[11.0] February 1862: Unconditional And Immediate Surrender

v1.1.1 / chapter 11 of 93 / 01 sep 07 / greg goebel / public domain

* In early 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant won a highly significant Union victory when he seized Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee, completely disrupting the rebel line of defense in the West and dealing the Confederacy a severe if not fatal blow. Back in Washington, Abraham Lincoln tried to push the war forward in the face of the inertia of the military establishment, even though he was heavily burdened by a personal tragedy. In the meantime, the rebels managed to score a victory of their own in the far West that seemed to open the door to the desert territories for the Confederacy.

[11.1] GRANT AND FOOTE MOVE DOWN THE TENNESSEE

* Most of the North had celebrated the victory at Logan's Crossroads, but enthusiasm was not universal. In Saint Louis, General Henry Halleck found the prospect of being shown up by his rival General Buell so unnerving that actions that had been "impossible" a few months earlier were now beginning to seem like a necessity if he wanted to hang on to his command.

It had taken Halleck time to open his eyes. General Grant had been threatening General Polk in his stronghold at Columbus, Kentucky, through most of the middle of January 1862, probing rebel defenses and trying to intimidate the Confederates. Grant had found the exercise useful and interesting, and went to Halleck to propose a general offensive. Halleck was abrupt and disinterested, and Grant left the meeting discouraged.

It wasn't like Grant to stay discouraged long. On his return to Cairo, he found a message from one of his brigadiers, a tough old regular named C.F. Smith who had been commandant of West Point when Grant was a cadet there. Grant held Smith in high regard and at first had difficulty giving the older man orders, though Smith quickly put him at ease. Smith been probing up the Tennessee on a gunboat to near Fort Henry while Grant had been demonstrating above Columbus. Smith reported: "I think two ironclad gunboats would make short work of Fort Henry." Grant, the wind back in his sails, telegraphed Halleck:

   CAIRO, JANUARY 28
   MAJ. GEN H. W. HALLECK
   SAINT LOUIS, MO.:

   WITH PERMISSION, I WILL TAKE FORT HENRY ON THE TENNESSEE, 
   AND ESTABLISH AND HOLD A LARGE CAMP THERE.

   U.S. GRANT
   BRIGADIER GENERAL

   MAKE YOUR PREPARATIONS TO TAKE AND HOLD FORT HENRY.  
   I WILL SEND YOU WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS BY MAIL.

Halleck's instructions to Grant were short and direct, providing the latest intelligence and then directing: "You will move with the least delay possible." Grant promptly replied: "Will be off up the Tennessee at 6 o'clock. Command, twenty-three regiments in all." The fleet departed on the morning of 2 February 1862.

* The "ironclad gunboats" Grant's man Smith had believed would crush Fort Henry were something new and strange, the product of Yankee ingenuity and improvisation. A year earlier, a Navy officer, Commodore John Rogers, had been charged with getting warships on the Mississippi and its tributaries as fast as possible. Rogers had purchased three flat-bottomed side wheelers in Cincinnati, had their upper works stripped off, and added reinforcing timbers, five-inch (13 centimeter) oak sheathing, and four to eight guns each. The three wooden gunboats, named the LEXINGTON, the CONESTOGA, and the TYLER, were operational by the end of summer. These vessels were more powerful than anything the Confederates had on the river and would prove very useful. However, while their oak armor would be proof against small-arms fire, large cannon would make short work of them. Something more formidable was needed.

While the three "timberclads" were being completed in August 1861, Fremont had contracted for the construction of ironclad gunboats with an industrialist named James B. Eads, who would later become one of America's most famous bridge builders. The vessels were based on a general design drawn up by a Cincinnati engineer named Samuel M. Pook. They were river steamboats whose layer-cake multiple decks had been replaced by a single deck with sloping armored sides, broken by portholes for cannon. An armored pilot house and twin smokestacks protruded above the gun deck.

The first two ironclads, the ESSEX and the BENTON, were converted riverboats. The ESSEX, converted from a ferry, was a relatively small vessel, mounting only five guns, but the BENTON, a converted catamaran "snag boat" that had been designed to pull trees out of river bottoms and salvage sunken vessels, was over 200 feet long and 72 feet in beam (60 by 22 meters), was covered with three and half inches (9 centimeters) of iron armor plate, had a crew of 176, and mounted 16 guns.

Seven other ironclads, including the SAINT LOUIS, CARONDOLET, LOUISVILLE, PITTSBURGH, MOUND CITY, CINCINNATI, and CAIRO, were built from scratch. Each of these was 175 feet long and over 50 feet in beam (53 by 15 meters), with sloping sides mounting two and a half inches (6.4 centimeters) of armor plate, and carried 13 guns. Eads' work crews, working at Carondolet near Saint Louis and Mound City, ran in high gear to build the vessels, and the first was completed in October 1861.

Eads had completed all these monsters, often called "Pook Turtles" after Samuel Pook, by January 1862. They left much to be desired. They were underpowered; underarmored; an oven for sailors in hot weather; and their low draft meant that their boilers had to be right in the middle of the gun deck, which would turn one of the ironclads into a steaming cauldron if a cannonball punctured them. Despite these limitations, they were highly effective and intimidating weapons.

