by Bruce Catton
They anchored a few miles downstream from Fort Henry on the afternoon of February 5, and Foote invited the generals aboard the gunboat Cincinnati and steamed up a little way to inspect the Confederate defenses. The river was full of floating mines — torpedoes, they were, in the nomenclature of that day — and the flood waters had torn most of these loose from their moorings and many of them were floating by. Sailors got one of them and brought it aboard the flagship, and Foote and the generals gathered around it on the low fantail deck at the stern while the ship’s armorer was called to dismantle the thing and see how it worked.
The mine was an iron cylinder, five feet long by some eighteen inches thick; with three long iron rods protruding from one end to actuate the firing mechanism. While the officers bent over to watch, the armorer removed these rods, took off the detachable end of the tube, and went to work with a wrench on a heavy nut that held the interior works together.
Apparently the torpedo had leaked. Water had entered, and the cylinder was full of air under pressure. As the armorer loosened the nut, this air suddenly began to emerge with an ominous hissing sound, and all hands immediately got the idea that the machine was about to explode. The armorer vanished, Smith and McClernand dropped flat on the deck, and Grant and Foote made for a ladder and went floating swiftly to the upper deck — getting there, breathless, just as the hissing stopped and it became obvious that the torpedo was not going to explode after all. General and flag officer looked at each other sheepishly. Then Foote blandly inquired:
“General, why this haste?”
Said Grant:
“That the navy may not get ahead of us.”4
Then they returned to the lower deck and the examination of the torpedo was completed.
They would attack the fort next day, and that evening old Foote made the rounds of the vessels in his squadron, addressing the crews, exhorting them to be brave men — most of them had never been under fire before — and urging them to put their trust in divine Providence. As a good Yankee, he had a final word of caution for them. When they fired the big guns they must make every shot count: “Every charge you fire from one of these guns costs the government about eight dollars.”
While Foote was addressing his crews, Grant got his troops ashore: Smith’s men on the western side of the river, to march up and seize the new works the Confederates were building there, and McClernand’s on the eastern bank, to march directly on Fort Henry itself. Morning came, the troops began to move, and Foote wheeled his gunboats upstream to convenient range and opened fire. An officer on the Essex noticed that the first three shots from the flagship fell short, and remarked that Foote’s own gun crews had just wasted twenty-four dollars.5
The fight was surprisingly short. The Rebel commander in Fort Henry, rightly judging that the place could not be defended very long, had sent most of his men cross-country to Fort Donelson, retaining only enough to work the guns that bore on the river. The gunboats’ fire was accurate (after the initial twenty-four dollar lapse) and the fort surrendered before Grant had got his soldiers into position.
Somewhat to the army’s embarrassment, the Confederate commander came out in a rowboat under a flag of truce, boarded the flagship, and made his surrender to Foote, who sent a detail ashore to hold the place until the soldiers could get there. The fort was so badly flooded that the cutter carrying this detail rowed straight in through the sally port. A Confederate officer said that if the fight had been delayed forty-eight hours the rising Tennessee would have drowned the fort’s magazine and the Yankees could have had the place for nothing.
