the Confederates were on. Grant said the Union commissary would provide whatever additional food was necessary. Southern officers were allowed to retain their sidearms and personal servants, and the enlisted ranks their clothing and blankets.135
The actual surrender was accomplished without formality. Dr. Brinton asked Grant when the official ceremony would be held? When would the rebels be paraded, their weapons stacked, and their standard lowered? “There will be nothing of the kind,” said Grant. “The surrender is now a fact. We have the fort, the men, the guns. Why should we go through vain forms and mortify and injure the spirit of brave men, who, after all, are our own countrymen.”136
Later that morning, February 16, 1862, Grant telegraphed Halleck that Fort Donelson had fallen. In addition to the garrison, Grant said the Union army captured “twenty thousand stand of arms, forty-eight pieces of artillery, seventeen heavy guns, and from two to four thousand horses.”137 In his handwritten dispatch to Cullum at Cairo, Grant gave credit where credit was due. The charge of General Smith’s division, he said, had been decisive. “It was most brilliantly executed and gave to our arms full assurance of victory.”138
In St. Louis and other Northern cities there was dancing in the streets. Church bells rang and cannons fired repeated salutes to celebrate the victory at Donelson. A newspaper editorial announced “any person found sober after nine o’clock in the evening would be arrested as a secessionist.” Halleck, never bashful when it came to embracing success, told a cheering crowd, “I promised when I came here that with your aid I would drive the enemies of our flag from your state. This has been done, and they are virtually out of Kentucky and will soon be out of Tennessee.”139 The following day he wired McClellan, “Make Buell, Grant, and Pope major generals of volunteers and give me command of the West. I ask this in return for Forts Henry and Donelson.”140
In Washington, McClellan also basked in reflected glory.141 Guns boomed all day long, and General Cullum’s dispatch from Cairo announcing Donelson’s capture was read verbatim to the House and the Senate. On Monday, Secretary of War Stanton recommended Grant (and only Grant) be promoted to major general. Lincoln happily complied. The fact Grant entered service from Illinois gave the president special pleasure. He did not feel competent to speak about the fighting qualities of Eastern men, Lincoln observed as he signed Grant’s commission, but the gallant behavior of Illinois troops at Donelson showed that “if the Southerners think that man for man they are better than our . . . western men, they will discover themselves in a grievous mistake.”142
Back at Donelson, Grant wrestled with the aftermath of victory. Not since Yorktown had an American general taken the surrender of a whole army in the field. Grant wrote Julia he believed it was the largest capture ever made on the continent.143, VIII To deal with so many prisoners was more than Grant’s battlefield staff could handle. The severe February weather made it essential to move the men quickly lest they die of exposure, and when Buckner volunteered the use of his staff to assist, Grant accepted without hesitation. He wrote out an order authorizing the prisoners be collected at the nearby village of Dover “under their respective company and regimental commanders, or in such manner as may be deemed best by General S.B. Buckner.”144 In effect, the Confederate officers handled their own internment, and by late Monday most of the men had been loaded onto steamers bound for Cairo. Grant told Cullum that in the future he would suggest paroling all prisoners rather than keeping them in custody. Most would honor their paroles, he thought, and it required too much effort for an army in the field to handle them. The taste of victory was sweet, and Grant evidently decided it was a good time to replenish the overcoats and blankets his men threw away on the march from Fort Henry. “Send me 5000 blankets and 1000 overcoats as soon as possible,” he wrote Cullum. “Many were lost on the battlefield and the men are now without.”145 When Buckner and his staff boarded the last of the transports on Tuesday, Grant went to say farewell. Before leaving he drew Buckner aside. “You are separated from your people,” said Grant, “and perhaps you need funds. My purse is at your disposal.” Buckner thanked him for his thoughtfulness but declined. Later Buckner said Grant always recognized a favor extended to him, and the offer of money “was a recognition of the kindness which I had done him.”146
Grant came into his own. The lightning victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson captured the public’s imagination. Within ten days the center of Albert Sidney Johnston’s line had been breached, Kentucky secured, and the deep South opened to invasion. Grant lost 3,000 men at Donelson, roughly 11 percent of those engaged. Southern losses were much greater. Aside from battlefield casualties and the 14,000 men who went into captivity, a Confederate army with all of its horses, equipment, and weapons was taken out of the war. The effect on morale in Dixie was devastating. Tennessee, one of the most populous states in the nation, was denied to the South. Said differently, the rebel army was deprived of at least 50,000 potential recruits between the ages of eighteen and forty-five.147 Equally important, Grant’s victory at Donelson resonated strongly throughout Europe. The first significant Union triumph in the war, it slowed the movement to recognize the Confederacy and helped insure the war would be seen as an American domestic affair.148
Overnight Grant became famous. His initials were taken to mean “Unconditional Surrender” and schoolchildren throughout the North memorized his message to Buckner. Newspaper accounts were unremitting in praise of his cool direction of the battle. When readers learned he smoked a cigar throughout the 2nd Division’s attack, gifts of cigars flooded in. Grant gave up smoking a pipe, if for no other reason than there were dozens of boxes of cigars lying around headquarters and it seemed a shame to let them go to waste.149 Reporters had a field day making the most ordinary of men appear extraordinary. Grant’s features were described as “carved from mahogany,” his eyes clear blue, his jaw “squarely set, but not sensual.” One writer saw three expressions in his face: “deep thought, extreme determination, and great calmness.” Readers were told that on horseback Grant sat firmly in the saddle, eyes straight ahead, “as if only intent on getting to some particular point.” The words “square” and “straight” and “firm” were the ones used most often, and people liked them.150
The whole campaign against Henry and Donelson seemed a marvel of generalship, a superb combination of simplicity and determination—in stark contrast to the dilatory maneuvering of the forces under Buell or the Army of the Potomac under McClellan. The public’s perception was not far off the mark. Grant, like few American generals before or since, understood the momentum of warfare. He had a quickness of mind that allowed him to make on-the-spot adjustments. His battles were not elegant set-piece operations—as Scott’s textbook victory at Cerro Gordo had been—but unfolded unpredictably as opportunities developed. At the root of Grant’s success was his army. Properly trained and supplied it was an instrument to be deployed against the enemy as circumstances dictated. Donelson was typical. On Thursday, Grant’s probes were repulsed with heavy losses. On Friday, Foote’s flotilla was routed. On Saturday, disaster struck the Union right and by noon the road to Nashville lay open. Undeterred, Grant counterattacked. C. F. Smith’s intrepid leadership carried his division over Donelson’s revetments; Wallace retook the Nashville road; and McClernand put his battered division back together. Grant was the author of the Union’s deliverance, and the next morning he accepted Donelson’s surrender.