Although the gunboats had been built by the Army and the crews were soldiers, recruited from river-boatmen and the like, the Navy had offered to provide skippers and the Army accepted. The Navy sent out some of its best officers, most prominent among them being Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote. Foote was a Connecticut Yankee, 56 years old, a decent, straightforward man, though said to be "savage and demoniacal" when angry. He had spent forty years in the Navy, doing the Lord's work, fighting slavers and demon whisky. Twenty years previously, he had captained the first temperance ship in the Navy, and each Sunday he held a Bible school for his sailors. Despite Grant's occasional indulgence in the bottle, the two men got along splendidly, for they had some things in common: steely resolve and a burning desire to crush the rebels.

On the evening of 3 February 1862, the fleet left Paducah, Kentucky, and steamed up the Tennessee towards Fort Henry in the gloom and rain. There were four ironclad and three wooden gunboats, escorting nine transports carrying a division of troops. Once that division had landed, the transports were to go back downstream and return with a second division, ferrying a total of 15,000 men into battle.

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[11.2] THE CAPTURE OF FORT HENRY

* The rebels weren't completely surprised by the invasion, though they still weren't well-prepared for it. The Union probes that had been sent forward in January against Confederate defenses in the region had alerted Albert Sidney Johnston that the Federals were getting ready to move against him. Forts Henry and Donelson were the most critical and so most logical of targets. If the Federals took the two forts, the entire rebel defense of Tennessee would fall apart.

The previous fall Johnston had sent an engineer, Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman, to take command of the forts and do what he could to improve them. Tilghman had arrived in late November to find the forts in a wretched state, lacking every necessity for an effective defense. Worse yet, Fort Henry had been built on low-lying ground where it was not only subject to flooding, but dominated by high ground across the Tennessee, on the west bank.

Tilghman screamed for reinforcements, and by mid-January he had 5,700 troops at the two forts. After the defeat at Logan's Crossroads, Johnston placed more forces in positions where they could move to assist if need be. These reserve forces were under the command of Generals Gideon Pillow, Simon Bolivar Buckner, and John B. Floyd, who had been moved west after his disastrous showing in the mountains of western Virginia.

Johnston was, however, astonished to find that for whatever reasons Tilghman had failed to take the obvious step of fortifying the heights across the river from Fort Henry, and in fact had discovered that Tilghman had not been able to make up his mind to do much of anything in particular. Johnston immediately wired Tilghman and ordered him to do dig in on the heights:

   DO NOT WASTE A MOMENT.  WORK ALL NIGHT.

The ironclads got within two miles (three kilometers) of the fort and then started trading shots with the rebels. A Confederate six-inch (9.6 centimeter) gun went into action, and gave Grant the information he needed by overshooting the vessels and splashing a shot beyond the mouth of the creek. The gun then emphasized the lesson by slamming a cannonball into the ESSEX. The three ironclads turned around and went back downriver to the transports.

Grant unloaded his First Division north of the creek and sent the transports back downriver to bring back his Second Division while he planned his attack. He quickly grasped the importance of the high ground across the river from the fort that had so worried Johnston. The beating Grant and his men had taken at Belmont from rebel guns on high ground had burned that particular lesson into his brain. Grant decided that most of the Second Division would move forward, seize that high ground and plant artillery batteries there, while the First Division would attack the fort directly from the east.

The rebels had added a new factor to the equation of battle: "torpedoes", they called them. Today we would refer to them as "mines"; they were cylinders of explosives, anchored to the river bottom, carrying long rods that in principle would set off the charge when a ship brushed against them. The river was rising from the winter rains, tearing the torpedoes from their moorings or leaving them too deep to be effective, but they were still a worry.

On the afternoon of 5 February, during a conference between Grant, Foote, and the two division commanders, the captain of a gunboat sent a message to Grant that he had pulled a torpedo out of the river and had it on the gunboat's deck; would anyone care to see it? Since the Second Division was still being shuttled in to the landing and the attack could not go forward until they arrived, leaving Grant and the other senior officers with little to do for the moment, they went over in a group to investigate. The officers gathered around the torpedo, which was a five foot (1.5 meter) long cylinder with a pronged rod extending from its head. Grant was intrigued by the evil-looking thing, had the ship's armorer come up to try to dismantle it, and watched as the man tinkered with the device. Suddenly, as the armorer loosened a nut, the torpedo emitted a loud hissing sound that appeared to be building to an explosion. The men scattered, with Foote climbing up the ship's rope ladder and Grant close behind him.

The hissing died out, leaving the two men hanging on the ladder. Foote looked down to see Grant beneath and, smiling, asked: "General, why this haste?" Grant replied: "That the Navy may not get ahead of us."

* Tilghman was outnumbered almost 5-to-1; his men were poorly armed; and the winter rains were raising the river level, threatening to flood the rebels out. He wanted to make a fight of it at first and wired for reinforcements, but as the Federal buildup continued he realized his position was hopeless. He ordered most of the men to march to Fort Donelson and stayed behind with a skeleton force in order to at least give token resistance to the Federals.