Short as it was, the fight had not been bloodless. Foote’s flagship had been struck thirty-two times and two of her guns had been disabled, and the Essex had been put completely out of action with a shell through her steam chest and thirty-two casualties. The Confederate gunners had stood up to their work until fire from the fleet had dismounted their effective pieces; but Foote had brought his boats in to close range where his raw gun crews could hardly miss, and he had heavier guns than anything the fort possessed. The whole experience apparently gave sailors and soldiers alike an exaggerated idea of the effectiveness of gunboats against fortifications, which was to have important consequences a bit later.6
Grant’s men came floundering up presently — the bottom land was all under water and there was a veritable millrace a quarter of a mile wide just outside the parapets — and since he and Foote got on well the navy refrained from crowing too much over its triumph. Smith and his men were brought over from the western side of the river, and Grant sent a wire to Halleck announcing the victory. He added that he would move over and capture Fort Donelson in a couple of days.7
Grant’s telegram immediately stepped up the exchange of messages in the McClellan-Buell-Halleck triangle. Halleck told McClellan that he could hold Fort Henry “at all hazards,” predicted that the Rebels would feel obliged to abandon Bowling Green, and urged that every available man be sent up the Tennessee or the Cumberland. McClellan suggested that perhaps Buell should go to Fort Henry in person — in which case, since he outranked Grant, he would be in command there; Halleck thought that Buell should simply send reinforcements instead. McClellan proposed that Buell take his men up the Cumberland to Nashville while Halleck continued to ascend the Tennessee, with a combined smash at Memphis as the objective. This was a sound idea but impracticable for the moment, since the navy did not yet have enough gunboats to escort transports on two rivers at once. Buell complained that he could not get a clear idea of Halleck’s plans.8
Meanwhile Grant was taking his men overland to Fort Donelson.
Fort Henry had been comparatively easy, but Donelson would be very tough. Grant was no great distance from Paducah, where Sherman — brought out of his temporary retirement by Halleck and given the post Smith had held — was working hard to funnel more troops to him; but Buell’s men in Kentucky were a long way off, and Confederate Johnston had fifty thousand men strung out on the line from Columbus to Bowling Green. Beauregard had joined him — without those reinforcements which rumor had said he was bringing — and he was urging that Johnston concentrate everything he had and smash Grant’s force before it was too late. Johnston refused to go along with this and ordered the forces at Bowling Green to fall back on Nashville instead; but he did send twelve thousand men to Fort Donelson, bringing the total force there to seventeen thousand or more. Built on the west bank of the Cumberland, Donelson occupied high ground, with powerful guns to command the river and with extensive entrenchments strung along wooded ridges and hilltops to command the approaches by land. As the head of Grant’s column approached the place, the Confederates had more men on the scene than he had.
It had taken much longer than Grant anticipated to get everything ready, and it was not until February 13 that his army was in position. His plan was simple. Foote had gone back to Cairo, leaving his disabled boat there and picking up three others, two of which were the unarmored Tyler and Conestoga. He was steaming up the Cumberland now with six gunboats, four of them armored, and he was convoying transports bringing Grant reinforcements. Grant proposed to hem the Confederates in by land and have the gunboats close the river front; a sharp bombardment by Foote, then, might make a successful infantry assault possible, and the Confederate garrison could be captured entire.
February 14 came in cold after a sharp night. It had been unseasonably warm during the cross-country march from Fort Henry, and many of the green troops had blithely thrown away their overcoats; some units had even left blankets behind in camp on the Tennessee. The men put in a miserable night. They were so close to the Confederate lines that fires were not allowed. But as the sun came up the air moderated a bit, and in midafternoon the soldiers’ spirits rose; out of their sight, beyond the hills and the trees, there came a heavy, measured thud-thud of the big naval guns. Foote was bringing his four armored gunboats up to give Fort Donelson what he had given Fort Henry.
It might have worked if he had kept his dis
tance. His guns outranged anything the Confederates could fire at him, and when he opened the shooting at a distance of two miles his gunners were hitting regularly and doing substantial damage. But at Fort Henry he had finished things off fast by closing to point-blank range, and he tried the same thing here. The result was sheer disaster. At close range his gunners consistently overshot, and the Confederate gunners found their targets and pounded them hard. In a short time the squadron had to withdraw, two boats disabled, the others damaged, many men killed, Foote himself badly wounded. If Fort Donelson was going to be taken, the army would have to do it. Glumly Grant admitted that he might have to settle down for a siege.9
Fortunately the Confederate command was very nervous. Top Confederate in the place was Brigadier General Gideon Pillow, a gray-whiskered veteran of the Mexican War who was to bear one distinction, and only one, out of the Civil War — he was the only Confederate general to whom Grant consistently referred in terms of contempt. Even though the naval attack had been beaten off, Pillow figured the place could not be held, and next morning he marshaled a striking column to break the right of Grant’s line and open a way for the garrison to escape.