From Cairo, General Cullum sent his congratulations. “I, in common with the whole country, warmly congratulate you upon this remarkable achievement which has broken the enemy’s center, dispersed the rebels, and given the death blow to secession.” The 5,000 blankets and 1,000 overcoats Grant requested would of course be sent forward immediately. Cullum, who made no attempt to conceal his satisfaction, said the victory was attributable entirely to “your brilliant leadership.”151 In St. Louis, Halleck made no comment. He did not acknowledge Grant’s telegram announcing the capture of Fort Donelson, and sent no congratulations whatever.152
I. Three of Polk’s regiments, the 2nd Tennessee, the 21st, and the 154th, were Memphis regiments. The Nashville Banner reported “Memphis today is like Rachel mourning for her children.” Schools closed and men and women lined the riverbank waiting for the incoming boats. Nashville Banner, November 10, 1861. Also see the Memphis Appeal, November 9, 10, 11, 1861.
II. Military historians have often suggested the Confederates would have done better to construct their fortifications at the Birmingham Narrows in Kentucky where the twin rivers are only three miles apart. In the spring of 1861, however, this was not possible, since Kentucky had not seceded and was jealously guarding its neutrality. For greater detail on the siting of Fort Henry, see Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Forts Henry and Donelson: The Key to the Confederate Heartland 46–48 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987).
III. “Have the gunners mind their aim,” said Foote with Yankee thriftiness. “Every charge you fire costs the government eight dollars.” Boston Journal, n.d., quoted in Cooling, Forts Henry and Donelson 100.
IV. The size of garrison at Fort Donelson cannot be stated precisely. Grant estimated there were 21,000 Confederates in the fort on February 15 (1 Memoirs 315). Adam Badeau, in his Military History of Ulysses S. Grant, which was written from official sources, put the number at 21,123 (I, 51 note–52 note) (New York: D. Appleton, 1881). General Albert Sidney Johnston estimated 17,000 men were present on February 13 (7 War of the Rebellion 283, 922). A list of the regiments at Donelson is provided in 1 Battles and Leaders of the Civil War 429, Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds. (New York: Century, 1887). After analysis, Thomas L. Livermore accepted Grant’s estimate of 21,000 (Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America: 1861–1865 78–79 [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957]). Benjamin Franklin Cooling, in his 1987 study of the battle, simply notes between 15,000 and 21,000 were present and lets it go at that. Forts Henry and Donelson 149. Shelby Foote uses the figure 17,500. 1 The Civil War 195 (New York: Random House, 1958). To avoid overstating the size of the garrison I have adopted Johnston’s number.
V. “Command me in any way,” Sherman wrote Grant from Paducah. “I feel anxious about you as I know the great facilities [the Confederates] have of concentration by means of the river and railroad, but [I] have faith in you.” February 15, 1862. National Archives, Record Group 393, District of West Tennessee, Letters Received.
VI. Grant subsequently told Buckner that if he had captured Pillow at Donelson, “I would have turned him loose. I would rather have him in command of you fellows than as a prisoner.” John R. Proctor, “A Blue and Gray Friendship,” 31 Century Magazine 944 (1897).
VII. Years later Buckner told his family lawyer he deliberately used the words “ungenerous and unchivalrous” knowing the public would not understand what he meant but Grant would. On his part, Grant, on his deathbed, confided to Buckner he thought Pillow was in command and that Buckner was simply writing as his agent. He told Buckner if he had realized Buckner was commanding “the articles of surrender would have been different.” Mrs. Delia C. Buckner to H.A. Watkins, May 25, 1929, in Arndt Stickles, Simon Bolivar Buckner: Borderland Knight 168, 172 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940).
VIII. The Union commissary general subsequently reported rations were issued to 14,623 prisoners from Donelson at Cairo. Grant, 1 Memoirs 314.