Grant and Foote moved against the fort at midday on 6 February. While the soldiers moved to prepare a ground assault, Foote's gunboats closed on the fort and began to blast away at it. The rebels fired back, striking Foote's flagship 32 times and punching a hole in the ESSEX's boiler, leaving her powerless with scalding steam strewing dead and dying men on her gun deck. 32 of her men were casualties. However, the Confederates had only two cannon capable of damaging the ironclads; one soon burst while firing, and the second was put out of action by a broken priming wire. The defenders' position grew steadily more difficult.

Tilghman had asked his men to hold out for an hour to give those who had left time to make good their escape, and the fort had held out for two. He decided they had done well enough and surrendered. It was hardly a hard-fought victory for the Union. There were a few dozen casualties on each side, the Federal ground forces had never got into action, and the fort was flooded by evening anyway, making the whole fight a little pointless. Grant was still pleased, since now the Tennessee River was an open road. He took immediate advantage of it. The three wooden gunboats were sent to destroy the railroad bridge 15 miles (24 kilometers) upstream, severing the connection between Bowling Green and Memphis. The gunboats continued upriver, 150 miles (240 kilometers) in all, to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where they destroyed or captured six rebel vessels.

Fort Henry was only half the job, however. There was still the problem of Fort Donelson.

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[11.3] THE REBELS ABANDON BOWLING GREEN / THE FALL OF FORT DONELSON

* Albert Sidney Johnston was certain that Fort Donelson would be attacked immediately. He telegraphed Richmond from his headquarters in Bowling Green on 7 February to inform his superiors that Fort Henry had fallen and Fort Donelson was "not long tenable". Worse, Buell was closing in slowly on Bowling Green with 40,000 men to confront the 14,000 rebels there. Buell had been just as goaded by Grant's action at Fort Henry as Halleck had been by Thomas's victory at Logan's Crossroads. The Federals had cut Johnston's connection to Memphis, and once the Yankees took Fort Donelson, they would be able to steam up the Cumberland and seize Nashville, Johnston's base of supplies.

Johnston could not stay where he was. He held a council of war on that day with Hardee and Beauregard, who had just arrived in Kentucky. The 15 Confederate regiments that had put fright into Halleck had not arrived with Beauregard, since they didn't really exist. On arrival, Beauregard had expected to find a powerful military machine in operation that could deal the Federals strong blows, and was shocked to find out that the great Confederate armies of the West were only a propaganda mirage.

By the time Beauregard was called to the meeting he had recovered from his shock, and characteristically advocated that Johnston throw everything he had at Grant and then turn on Buell. The level-headed Johnston decided against it. He had the military sense to understand his position was impossible, and so the only thing to do was abandon Kentucky completely to the Federals and pull back behind the Cumberland. The garrison at Fort Donelson was ordered to hold off Grant and his men as long as possible to buy time, and then escape when they could take no more. On 11 February, Johnston began the withdrawal from Bowling Green. Beauregard was ordered to Columbus, Kentucky, to evaluate the situation in the now-isolated town and withdraw the Confederate forces there if he judged it necessary.

* Grant could have attacked Fort Donelson immediately after taking Fort Henry, but he had looked over the Confederate defenses and decided to wait for Foote's ironclads to steam back down the Tennessee and then up the Cumberland to support him. Besides, Halleck was sending Grant every man he could scrape up, and so Grant felt he could afford to wait.

On 12 February 1862, the day after Albert Sidney Johnston began to pull out of Bowling Green, Grant's men began their overland march from Fort Henry to Fort Donelson. Grant had 15,000 men in his column, with 2,500 left in reserve at Fort Henry and another 10,000 moving up the Cumberland on transports. The weather was sunny and pleasant. Many of the green troops discarded their bulky winter overcoats and extra blankets by the roadside.

Grant's decision to wait proved an error. Having had an easy victory at Fort Henry, he assumed the same would be true at Fort Donelson, but Confederate reinforcements had been trickling into Fort Donelson in the meantime. The first arrivals were the refugees from Fort Henry on 7 February, then General Gideon Pillow and his men on the 9th, followed by Simon Bolivar Buckner's force on the 10th. By the time Grant moved out, the fort was heavily garrisoned, and it was also relatively well-built and well-sited. Heavy guns were competently dug in on high ground overlooking the Cumberland, and land approaches were controlled by trenchworks that made effective use of the terrain.

The Federal column arrived at Fort Donelson at midday on the 12th and ran into sharpshooter fire. Cannon fire booming from the Cumberland in front of them indicated that naval reinforcements had arrived as well. It turned out to be a solitary gunboat, the CARONDOLET. The other vessels were still downriver, but the naval support was welcome. The rest of the day was spent investing the fort. Grant's Second Division, under C.F. Smith, moved to cover the northern approaches to the fort, while the First Division, under John A. McClernand, moved to cover the southern half.

Real fighting started immediately after dawn on 13 February. John McClernand was an ambitious but militarily-inexperienced Illinois Congressman who had taken a brigadier general's rank to get his share of glory. He quickly sent a brigade forward to silence an annoying Confederate battery. It was an artless attack, the battery proved strong, and after three rash charges the Federals called it quits, leaving their dead and wounded on the field.

