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THE LEGACY OF FORTS HENRY AND DONELSON
News of Fort Donelson's fall soon echoed across the Union and the
Confederacy. Northern newsmen and artists had joined the expeditionary
force, and they lost no time in interviewing and sketching participants,
impressions of battle, and events attending the surrender that could be
transmitted back home. Women nurses such as "Mother" Bickerdyke and Mary
Newcomb soon arrived with representatives from aid societies to care for
the injured. War trophies were everywhere, many finding their way into
homeward-bound mail pouches. Northern victory bells pealed and bonfires
blazed in recognition of the glorious victory while to Southerners, the
news sent shock waves of dismay and disbelief. Jefferson Davis admitted:
"Events have cast on our arms and hopes the gloomiest of shadows."
Scores of households everywhere mourned the loss of loved ones who would
not return to fill "the vacant chair."
Truly, the meaning of Fort Donelson could not be measured by heavy
casualty figures as would many subsequent battles. Perhaps 27,000
Federals ultimately faced 21,000 Confederates. Possibly 2,600 of the
former were killed or wounded compared with an estimated 2,000 of the
latter. Approximately, 14,000 to 15,000 Southerners were sent north by
steamboat and train to hastily established prison compounds at Alton and
Camp Douglas, Illinois, Camp Morton at Indianapolis, Indiana, and Camp
Chase, Ohio. Johnson's Island, Ohio, and Fort Warren, Massachusetts,
received the officers. The surrender also yielded an estimated 400,000
rations of rice, 300,000 rations of beef, and 150,000 rations of pork,
as well as 400 barrels of new molasses and 20 hogsheads of sugar.
Counting cannon captured at Fort Henry and, after Fort Donelson, upriver
at Clarksville, upward of seventy-five pieces of artillery fell into
Federal hands on the twin rivers. All such war booty took time to
inventory, and Grant's troops spent the next few weeks securing the
material, recovering from the battles, and getting organized for the
next move. Most important of all, a corps-size element of the western
Confederate army had been swept from the chessboard because of the two
surrenders.
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CONFEDERATE PRISONERS MINGLE OUTSIDE THE CAPTURED FORT DONELSON UNDER THE
WATCHFUL EYE OF UNION GUARDS. (LC)
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AFTER THE FALL OF FORT DONELSON, FEDERAL GARRISONS
WERE SCATTERED ALONG THE BANKS OF THE CUMBERLAND RIVER.
(NEAR FORT DONELSON BY ALEXANDER RANSOM, COURTESY OF TENNESSEE STATE
MUSEUM COLLECTION)
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The fruits of victory became obvious within two weeks of the
surrender at Fort Donelson, Foote soon ventured upstream to take
possession of Clarksville, Tennessee, and together with Grant visited
Nashville, vacated by Johnston and occupied by Buell's slowly advancing
army by February 25. Along the twin rivers, Federal forces liberated the
first slaves and destroyed the first civilian property—iron works
and rolling mills—both labeled "contraband of war" because of their
role in the Confederate war effort. Ironically, the facilities belonged
to John Bell, one of the candidates for president of the United States
in the 1860 election. Because of this train of events, the Confederate
theater commander declared the loss of Forts Henry and Donelson as
irretrievable. All he could do at that point was retire with Hardee's
bedraggled force to regroup in northern Mississippi, where they were
eventually joined by the Columbus garrison, evacuated on March 2.
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NATHAN BEDFORD FORREST
The one bright spot to emerge from the disasters
at Forts Henry and Donelson for the Confederacy was Colonel (later
Lieutenant General) Nathan Bedford Forrest. Escaping with some 1,000 of
his own men as well as others from the doomed garrison on the
Cumberland, Forrest first made his way to Nashville, where he helped
restore order in that panic-stricken city and then joined General
Albert Sidney Johnston's retreating army to Alabama. He subsequently
became perhaps the most famous cavalryman in the western theater and
achieved independent command of the West Tennessee and northern
Mississippi theater of operations late in the war. An untutored genius
at war, Forrest was not a West Pointer but a citizen-soldier like most
of the participants on both sides of the struggle.