To an extent, the plan worked. McClernand’s division held the right; the Confederate assault doubled it back on the Union center, driving Federal brigades in flight and swinging the door of escape wide open. But Grant sent Lew Wallace and his men in to help close the gap, and on his left he ordered Smith to assault the Rebel breastworks in order to ease the pressure on his right. Old Smith, who had said the officer must live for the great day of battle, put his regiments into line, stuck his cap on the point of his sword, and rode ahead of them into a tangle of brush and felled trees, with Confederates on a ridge beyond driving in a hot fire.
Smith’s men had never been in action before, and when they entered the underbrush with bullets whining and crackling all around them, they wavered. Smith stormed at them:
“Damn you, gentlemen, I see skulkers. I’ll have none here. Come on, you volunteers, come on! This is your chance. You volunteered to be killed for love of country, and now you can be. You damned volunteers — I’m only a soldier and I don’t want to be killed, but you came to be killed and now you can be!”
Then, without looking back, sitting his horse as if he were on parade, sword held high, he rode on ahead of them. One of his rookies wrote afterward that “I was nearly scared to death, but I saw the old man’s mustache over his right shoulder, and went on.” Through the underbrush and fallen timber and up the slope they went, the Rebels blistering the hillside with musket fire. Once more the line wavered briefly. Smith beckoned to his division surgeon, who was riding with the staff, and told him: “Hewitt, my God, my friend, if you love me, go back and bring up another regiment of these damned volunteers. You’ll find them behind the bushes.”
The other regiment came up, the wavering ceased, and a staff officer recorded: “And so the old cock led them with a mixture of oaths and entreaties over the breastwork.” On Smith’s whole front the Confederates had to withdraw to an inner line. Wallace’s men, meanwhile, had regained most of the ground McClernand had lost, and by evening the open door was slammed shut again. Clearly enough, Grant’s army — heavily reinforced by this time and strongly outnumbering the Confederates — could drive home a smashing assault in the morning.10
It was another cold night, and the Federals huddled in their lines with nothing but the anticipation of victory to warm them. Sometime past midnight Grant was in the little cabin that served as headquarters, his surgeon dozing in a chair, a good fire burning in the fireplace; and General Smith came in, ice on his boots, his great mustachios looking frostier than ever. He handed Grant a letter, remarking, “There’s something for you to read, General.” Then he asked the surgeon for a drink, took a good old-army pull from the flask that was offered, wiped his lips, and stood before the fire, warming his long legs. Grant read the letter.
It had just come through the picket lines under a flag of truce, and it bore the signature of Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner, an old-time army friend of Grant, now commanding the Confederates in Fort Donelson. Because his two seniors were frightened, Buckner was the residuary legatee of defeat. At a council of war earlier that evening the Confederate commanders had agreed that the fort would have to be surrendered. However, no Confederate general had yet been captured by the Federals, and no one was quite certain that a vengeful Lincoln government might not try captured generals for treason; and so General Pillow, the top man in the fort, announced that he personally was going to make his escape, and he passed the command to the next man in line, Brigadier General John B. Floyd.
Floyd had personal reasons for wishing to avoid capture. He had been Secretary of War in Buchanan’s Cabinet, and Northerners believed he had used his official position to stock southern arsenals and forts with extra supplies of weapons against the day of secession. It seemed likely that if they caught Floyd they would make things tough for him. So Floyd said he thought he had better go away with Pillow, and he passed the command on to Buckner. Being made of stouter material, Buckner did not try to duck his responsibilities. If the fort had to be given up and if he was now its commander, he would do what had to be done and would stay with his men, to take what came. So he had written a letter to Grant asking what terms the Federals would give if the garrison should surrender.
Grant read the thing and looked up at Smith, who was twisting his mustache before the fire. Perhaps Grant still felt like the young cadet in the presence of the commandant, for he asked, “What answer shall I send to his, General Smith?”