The CARONDOLET then joined in the fight, while C.F. Smith sent one of his brigades forward. The Union soldiers made a little headway, but the only result was that they were left in the open in the face of murderous Confederate sharpshooter fire. By the end of the day, they had been forced to withdraw. The CARONDOLET had fired hundreds of rounds at the fort to no great effect. It had been hit twice in return, with one cannonball penetrating into the engine room and bounding about "like a wild beast pursuing its prey". The ironclad had made emergency repairs and then continued the bombardment through the rest of the ground attack.

Grant was not particularly disturbed by the bloodying. It demonstrated that the rebels were willing to stand and fight and were well dug in, but Grant knew he would be able crack them anyway once his water-borne reinforcements arrived.

Additional Confederate forces under John B. Floyd had arrived at Donelson that day to help oppose Grant's attacks, and Floyd took command of the fort. There were now 17,500 men inside Fort Donelson, and for the moment there were more rebels inside the fort than Federals outside of it. The balance would quickly tip back against the Confederates.

Why Albert Sidney Johnston allowed reinforcements to be sent in when he had no intention of holding Fort Donelson is hard to understand. It was also hard to understand why he assigned the command to Floyd, who had proven his incompetence in the mountains of western Virginia. In addition, Pillow was a questionable choice as his second-in-command; he had achieved some notoriety in the Mexican War by having his men entrench with their line facing away from the enemy. Such decisions hint that Johnston's inspiring martial bearing did not quite match his actual combat capabilities.

Grant's soldiers were as confident as their general until dusk, when a cold rain began to fall. The weather grew colder and more miserable, dropping to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-12 degrees Celsius), leaving everything coated in ice, making the men thoroughly wretched. The soldiers who had discarded their winter gear on the march from Fort Henry now regretted their hasty decision. By morning, there were two inches (five centimeters) of snow on the ground.

Snow or not, Grant was going to smash the rebels. During the night he had ordered his 2,500-man reserve at Fort Henry to march over immediately, and in the morning Foote arrived with his gunboats and 10,000 reinforcements. Grant reshuffled the troops in place and used the reinforcements to constitute a Third Division, under the command of Brigadier General Lew Wallace, a 34-year-old ex-lawyer from Indiana, and put the new division into the center of the Union line. Grant's plan was simple: his soldiers would ring in the Confederates, and then Foote's gunboats would bombard Fort Donelson into submission. Foote had four ironclads, including his flagship the SAINT LOUIS, the CARONDOLET, the PITTSBURGH, and the LOUISVILLE, plus two of the timberclads, the TYLER and CONESTOGA. Foote had wanted more time to prepare for attacking the fort, but he liked Grant's willingness to press the enemy, and so at 3:00 PM on 14 February, Foote went up the river to the fort.

The ugly ironclads led the way, four abreast, followed by the two wooden gunboats. The Confederate batteries opened up when the ships were a mile and a half (two and a half kilometers) away, while the gunboats waited until they were a mile (one and a half kilometers) away from the fort and opened fire. As Foote closed in on the fort, the fire between attackers and defenders grew more intense. Cavalry Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest, normally very hard to intimidate, was moved to call out to one of his officers, who had been a preacher: "Parson, for God's sake pray! Nothing but God Almighty can save this fort!"

In fact, as Foote's ships approached to within a quarter-mile (400 meters) of the fort, Foote could see rebels gunners fleeing from the fort's lower batteries, and believed that in 15 minutes they would shut down the batteries. Unfortunately for Foote, the Confederate fire was also proving more effective at close range, tearing off armor from the gunboats and smashing lifeboats and smokestacks. Just as Foote thought he was winning, a solid shot smashed into the SAINT LOUIS, tearing away the wheel, killing the pilot, and wounding Foote along with everybody else in the pilot house, except for a nimble reporter who had been recording the battle.

The SAINT LOUIS drifted around in the current and fell back downstream. The PITTSBURGH, having had its tiller ropes shot away, followed her. The LOUISVILLE took hits near the waterline and then lost her steering gear as well. The CARONDOLET, taking on water from hits near her bow, turned about and fled, firing wildly in order to conceal itself in its own smoke. That was the end of the attack. The Federals had taken 54 casualties, including 11 killed outright. The Confederates hadn't lost a single man and were jubilant. Grant had to disappointedly report back to Halleck:

   APPEARANCES INDICATE NOW WE WILL HAVE A PROTRACTED SIEGE HERE.  

* Confederate General John B. Floyd was doubly pleased at bloodying the Federals. Not only had he driven off Foote's seemingly-invincible ironclad monsters, he had held off Grant long enough to allow the rebel forces under Albert Sidney Johnston and Hardee to complete their evacuation from Bowling Green. Their men were now safely in Nashville, or on the way there. The next trick Floyd had to pull off was to break out of Fort Donelson and join Johnston in Nashville. He had no good reason to stay any longer.

Floyd had planned the breakout on the 14th, but Foote's ironclads had distracted him. After the fight, he called a council of war to consider what to do next. Floyd, an amateur, took his counsel from two professionals, Gideon Pillow and Simon Bolivar Buckner. Unfortunately, the counsel could not have been more divided. Pillow was exciteable, enthusiastic, willing to take on anybody, while Buckner was gloomy and cautious. Furthermore, the two men had been enemies back to the Mexican War. Floyd had demonstrated indecisive leadership as well as a tendency to fumble under pressure in the mountains of West Virginia; contradictory advice was the last thing he needed.

