Donelson: Grant's First Victory: Line of Battle, #3

By Nick Vulich

Donelson: Grant's First Victory outlines the battle of Fort Donelson and explains how it came about. In less than an hour, you will meet the main participants, understand Union and Confederate troop movements, and learn how the victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson launched Ulysses S. Grant on his march to Richmond. For readers who want to know more, and understand how contemporary readers learned about the battle, we included contemporary newspaper accounts of the conflict.

It's not the complete story, but enough to bring you up to speed, understand the issues of the day, and maybe encourage you to explore more on your own.

Each book includes a timeline to help you see the bigger picture so you can watch events unfold

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Whether you are a Civil War buff or are just looking for a simple overview of the battles Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, you will enjoy this book. It is written in a simple, conversational style that makes it easy to understand the complex troop movements of the Union and Confederate armies.

Line of Battle – Book 3

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Vulich
• Release date: Dec 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393439226

Book preview

Donelson

Grant’s First Victory

Line of Battle

Copyright ©2019 Nick Vulich

Table of Contents

Introduction

Civil War Timeline—1862

Participants

Becoming General Grant

Battle of Fort Henry

Battle of Fort Donelson

Appendix

Chicago Daily Tribune Account

Chicago Daily Tribune Account—Continued

Missouri Democrat Account

Report of General John Floyd

Report of General Grant

Report of Colonel Lauman

Letter from George L. Godfrey

Letter from Ira Peck

Letter from Pliny Nichols

Letter from Al. A. Barnes

Introduction

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They say they never saw men brave enough to be damn fools—but say the Second Iowa is.[1]

William D. Christy. Second Iowa Infantry.

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Some historians have argued that the South lost the Civil War after the battles of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson.

They may have been right.

General Albert Sidney Johnston had given up any hope of holding Kentucky or Tennessee the day after Fort Henry fell. He met with Generals Beauregard and Hardee at Bowling Green, Kentucky, to discuss damage control. Beauregard wanted to concentrate their force—nearly 40,000 men—at Fort Donelson and fight it out. Johnson opted to pull out of Kentucky completely and temporarily move his troops south of the Cumberland River.

But he didn’t want to do it right away. Instead, he sent Beauregard to evacuate the Confederate forces from Columbus. Then he sent Generals Pillow, Buckner, and Floyd to Fort Donelson to delay the Union troops, so he could buy enough time to pull his forces out of Bowling Green and Nashville.

That same day, Johnston wrote Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate Secretary of War, I think the gunboats of the enemy will probably take Fort Donelson without the necessity of employing their land forces. If the fort fell, he said, it would endanger Nashville and allow Union forces to destroy bridges and ferryboats along the rivers. To avoid the consequences of such an event, I ordered General Hardee... to fall back to Nashville and cross the [Cumberland] river.[2]

That was mistake number one for Albert Sidney Johnston.

By sending reinforcements to Fort Donelson, he endangered nearly a third of his army—the 13,000 men Grant would take prisoner after capturing the fort. Johnston would make a similar mistake a few months later when he pulled his forces out from behind the safety of their fortifications at Corinth to attack Grant’s forces at Shiloh.

He would pay for that mistake with his life.

The Union move on Fort Henry and Fort Donelson was anything but certain. Ulysses S. Grant visited General Henry Halleck at his St. Louis headquarters on January 23rd. After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, Halleck shot his plan down after barely giving it a listen. Five days later, Grant pressed the issue again. The next day, Flag Admiral Foote, commander of the gunboats, sent a similar message to Halleck, saying they were sure they could take the fort.

Halleck reconsidered and approved the request on February 1st.

Grant explained the importance of taking the two forts. By taking Fort Henry, the rebels would lose the use of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, and Fort Donelson held the key to Nashville and Kentucky.[3]

His thoughts were on the mark. After the capture of Forts Henry and Fort Donelson, the rebels were forced to abandon Kentucky and most of Tennessee. More importantly, the Union gained control of the waterways and railroads, giving them a firm base of operations for further actions in the West. Nashville was transformed from a Southern hub to a major supply depot for the Western army.

For Grant personally, the victory put him on Abraham Lincoln’s radar and started his rise to power.

You need to look at what was happening in the Eastern theater of the war to understand the importance of that. The Army of the Potomac had been stalled out since the disaster at Bull Run the previous July, and McClellan just sat there—drilling and parading his troops. McClellan had a bevy of excuses whenever he was asked when he was going to fight. The rebels had him outnumbered two to one or more, his horses had sore tongues, or his troops were inexperienced and needed more training.

Soon, Abraham Lincoln would find himself making snide comments about General George McClellan, suggesting that he had a severe case of the slows or was using the 100,000-man Army of the Potomac as his personal bodyguard. Finally, things got so bad that Lincoln considered borrowing the army if McClellan wasn’t going to use it.

