As the smoke rose we saw that the enemy was retreating rapidly and in great confusion. The Carondelet dropped down to within half a mile above Craighead’s Point, and kept up a continual fire upon their vessels, which were very much huddled together. When they were nearly, if not quite, beyond gunshot, the Benton, having raised sufficient steam, came down and passed the Carondelet; but the Confederates were under the protection of Fort Pillow before the Benton could reach them. Our fleet returned to Plum Point, except the Carondelet, which dropped her anchor on the battle-field, two miles or more below the point, and remained there two days on voluntary guard duty. This engagement was sharp, but not decisive. From the first to the last shot fired by the Carondelet, one hour and ten minutes elapsed. After the battle, long-range firing was kept up until the evacuation of Fort Pillow.
On the 25th seven of Colonel Ellet’s rams arrived,—a useful acquisition to our fleet. During the afternoon of June 4th heavy clouds of smoke were observed rising from Fort Pillow, followed by explosions, which continued through the night; the last of which, much greater than the others, lit up the heavens and the Chickasaw bluffs with a brilliant light, and convinced us that this was the parting salute of the Confederates before leaving for the lower Mississippi. At dawn next morning the fleet was all astir to take possession of Fort Pillow, the flag-steamer leading. We found the casemates, magazines, and breastworks blown to atoms.
On our way to Memphis the enemy’s steamer Sovereign was intercepted by one of our tugs. She was run ashore by her crew, who attempted to blow her up, but were foiled in their purpose by a boy of sixteen whom the enemy had pressed into service, who, after the abandonment of the vessel, took the extra weights from the safety-valves, opened the fire-doors and flue-caps, and put water on the fires, and, having procured a sheet, signaled the tug, which came up and took possession. It may be proper to say that on our way down the river we respected private property, and did not assail or molest any except those who were in arms against us.
The morning of the 6th of June we fought the battle of Memphis, which lasted one hour and ten minutes. It was begun by an attack upon our fleet by the enemy, whose vessels were in double line of battle opposite the city. We were then at a distance of a mile and a half or two miles above the city. Their fire continued for a quarter of an hour, when the attack was promptly met by two of our ram squadron, the Queen of the West (Colonel Charles Ellet) leading, and the Monarch (Lieutenant-Colonel A. W. Ellet, younger brother of the leader). These vessels fearlessly dashed ahead of our gun-boats, ran for the enemy’s fleet, and at the first plunge succeeded in sinking one vessel and disabling another. The astonished Confederates received them gallantly and effectively. The Queen of the West and Monarch were followed in line of battle by the gun-boats, under the lead of Flag-Officer Davis, and all of them opened fire, which was continued from the time we got within good range until the end of the battle—two or three tugs keeping all the while a safe distance astern. The Queen of the West was a quarter of a mile in advance of the Monarch, and after having rammed one of the enemy’s fleet, she was badly rammed by the Beauregard, which then, in company with the General Price, made a dash at the Monarch as she approached them. The Beauregard, however, missed the Monarch and struck the General Price instead on her port side, cutting her down to the water-line, tearing off her wheel instantly, and placing her hors de combat. The Monarch then rammed the Beauregard, which had been several times raked fore and aft by the shot and shell of our iron-clads, and she quickly sank in the river opposite Memphis. The General Lovell, after having been badly rammed by the Queen of the West, was struck by our shot and shell, and, at about the same time and place as the Beauregard, sank to the bottom so suddenly as to take a considerable number of her officers and crew down with her, the others being saved by small boats and our tugs. The Price, Little Rebel (with a shot-hole through her steam-chest), and our Queen of the West, all disabled, were run on the Arkansas shore opposite Memphis; and the Monarch afterward ran into the Little Rebel just as our fleet was passing her in pursuit of the remainder of the enemy’s fleet, then retreating rapidly down the river. The Jeff. Thompson, below the point and opposite President’s Island, was the next boat disabled by our shot. She was run ashore, burned, and blown up. The Confederate ram Sumter was also disabled by our shell and captured. The Bragg soon after shared the same fate and was run ashore, where her officers abandoned her and disappeared in the forests of Arkansas. All the Confederate rams which had been run on the Arkansas shore were captured. The Van Dorn, having a start, alone escaped down the river. The rams Monarch and Switzerland were dispatched in pursuit of her and a few transports, but returned without overtaking them, although they captured another steamer.