Despite all that, Floyd decided that they would attempt the breakout at dawn on 15 February, striking through McClernand's First Division on the southern part of their perimeter, and the Confederates worked all night to prepare their assault. It was miserable work, since there was a snowstorm in progress, but the storm concealed their actions from the Yankees, who were busy trying to deal with the cold.

The rebels also had another piece of good luck. Grant left his headquarters before dawn to confer with Flag Officer Foote, who was retiring downriver with his wounds and damaged ironclads and wanted to speak with Grant before he departed. On leaving for the meeting, Grant had given orders that his division commanders stay put and do nothing to provoke an engagement, later admitting that it had never occurred to him that the rebels might take action themselves. He left no one in charge.

The Confederate attack went forward as planned, with Forrest's cavalrymen leading the way. The Federals were not completely unprepared since it was too cold to sleep and most of them were up and about at dawn to light fires to keep warm. They fought back stubbornly but were hard pressed. McClernand asked Lew Wallace for assistance, but in Grant's absence nobody at headquarters was willing to take responsibility for major decisions.

After three hours of fighting, McClernand's men ran low on ammunition and began to give way in panic. Wallace, watching the stream of panicky men coming into his position, detached two brigades on his own authority to try to stem the disaster. The rebels were on the edge of winning the battle, but at that moment the confusion in the Confederate command asserted itself. Ironically, Pillow suddenly became fearful of a counterstroke while Buckner insisted on pressing forward. Floyd showed up and found himself forced to settle the dispute. At first he agreed with Buckner, but Pillow took Floyd aside and thoroughly discouraged him. Floyd ordered the men back into the fort's perimeter. The Confederates had almost won and then threw it all away.

Grant didn't hear of the fighting until about noon; he was returning to his command when he met a panicky captain on the road. Grant spurred his horse, but it took him another hour to get to his lines, where he found Wallace and McClernand arguing angrily with each other. Grant cooly took charge and began to restore order. The situation was tense, but not out completely out of control. McClernand's soldiers had taken a beating and were disorganized and dispirited, but Wallace's men, though excited, were hardly panicked, and Smith's troops were calm.

Grant correctly interpreted the Confederate attack as an attempt to break out of the fort, and realized that the failure to achieve the breakout had probably demoralized them. If he attacked immediately, he might be able to break them. 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." The soldiers did not balk. Having become disoriented, it was a relief to get some clear direction, and they prepared to take up the fight again.

Grant sent word to Foote to use his operational gunboats to make a demonstration, not with any intent to cause real damage but simply to bolster the morale of the attackers and undermine that of the defenders. Then he rode to the north end of the line and ordered C.F. Smith to charge the rebels. Grant had also correctly calculated that the rebels had stripped their northern entrenchments to support their breakout attempt, and told the old general that he would find only "a very thin line to contend with." Smith replied: "I will do it!" -- and was on the offensive almost immediately. Smith was 60 years old, ancient for a combat soldier, with a great white mustache, and looked inspiring as he rode out in front of his men to lead them to the Confederate defenses. He shouted out to his troops: "Damn you, gentlemen! I see skulkers, I'll have none here!"

The Federals drove back the rebel regiment that had been holding the line and seized a ridge overlooking the fort. To the south, McClernand and Wallace drove the rebels back into their lines, while two ironclads tossed shells into the fort from long range to help add to the confusion. As long as the Federals held the ridge, they could bring all the Confederate defenses under bombardment. The fort had effectively been lost and Floyd and his generals knew it. That evening Floyd held another council of war in which Pillow and Buckner angrily traded accusations while the befuddled Floyd was caught in the middle.

Forrest had been scouting and found an escape route, a road that skirted the river to the south, but it was flooded by a swollen creek at one point. The army surgeon worried that exposure to icy water might be fatal to the some of the troops crossing it. Floyd's demoralization reached the breaking point when he was given a report that Grant had received another 10,000 men. As Floyd already believed he was outnumbered 4 to 1, he felt he had no alternative but to surrender.

Neither Floyd nor Pillow personally wanted to be the ones to surrender to the Federals. Floyd suspected he would face Federal treason charges for his suspicious actions as Buchanan's Secretary of War, and Pillow was too fiery to submit to any such humiliation. Command was passed to Buckner, who had been friendly with Grant before the war and might be able to obtain better terms. Forrest was rightly infuriated with the whole farce, angrily standing up to declare: "I did not come here for the purpose of surrendering my command!" Buckner agreed that Forrest could lead his troops out of the fort if he started before surrender negotiations got under way, and Forrest stomped out fuming into the night, followed by Floyd and Pillow.

Buckner sat down and wrote a note to Grant, proposing a cease-fire while the two sides discussed terms. Buckner sent a messenger with his letter and a flag of truce through the lines into Smith's Second Division. The messenger had trouble getting through the lines, since the rebel soldiers themselves were by no means ready to give up, but he managed to make his way to C.F. Smith and hand over the message. Smith rode to the farmhouse where Grant had set up his headquarters and found him warm in a feather bed; Smith gave him the letter, saying: "There's something for you to read."