Smith cleared his throat heavily and barked: “No terms to the damned rebels.”
Grant chuckled, got a pad of paper, and began to write. A moment later he showed Smith what he had written. It was a short message, which would become famous. Curt and to the point, it announced that Grant would offer no terms except “immediate and unconditional surrender,” and closed with the blunt statement: “I propose to move immediately upon your works.”
“Hmm!” said Smith. “It’s the same thing in smoother words!” Grant chuckled again, and Smith stalked out of the room to send the letter through the lines to Buckner.11
Buckner thought the letter harsh and unchivalrous, but there was no help for it. Pillow and Floyd had slipped away to the far side of the Cumberland and were on their way to safety. One other soldier had also escaped, a man who was to be worth more to the Confederacy than a dozen Pillows and Floyds: a hard, rough-hewn former planter and slave trader named Nathan Bedford Forrest, now commanding a detachment of Confederate cavalry, one of the authentic military geniuses of the whole war. If they could have caught him and kept him under lock and key to the end of the war, the Federals would have saved themselves much anguish. Forrest had found that the encircling lines were not quite airtight, and he led his troopers out to safety, floundering waist-deep through an icy backwater in the silent night; and Buckner and his troops — something like fifteen thousand of them, with all their guns and equipment — laid down their arms and surrendered when morning came. The North had won the first great victory of the war.12
Grant’s message was sent all across the North, and people made him a hero overnight; there was something about the hard ring of “unconditional surrender” that aroused vast enthusiasm, and it tickled people that the words fitted Grant’s initials.
But it was old Smith who had really stated the terms. As he said, all Grant had done was put them in smoother words.
4. To the Deep South
Fort Donelson was a crusher, and the Confederate high command instantly recognized it as such. The loss of Fort Henry had already cracked Johnston’s line, causing him to retreat from Bowling Green to Nashville, and to send Beauregard west to see what could be done with the great river fortress at Columbus. Now with Donelson gone, there was no good place to make a stand north of the southern Tennessee border.
On news of Buckner’s surrender, Johnston evacuated Nashv
ille and started south, while Beauregard prepared for the evacuation of Columbus. As far as any plans had been made, Johnston aimed to concentrate his forces at Corinth, Mississippi. Beauregard believed that the Mississippi River could still be held, with strong points at Island No. Ten, New Madrid, and Fort Pillow, but except for this fringe all of western Tennessee was gone.1
What gave the defeat the potentiality of outright disaster — aside from the fact that the Confederacy was losing a modest industrial nexus of fair importance — was that it exposed to the Federal invaders the most important railroad line in the southern nation, the Memphis and Charleston, which (after dipping down into northern Mississippi and Alabama) ran east through Chattanooga and Knoxville and gave the Mississippi Valley region a direct connection with Virginia and the Atlantic seaboard. Abraham Lincoln, whose strategic ideas were not nearly as defective as a good many of his generals assumed, had had this line on his mind from the start; it was one of the reasons he was so desperately anxious to get an army down into eastern Tennessee. The value which the Richmond government placed on the line was shown by its reaction to the news of the defeat; it instantly began to strip the southern seaboard of troops in order to give Johnston reinforcements.
Confederate Secretary of War Judah Benjamin wrote to Robert E. Lee, who was then busy perfecting coastal defenses in South Carolina and Georgia, to send troops to Tennessee at once, because the railroad line “must be defended at all hazards.” Braxton Bragg, commanding at Mobile, Alabama, was ordered to leave a garrison in the harbor forts and to take the rest of his troops up to Johnston. Benjamin’s predecessor in the War Department, L. P. Walker, now a brigadier in Alabama, wrote that it would be better to lose all the seacoast than this railroad, calling it “the vertebrae of the Confederacy.” The Confederate government was aware by now that the Federals would soon be mounting an assault on New Orleans via the Mississippi passes, but when Donelson fell the best troops in the Louisiana sector were rushed north, along with much military equipment.2