When Lincoln saw a general who could fight, he was all in. What impressed him most about Ulysses S. Grant was that he didn’t whine about being overwhelmed by enemy forces and didn’t stop to think things over after winning a battle. Instead, Grant moved on to the next one.

Compared to McClellan or anything he had seen up to that point, Grant was a dynamo. Lincoln would later tell people he couldn’t spare Grant. He fights.

As for the battle itself, the bodies of the dead told the story. Federals and rebels were promiscuously mingled, sometimes grappled in the fierce death throe, sometimes facing each other as they gave and received the fatal shot or thrust, sometimes laying across one another, and again heaped in piles which lay six or seven feet deep, wrote one correspondent who walked the field after the battle. One sat against a tree, with mouth and eyes wide open... another clutched the branch of an overhanging tree... the other hand grasped his faithful musket. A third clung with both hands to a bayonet which was buried in the ground, in the act of striking for the heart of a rebel foe.[4]

The fighting at Fort Donelson took the war to a new level.

New technology played an essential part in the battle. Grant’s troops moved by rail and then steamboat to the battlefields. The Telegraph, less than thirty years old at the time of the war, kept him in constant contact with General Halleck—five-hundred miles away at his headquarters in St. Louis.

Fort Henry was the first significant test of the new Union ironclads designed by Samuel Pook. They were a huge success and took the fort all on their own. Fort Donelson was a different story. It was better located and had more and stronger guns. Grant was forced to do most of the fighting on foot. Still, the gunboats got away and lived to fight another day.

This book outlines the battles of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson and explains how they came about. In less than an hour, you will meet the main participants, understand Union and Confederate troop movements, and learn more about the rise of Ulysses S. Grant and the newly-built Union gunboat fleet that helped him win the West. For readers who would like to know more and understand how contemporary readers learned about the battle, I’ve included the original accounts of the fight as published in the Chicago Daily Tribune and the Missouri Democrat. Add to that the official reports of U. S. Grant, General John Floyd, and Colonel Jacob Lauman and letters home from four soldiers on the ground during the campaign.

It's not the complete story, but enough to bring you up to speed, understand the issues of the day, and maybe encourage you to explore more on your own.

Each book includes a timeline to help you see the bigger picture so you can watch events unfold.

Let’s get started...

Civil War Timeline—1862

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January 13.

Edwin Stanton replaces Simon Cameron as Secretary of War. The change put General George McClellan in high spirits. He assumes Stanton is a kindred spirit who despises the President’s meddling in military affairs. Stanton doesn’t share his view. This army has got to fight or run away, Stanton tells a reporter. He is tired of reading about McClellan’s military reviews and celebrations. The champagne and oysters on the Potomac must be stopped.[5]

January 23.

Ulysses S. Grant visits General Henry Halleck at his headquarters in St. Louis. After waiting for what seems an eternity to see the commanding general, Halleck shoots down Grant’s plan to attack Fort Henry almost before he can get it out.

January 28.

Not one to give up easily, Grant telegraphs Halleck again. If permitted, I could take and hold Fort Henry on the Tennessee.[6]

January 30.

Admiral Foote backs Grant up and sends the following message to General Henry Halleck. Grant and I are of the opinion that Fort Henry and the Tennessee River can be carried with four ironclad gunboats and troops and be permanently occupied. Have we your authority to move for that purpose when ready?[7]

February 1.

General Henry Halleck approves Grant’s request to attack Fort Henry. Many historians suggest it wasn’t because of any faith in Grant. Instead, Halleck considered himself in a contest with General Don Carlos Buell to see which of them would get command of all the Western armies. After his victory at Mill Springs, Buell is one up on him, so Halleck needs a victory, and Ulysses S. Grant is his only commander with a plan.

February 2.

Ulysses S. Grant and William Porter take an exploratory journey on the gunboat Essex to determine the range of Fort Henry’s guns. The rebels second shot blasts through the captain’s quarters, just missing Grant and Porter. The good news is—they have their answer.

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February 6.

General Ulysses S. Grant plans a coordinated attack on Fort Henry with the Union Navy. Bad weather swamps the roads and slows his march. By the time he arrives at Fort Henry, the Navy, under Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote, has taken the fortress. After the battle, General Lloyd Tilghman, the commander of Fort Henry, says the site selected for the fort did not have one redeeming feature to enable him to defend it.

Midway through the fight, Tilghman sends Colonel Adolphus Heiman and the remainder of the garrison (about 2600 men) to Fort Donelson, keeping just enough men to man the guns.

Grant informs General Halleck he will take Fort Donelson on February 8th. He might have done it, except the rain won’t let up. It mucks up the