Grant read the letter and laughed, asking Smith: "Well, what do you think of it?" Smith replied: "I think, no terms with traitors, by God!" Grant took a tablet and quickly wrote up a response:

   Hd Qrs. Army in the Field
   Camp near Donelson, Feb 16th

   Gen. S.B. Buckner,
   Confed. Army,

   Sir:  Yours of this date proposing Armistice, and appointment of
   Commissioners, to settle terms of Capitulation is just received.  
   No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be 
   accepted.

   I propose to move immediately on your works.

   I am Sir: very respectfully
   Your obt. sevt.
   U.S. GRANT
   Brig. Gen. 

While this had been going on, a Confederate steamboat had arrived in the night with 400 reinforcements, just in time for them all to be taken prisoner. Floyd commandeered the vessel for his own brigade, which consisted of four Virginia regiments and one Mississippi regiment. He got two of the Virginia regiments across the Cumberland and was loading up the other two when word from Buckner arrived that since surrender negotiations had begun, those who did not leave at once would have to remain to be given up to the Federals. Floyd hurried on board and ordered the vessel to shove off, leaving the Mississippi regiment behind, howling in protest.

Pillow was only able to find an old scow and run away across the river with his chief of staff. The rest of his command remained behind to be captured. Forrest, however, got away not only with all his own men but also with a number of infantrymen who doubled up with the cavalry troopers on their horses over the flooded stretches of the road.

Buckner was distressed by the "ungenerous and unchivalrous" terms of Grant's response, but knew he had to capitulate anyway. At sunup, on Sunday, 16 February 1862, he and his officers shared a friendly breakfast with Grant and some of his lieutenants. The surrender took place without formality or even much military diligence, and many Confederates simply walked away unhindered. Grant didn't seem to care much.

In fact, as he told Buckner, he was more than happy to see Gideon Pillow get away: "If I had captured him, I would have turned him loose. I would rather have him in command of you fellows than as a prisoner." The Federals had more mixed feelings about the escape of Floyd: he was at least as inept as Pillow, but he was indeed wanted on criminal charges in the North for fraud and treason. Buckner had loaned Grant money in 1854 when Grant was broke and down, and so Grant was not insensitive to Buckner's distress. Grant offered him the use of his purse.

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[11.4] THE REBELS ABANDON COLUMBUS AND NASHVILLE

* On 15 February 1862, the same day the issue was decided at Fort Donelson, General Beauregard left Nashville for Columbus, Kentucky, taking a train through a roundabout connection through the rail hub at Corinth, in northwestern Mississippi. He only made it halfway northwards back towards his destination, falling sick with a severe sore throat and taking shelter in a hotel in Jackson, Tennessee. He ordered General Polk to come south from his command in Columbus. When Polk arrived, Beauregard, ill and depressed, told him that Columbus had to be abandoned.

Polk protested, saying he had been fortifying Columbus for five months. Beauregard sadly replied that the manpower could not be spared, and Polk's 17,000 troops would have to fall back to New Madrid, Missouri, 40 miles (64 kilometers) downstream from Columbus near the Tennessee border line, where the swampy terrain could be defended by half of Polk's forces, leaving the remainder to plug the gaping hole in the center of the Confederate line of defense. Columbus was isolated now anyway, and any force that remained there was in danger of being cut off and captured.

Polk returned to Columbus and, now as depressed as Beauregard, began his withdrawal. If he could not stand and fight, he would at least make sure that everything he had went with him as he retreated. Despite an attack by Federal gunboats on 23 February and the logistical difficulty of moving 140 guns, 17,000 men, and all their camp equipment, Columbus was empty of Confederate troops and equipment by 2 March. 7,000 men went to New Madrid, while the remaining 10,000 moved south to the rail hub at Humboldt, Tennessee, halfway to Corinth, where they could be moved to reinforce threatened points along the Confederate line.

* The Federals had won a great victory at Fort Donelson. Although they had suffered 2,000 casualties, they had captured roughly 14,000 rebels and torn the Confederate line in Tennessee wide open. Church bells rang across the North at the news of the victory, and "Unconditional Surrender" Grant was the hero of the hour. The various defects of his conduct of the campaign went unnoticed. What counted was that he wanted to fight, and fought until he got what he wanted. While his delay in starting the attack on Fort Donelson had resulted in the Confederates concentrating a large force against him, through his luck and the incompetence of rebel leadership the end result was that he had dragged in a bigger haul.

The bells rang in Nashville that Sunday as well, but not to celebrate. Instead, they rang to warn the populace that the city would soon fall to the Yankees. Albert Sidney Johnston put his forces on the road to regroup in Murfreesboro, not far to the south, and the citizenry panicked as the troops pulled out. There was a flood of people trying to save their possessions and get out of town.