The scene at this battle was rendered most sublime by the desperate nature of the engagement and the momentous consequences that followed very speedily after the first attack. Thousands of people crowded the high bluffs overlooking the river. The roar of the cannon and shell shook the houses on shore on either side for many miles. First wild yells, shrieks, and clamors, then loud, despairing murmurs, filled the affrighted city. The screaming, plunging shell crashed into the boats, blowing some of them and their crews into fragments, and the rams rushed upon each other like wild beasts in deadly conflict. Blinding smoke hovered about the scene of all this confusion and horror; and, as the battle progressed and the Confederate fleet was destroyed, all the cheering voices on shore were silenced. When the last hope of the Confederates gave way, the lamentations which went up from the spectators were like cries of anguish.
THE BATTLE OF FORT PILLOW, MAY 10, 1862 (LOOKING NORTH). AFTER A SKETCH BY REAR-ADMIRAL WALKE.
Boats were put off from our vessels to save as many lives as possible. No serious injury was received by any one on board the United States fleet. Colonel Ellet received a pistol-shot in the leg; a shot struck the Carondelet in the bow, broke up her anchor and anchor-stock, and fragments were scattered over her deck among her officers and crew, wounding slightly Acting-Master Gibson and two or three others who were standing at the time on the forward deck with me. The heavy timber which was suspended at the water-line, to protect the boats from the Confederate rams, greatly impeded our progress, and it was therefore cut adrift from the Carondelet when that vessel was in chase of the Bragg and Sumter. The latter had just landed a number of her officers and crew, some of whom were emerging from the bushes along the bank of the river, unaware of the Carondelet’s proximity, when I hailed them through a trumpet, and ordered them to stop or be shot. They obeyed immediately, and by my orders were taken on board a tug and delivered on the Benton.
THE BATTLE OF MEMPHIS (JUNE 6, 1862), LOOKING SOUTH. AFTER A DRAWING BY REAR-ADMIRAL WALKE.
General Jeff. Thompson, noted in partisan or border warfare, having signally failed with those rams at Fort Pillow, now resigned them to their fate. It was said that he stood by his horse watching the struggle, and seeing at last his rams all gone, captured, sunk, or burned, he exclaimed, philosophically, “They are gone, and I am going,” mounted his horse, and disappeared.
An enormous amount of property was captured by our squadron; and, in addition to the Confederate fleet, we captured at Memphis six large Mississippi steamers, each marked “C.S.A.” We also seized a large quantity of cotton in steamers and on shore, and the property at the Confederate Navy Yard, and caused the destruction of the Tennessee, a large steam-ram, on the stocks, which was to have been a sister ship to the renowned Arkansas. About one hundred Confederates were killed and wounded and one hundred and fifty captured. Chief of all results of the work of the flotilla was the opening of the Mississippi River once for all from Cairo to Memphis, and the complete possession of Western Tennessee by the Union forces.
* * *
1 The armament of the fort consisted of “ten 32-pounder guns (two of them ship carronades), one 8-inch howitzer, two nondescript 9-pounders, one 10-inch Columbiad, and one rifled gun throwing a conical shell of 128 pounds.” The garrison
was commanded by Colonel J. E. Bailey, the artillery by Captain Joseph Dixon, and after his death by Captain Jacob Culbertson, with Captains Ross, Beaumont, and Bidwell in separate command of the guns of the lower batteries. Captain Dixon was killed in the action of the 13th with the Carondelet by a shot which dismounted one of his guns—“the only damage done to the batteries during the siege.” (Captain Culbertson’s report.)—EDITORS.
2 From the report of Captain B. G. Bidwell, “the only officer connected with the heavy batteries of Fort Donelson who was fortunate enough to escape,” we take this account of the engagement:
“All was quiet until the evening of the 14th (Friday), when 4 boats came around the point, arranged themselves in line of battle, and advanced slowly, but steadily, up the river to within 200 yards of our battery, and halted, when a most incessant fire was kept up for some time. We were ordered to hold our fire until they got within range of our 32-pounders. We remained perfectly silent, while they came over about one and a half miles, pouring a heavy fire of shot and shell upon us all the time. Two more boats came around the point and threw shell at us. Our gunners were inexperienced and knew very little of the firing of heavy guns. They, however, did some excellent shooting. The rifled gun was disabled by the ramming of a cartridge while the wire was in the vent, it being left in there by a careless gunner,—being bent, it could not be got out,—but the two center boats were both disabled, the left-center (I think) by a ricochet shot entering one of the port-holes, which are tolerably large. The right-center boat was very soon injured by a ball striking her on top, and also a direct shot in the port hole, when she fell back, the two flank boats closing in behind them and protecting them from our fire in retreat. I think these two were not seriously injured. They must have fired near two thousand shot and shell at us. Our Columbiad fired about 27 times, the rifled gun very few times, and the 32-pounders about 45 or 50 rounds each. A great many of our balls took effect, being well aimed. I am confident the efficiency of the gun-boat is in the gun it carries rather than in the boat itself. We can whip them always if our men will only stand to their guns. Not a man of all ours was hurt, notwithstanding they threw grape at us. Their fire was more destructive to our works at 2 miles than at 200 yards. They over-fired us from that distance.”
