Welcome to the tenth installment of our Civil War rewind series, where we note important events in The War Between the States in chronological order, 150 years after they happened.. Things will pick up a bit here, as winters generally were not the time for fighting, but for training and keeping warm...
Up to this point, the war had not been going very well for the North. The Union army had been routed at Manassas, and they decided to train, and train, and train.. Out West, there had been a few smaller skirmishes, but by late winter, they were ready to go - and go they did. While the states in the East were pretty much decidedly Union or Confederate, the Western states often stayed on the fence...
Kentucky was the most important of those border states. Oddly, it was the birthplace to both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, which I suppose would make it up for grabs. It officially went with the Union, but the South held out hope that victories by their army would sway them. Keeping a firm stronghold on their forts in Northern Tennessee were paramount to this plan, and Union General Ulysses S. Grant went right after them.
From day one, Grant was a fighter. Once it got even close to being warm, Grant attacked the installations along the rivers in the area. On February 6, 1862, Grant quickly took Fort Henry along the Tennessee River, and he set his sights on the main barracks at Fort Donelson, along the nearby Cumberland River, now known as Lake Barkley. Grant had predicted Donelson would fall by the 8th, but events quickly didn't go his way.. It got cold and snowy, and his reinforcements were late, so it wasn't until the 14th that Grant made his assault on Donelson... Let's go to the map for a second..
If Grant thought taking Donelson was easy, he had another thing coming. As you can see from above, the battery had cannons pointing right down the river from all angles, so any attack via water would be tough. Grant found out quickly...
The ironclads tried to pummel the Confederate troops into submission before sending in the troops, but Naval Ofc. Andrew Foote made little progress. Grant was planning a troop attack from the south with Gen.'s Charles Smith, Lew Wallace and John McClernand (going west to east), but the South struck first.. Confederate Gen. John Floyd, who only took over Donelson a week earlier, sent Gideon Pillow from their left flank, and landed a hard blow to McClernand's troops, pushing them back. Then, something stupid and another thing smart happened....
After winning the day, and with McClernand's troops scrambling, Pillow inexplicably pulled his troops back to the fort. Grant knew that Floyd had overloaded his troops to the left, so he counterpunched back to their right, where they were barely covered... It worked. Charles Smith took most of the earthworks, and was only stopped by nightfall.
Overnight, Floyd and Pillow decided that the only thing to do was surrender. Gen. Nathan Beford Forrest, who organized and trained his own cavalry, who incensed, but left later on that evening. Still, there were 13,000 troops left and Gen. Simon Buckner was left in charge to surrender. Buckner went to West Point with Grant, and assumed he could get good terms from his old friend, but he was wrong... Grant replied 'There will be no terms but unconditional and complete surrender. I propose to move immediately upon your works.' Buckner gave in.
Yes, the North had their first real victory, and the word was that the Grant's initials stood for 'Unconditional Surrender'. Tennessee almost in entirety would fall city by city to the North, and Kentucky was lost for good. Still, the North would step on it's own toes, as Grant soon would be relieved of duty by Union Commander H.W. Halleck out of sheer jealousy... In short order, Grant would return, and Halleck was retired out West.
Though it seemingly would start out well, 1862 would be the South's year, as an unlucky shot would bring a desk general out from behind his desk, into the field - and history. That's how it went, 150 years ago this week...
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