Johnston had accumulated massive amounts of stores in Nashville and wanted to save as much of them as he could before the Federals arrived. When Floyd arrived on Monday, he was put in charge of removing the supplies, a task complicated by the disorder of the citizenry who had fallen to looting. When Forrest arrived from Fort Donelson on Wednesday, the cavalryman was ordered to assist. Floyd decided to leave the work to Forrest and marched his brigade out of the city on Thursday morning. This was just as well, since it left Forrest free to pursue the removal of the supplies with great efficiency, sending South badly-needed industrial gear and trainloads of bacon, flour, ammunition, clothes, and other stores.

In order to placate the public, the mayor had promised they could take whatever was left of the stores when the Confederate Army finally pulled out, but it quickly became clear that Forrest would leave little behind. A mob tried to block Forrest's men; he tried to appeal to their patriotism, but failing in that, he set his troopers onto the crowds to disperse them with the flat of their sabers. Fire hoses spraying ice-cold river water were also used at one warehouse, with "a magical effect".

Forrest stayed in Nashville into Sunday, three days longer than he had been ordered, and only withdrew down the road to Murfreesboro when Federal soldiers appeared on the north bank of the Cumberland. As it turned out, the Union men were merely an advance party of Buell's command; a surprised captain accepted the surrender of the city. Buell's forces didn't arrive in strength until Tuesday, 25 February 1862, to find the city deserted and shut up. The Union high command was in some ways as taken unawares by Grant's victory as the Confederates were by their defeat, and so the Federals did not move aggressively.

* The Confederates had lost all of Kentucky and the Federals had made great inroads into Tennessee. The failures of leadership at Fort Donelson had been a painful humiliation. Grant regarded Pillow and Floyd as inept; Confederate leadership came to the same conclusion, and both were put on the shelf to do no more harm. Albert Sidney Johnston was fiercely criticized, but made no excuses, writing Jefferson Davis: "I observed silence, as it seemed to me the best way to serve the cause and country." Davis, with that unswerving loyalty that was the bright side of his inflexible nature, replied: "My confidence in you has never wavered, and I hope the public will soon give me credit for judgement rather than to continue to arraign me for obstinacy."

The complaints increased, and at one point a delegation called on Davis to demand Johnston's dismissal, saying he was no general. Davis stood up and replied icily: "If Sidney Johnston is not a general, we had better give up the war, for we have no general." He showed his visitors the door.

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[11.5] JEFFERSON DAVIS SWORN IN / MR. LINCOLN'S TROUBLES

* The string of rebel defeats at Logan's Crossroads, Roanoke Island, and Forts Henry and Donelson discouraged the South. The deteriorating condition of Joe Johnston's forces in northern Virginia further underlined the military weakness of the Confederacy. Johnston had gone to Richmond to secretly confer with Jefferson Davis and his cabinet on 19 and 20 February. Davis had concluded that Johnston's forces would have to pull out of their forward positions near Washington DC and take up defensive positions nearer Richmond, and wanted to discuss the matter with Johnston. Johnston agreed, since his own reports had led Davis to that conclusion, though he pointed out that the movement would be impossible until the winter rains stopped and the roads dried out.

The only immediate result of the conference was confusion. Johnston's quarrels with Davis over rank had not put the two men on the best of terms, and both men left the meeting thinking matters clear when there really had been no agreement on specifics. Worse, when Johnston went back to his hotel on 20 February, he found that rumors of the withdrawal were already circulating around the hotel lobby, making obvious the foolishness of trusting military secrets with loose-lipped politicians.

In the face of all these troubles, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the elected President of the Southern Confederacy on 22 February. Davis's speech was eloquent, speaking out against Federal tyranny and encouraging Southern resistance in the face of defeats, and the address was well received by the crowd who stood in the cold rain to listen. There was still considerable gloom in the air. The North had despaired and the South had crowed over the Confederate victory at Manassas; now the shoe was on the other foot, and it fit painfully. During the inauguration ceremony, Davis and his black servants were all wearing black suits. A woman asked the coachman why, and he replied: "This, ma'am, is the way we always does in Richmond at funerals and suchlike."

Panic was widespread, and on 27 February 1862 Davis dealt with it by declaring martial law in the Norfolk area. On 1 March, Richmond itself would be placed under martial law and vocal critics of the war effort would be thrown in jail, an action that in suppressing loud complaints would do much to fuel quiet, sullen grumbling. However, the Federal defeat at Manassas had led to a stiffening of Northern spines, and in the same fashion influential Southerners began to discard their cockiness and prepare for what would become a long, hard, mean fight.

* Davis's inaugural day, 22 February 1862, was the date President Lincoln had designated for a forward movement of all the Union armies, but the day came and went and the Army of the Potomac remained in camp. To add to these worries, Lincoln suffered a personal tragedy. The Lincolns were fond and indulgent parents, hopelessly spoiling their two youngest sons, Willie (age 10) and Tad (age 8). Willie had fallen sick with a cold a few weeks previously, and the cold had developed into typhoid fever.

Willie Lincoln died on 20 February and was buried on the 24th. Whatever burden this was to Lincoln was made much heavier by its effect on Mary Todd Lincoln. She had always been high-strung, but she had been the target of vicious and demoralizing social sniping since coming to Washington. To her critics she was a coarse Western woman, a person of no breeding and many rumored sins. After all, her brothers were fighting for the Confederacy and many suspected she was a traitor, "two-thirds slavery and the other third secesh". She had endured this abuse with considerable dignity, but the boy's death was too much to bear.