3 The ostensible object was a request to permit the families of officers captured at Fort Donelson to pass through the Union lines. The request was granted on the following day, but General George W. Cullum (General Halleck’s chief of staff) and Flag-Officer Foote remonstrated with General Polk for the use made of the flag of truce.—EDITORS.
4 On the 3d of March the evacuated works had been occupied by a scouting party of the 2d Illinois Cavalry, sent from Paducah by Brigadier-General W. T. Sherman, who had succeeded Brigadier-General Grant in command of the District of Cairo (February 14, 1862) on the assignment of General Grant to the command of the District of West Tennessee. The fact of the occupation was not known at the time of the gun-boat reconnoissance, which included a land force accompanied by General Sherman and by Brigadier-General Cullum. This detachment landed and took formal possession. In his report of the occupation, General Cullum speaks of Columbus as “the Gibraltar of the West.”—EDITORS.
5 An interesting and important enterprise in this campaign was the sawing out, under great difficulties, of a channel, twelve miles in length, to complete a water-way for the Union transports across Madrid Bend. —EDITORS.
6 The Confederate land batteries above New Madrid were ten in number—five on the eastern side of Island Number Ten; four (Batteries No. 5, 4, 3, and 2) opposite the island on the mainland, as shown on the map (this page), besides Battery No. 1, two miles above the island.—EDITORS.
During the dark and stormy night of April 1st Colonel George W. Roberts, of the 42d Illinois Regiment, executed a brilliant exploit. Forty picked men, in five barges, with muffled oars, left for Battery No. 1. They proceeded in silence, and were unobserved until within a few rods of the fort, when a flash of lightning discovered them to the sentries, who fired. Our men, who did not reply, were soon climbing up the slippery bank, and in three minutes more the six guns were spiked, Colonel Roberts himself spiking a huge 80-pounder pivot-gun. Some of these guns had been previously dismounted by our fleet, and were now rendered doubly useless.—H.W.
7 The mortar-boat, No. 16, which was the first object of attack, was defended with great spirit by Acting-Master Gregory, who fired his mortar eleven times, reducing the charge and diminishing the elevation. (See cut, this page.)—EDITORS.
8 Flag-Officer Davis says in his report: “All of these vessels might easily have been captured if we had possessed the means of towing them out of action; but the steam-power of our gun-boats is so disproportionate to the bulk of the vessels that they can accomplish but little beyond overcoming the strength of the current, even when unincumbered.”—EDITORS.
CHAPTER 3
THE CAPTURE OF FORT DONELSON.
Lew Wallace, Major-General, U.S.V.
The village of Dover was—and for that matter yet is—what our English cousins would call the “shire-town” of the county of Stewart, Tennessee. In 1860 it was a village unknown to fame, meager in population, architecturally poor. There was a court-house in the place, and a tavern, remembered now as double-storied, unpainted, and with windows of eight-by-ten glass, which, if the panes may be likened to eyes, were both squint and cataractous. Looking through them gave the street outside the appearance of a sedgy slough of yellow backwater. The entertainment furnished man and beast was good of the kind; though at the time mentioned a sleepy traveler, especially if he were of the North, might have been somewhat vexed by the explosions which spiced the good things of a debating society that nightly took possession of the bar-room, to discuss the relative fighting qualities of the opposing sections.
If there was a little of the romantic in Dover itself, there was still less of poetic quality in the country round about it. The only beautiful feature was the Cumberland River, which, in placid current from the south, poured its waters, ordinarily white and pure as those of the springs that fed it, past the village on the east. Northward there was a hill, then a small stream, then a bolder hill round the foot of which the river swept to the west, as if courteously bent on helping Hickman’s Creek out of its boggy bottom and cheerless ravine. North of the creek all was woods. Taking in the ravine of the creek, a system of hollows, almost wide and deep enough to be called valleys, inclosed the town and two hills, their bluffest ascents being on the townward side. Westward of the hollows there were woods apparently interminable. From Fort Henry, twelve miles north-west, a road entered the village, stopping first to unite itself with another wagon-way, now famous as the Wynn’s Ferry road, coming more directly from the west. Still another road, leading off to Charlotte and Nashville, had been cut across the low ground near the river on the south. These three highways were the chief reliances of the people of Dover for communication with the country, and as they were more than supplemented by the river and its boatage, the three were left the year round to the guardianship of the winds and rains.
HEADQUARTERS IN THE FIELD.
However, when at length the Confederate authorities decided to erect a military post at Dover, the town entered but little into consideration. The real inducement was the second hill on the north—more properly a ridge. As it rose about a hundred feet above the level of the inlet, the reconnoitering engineer, seeking to control the navigation of the river by a fortification, adopted it at sight. And for that purpose the bold bluff was in fact a happy gift of nature, and we shall see presently how it was taken in hand and made terrible.
It is of little moment now who first enunciated the idea of attacking the rebellion by way of the Tennessee River; most likely the conception was simultaneous with many minds. The trend of the river; its navigability for large steamers; its offer of a highway to the rear of the Confederate hosts in Kentucky and the State of Tennessee; its silent suggestion of a secure passage
into the heart of the belligerent land, from which the direction of movement could be changed toward the Mississippi, or, left, toward Richmond; its many advantages as a line of supply and of general communication, must have been discerned by every military student who, in the summer of 1861, gave himself to the most cursory examination of the map. It is thought better and more consistent with fact to conclude that its advantages as a strategic line, so actually obtrusive of themselves, were observed about the same time by thoughtful men on both sides of the contest. With every problem of attack there goes a counter problem of defense.
A peculiarity of the most democratic people in the world is their hunger for heroes. The void in that respect had never been so gaping as in 1861. General Scott was then old and passing away, and the North caught eagerly at the promise held out by George B. McClellan; while the South, with as much precipitation, pinned its faith and hopes on Albert Sidney Johnston. There is little doubt that up to the surrender of Fort Donelson the latter was considered the foremost soldier of all who chose rebellion for their part. When the shadow of that first great failure fell upon the veteran, President Davis made haste to reassure him of his sympathy and unbroken confidence. In the official correspondence which has survived the Confederacy there is nothing so pathetic, and at the same time so indicative of the manly greatness of Albert Sidney Johnston, as his letter in reply to that of his chief.1
When General Johnston assumed command of the Western Department, the war had ceased to be a new idea. Battles had been fought. Preparations for battles to come were far advanced. Already it had been accepted that the North was to attack and the South to defend. The Mississippi River was a central object; if opened from Cairo to Fort Jackson (New Orleans), the Confederacy would be broken into halves, and good strategy required it to be broken. The question was whether the effort would be made directly or by turning its defended positions. Of the national gun-boats afloat above Cairo, some were formidably iron-clad. Altogether the flotilla was strong enough to warrant the theory that a direct descent would be attempted; and to meet the movement the Confederates threw up powerful batteries, notably at Columbus, Island Number Ten, Memphis, and Vicksburg. So fully were they possessed of that theory that they measurably neglected the possibilities of invasion by way of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. Not until General Johnston established his headquarters at Nashville was serious attention given to the defense of those streams. A report to his chief of engineers of November 21st, 1861, establishes that at that date a second battery on the Cumberland at Dover had been completed; that a work on the ridge had been laid out, and two guns mounted; and that the encampment was then surrounded by an abatis of felled timber. Later, Brigadier-General Lloyd Tilghman was sent to Fort Donelson as commandant, and on January 25th he reports the batteries prepared, the entire field-works built with a trace of 2900 feet, and rifle-pits to guard the approaches were begun. The same officer speaks further of reënforcements housed in four hundred log-cabins, and adds that while this was being done at Fort Donelson, Forts Henry and Heiman, over on the Tennessee, were being thoroughly strengthened. January 30th, Fort Donelson was formally inspected by Lieutenant-Colonel Gilmer, chief engineer of the Western Department, and the final touches were ordered to be given it.
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