There was no rest for the President, however. General McClellan wanted to ensure the safety of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad to the West before committing his forces to the attack on Richmond. To this end, he moved 40,000 men up the Potomac to Harper's Ferry, where on 26 February they began crossing over the river on a light pontoon bridge to take up positions in the Shenandoah Valley. Simultaneously, Union Brigadier General Joseph Hooker was to lead a force across the river below Washington and force out the Confederates blocking the waterway with their cannon.

This large a force required a substantial supply line, one that would be hard to maintain over the single pontoon bridge. The methodical McClellan had of course factored that into his plans, and had arranged to set up a more permanent pontoon bridge, built on top of canal boats. There was only one problem: when soldiers tried to float the canal boats upstream to the designated site, they proved to be a bit too big for a critical set of locks, and there was no way to bring them forward.

McClellan had to revise his plans, but it was hardly a major setback. Complicated plans always have a few glitches and McClellan quickly worked around the problem. A few days later, with the wheels set in proper motion, the general and his staff returned to Washington to deal with more serious issues. Unfortunately, the fiasco made a bad impression back in Washington, all the more so because part of the change in plans was to cancel Joe Hooker's attack on the irritating enemy positions downstream. Secretary of War Stanton went into the President's office, locked the door behind him, and showed him a telegram bearing the news about the canal boats. When Lincoln asked him what this meant, Stanton replied: "It means it is a damned fizzle. It means that he doesn't intend to do anything."

Lincoln was normally the most patient of men, but things could not have been worse for him at the time and he flew off the handle. He sent for Brigadier General Randolph B. Marcy, who was not only McClellan's chief of staff but his father-in-law, and lit on the poor man in a fury: "Why in the nation, General Marcy, couldn't the general have known whether a boat would go through the lock before spending a million dollars getting them there?! I am no engineer, but it seems to me that if I wished to know whether a boat would go through a hole, or a lock, common sense would teach me to go measure it!"

General Marcy tried to defend McClellan, but the President cut him off abruptly and dismissed him. Lincoln's personal secretary John Nicolay later said it was the only time he saw the President completely lose his temper. General Marcy telegraphed McClellan, reporting the President WAS IN A HELL OF A RAGE.

The President was overwrought and not thinking clearly, but the perception of military incompetence in the Army of the Potomac was widespread. The whole campaign, Secretary Chase said, in a rare display of humor, had died of "lockjaw", and the joke circulated through the city. The radicals didn't think it was funny. Senator Ben Wade went to Lincoln to demand that McClellan be immediately dismissed from command. When Lincoln asked him who should replace him, Wade said: "Anybody!" The President, having recovered his balance, replied: "Wade, anybody will do for you, but I must have somebody."

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[11.6] THE WAR IN THE FAR WEST: THE BATTLE OF VALVERDE

* While the two sides struggled east of the Mississippi, the sideshow war in the deserts of the Far West was moving into high gear. In mid-December, Confederate Brigadier General Henry Sibley had arrived at Fort Bliss with a newly-recruited brigade. Lieutenant Colonel John Baylor had not made any serious movements north along the Rio Grande after taking Fort Fillmore in July. The Federals had withdrawn from Fort Thorn, 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Fort Fillmore, and then retreated 80 miles (128 kilometers) further north to Fort Craig, where they had massed about 4,000 men to take action against the Confederates.

Sibley intended to keep the initiative. He had about 3,700 men, and on 7 February 1862 marched them out of Fort Bliss. On the 19th, his met set up camp on the west bank of the Rio Grande, across the river from Fort Craig.

Colonel Edward R.S. Canby was in command of Union forces not only at his current post of Fort Craig, but of the entire Federal Department of New Mexico. His troops were poorly equipped, poorly trained, and scattered over a wide region. He had been scrambling to obtain reinforcements as news of Sibley's recruiting efforts in Texas trickled north. Canby expected to be attacked at dawn and spent the night doing everything possible to make his position stronger, but when the sun came up he realized the Confederates were moving around his position and seemingly heading north, leaving him and his men isolated. He now felt he had no choice but to attack the rebels, and sent a regiment across the river to do so and hopefully disrupt their advance.

As it turned out, Confederate General Sibley was simply maneuvering his men for an attack on Fort Craig; the Union regiment ran into strong rifle fire and cannon spewing canister. The Federal attack fell into pieces and the survivors remained pinned down until dark, when they were able to sneak back to the fort. The first day of the Battle of Valverde was over. Canby realized his mistake in assuming that the rebels were avoiding a fight, and also realized that his forces outnumbered the rebels; he had a chance to destroy them if he moved quickly. He sent three more regiments across the river on the morning of the 21st, and a nasty, bloody fight followed that went on until the afternoon, when the rebels threw everything they had at the Federals and broke their line, sending them scattering back towards Fort Craig.

Canby asked for an armistice to care for his wounded and bury his dead. He had suffered over 250 casualties, while the rebels had taken less than 200 and had sent the Federals into wild flight. The Battle of Valverde was over. Sibley felt that Canby's troops were not worth further effort. He gave his Texans a day to rest, and then sent them north towards Albuquerque.

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