Forrest had to overcome countless challenges not only during the
Civil War but over his whole lifetime. Rough-hewn in manner, ferocious
in combat, Forrest spawned many controversies. Yet they reflected this
independent warrior's rise to prominence during the most turbulent
period in our nation's history. From the very beginning, he represented
the arduous life of the Southern backcountry. Born in Chapel Hill,
Tennessee, on July 13, 1821, he was the son of a backwoods blacksmith
living on the edge of poverty. Forrest's boyhood was hard with barely
six months' formal education. He was thrust into responsibility for his
family at age sixteen when his father died. Variously engaged with an
uncle in business at Hernando, Mississippi, and later, on his own as a
prosperous slave trader in Memphis, Tennessee, Forrest eventually
acquired a plantation in Coahoma County, Mississippi, and assumed
public positions as constable,
coroner, militia officer, and Memphis alderman. Still, when Tennessee
seceded from the Union, he chose to enlist as a private in the ranks,
principally to defend his homeland.
Governor Isham G. Harris soon authorized Forrest to recruit what
became the 3d Tennessee Cavalry, and in early actions in Kentucky in
late 1861, he displayed the qualities that would mark his military
career—tenacious in fighting with the enemy and rapid employment of
envelopment tactics. His reputation for hard combat blossomed at Fort
Donelson and later at Shiloh, where he suffered a severe wound during
the closing phase of that battle. When he returned to the army and
command of what would be simply styled Forrest's cavalry brigade, he
staged a daring raid on the Union garrison at Murfreesboro, Tennessee,
on July 13, 1862, winning promotion to brigadier general for his
success. Indeed, together with another intrepid Confederate cavalryman,
John Hunt Morgan (later joined by Joseph Wheeler as the triad of mounted
knights leading the resurgence of Southern fortunes in the western
theater), Forrest became renowned for daring mounted raids against
scattered Union detachments guarding lines of communication and
strategic hamlets in the region.
Forrest crossed the Tennessee River into West Tennessee in December
1862. For two and one-half weeks, he crippled Major General Ulysses S.
Grant's supply lines and stymied the initial campaign against
Vicksburg, Mississippi. Combining bluster and bluff with tough fighting,
Forrest's cavalry wrecked bridges and depots, ripped up miles of
railroad track, burned supplies, and captured hundreds of hapless
Federals unable to cope with his whirlwind assaults. Moreover,
Forrest and his men eluded pursuers until brought to bay at Parker's
Crossroads on December 31. Remarkably, he snatched victory from defeat
by escaping with the majority of his command. The toll on his troops'
endurance and resources perhaps crippled Forrest's efforts to
collaborate effectively with Wheeler in a winter raid on the line of the
Cumberland River, however. This endeavor ended disastrously for their
combined efforts with the serious rebuff at Dover, near the old Fort
Donelson, on February 3, 1863.
Nevertheless, Forrest's recovery came quickly with Middle Tennessee
victories at Thompson Station and Brentwood as well as his successful
capture of Union colonel Abel Straight's force across northern Alabama
and into northwest Georgia in April and May. Here, Forrest displayed his
trademarks of rapid movement, ruse, and
deception to persuade a numerically superior force to surrender.
Couriers from non-existent units and brisk display of forces before
Straight's very eyes inflated the enemy's sense of entrapment. They
suggested Forrest's ability to control a situation completely and to
break the fighting will of his opponent. Here, Forrest was in his
element. When subsequently required to operate more directly with
General Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee, the "wizard of the saddle"
performed less enthusiastically. Although he contributed to Bragg's
singular success over William S. Rosecrans at Chickamauga on September
19-20, 1863, Forrest's failure to convince Bragg that rapid pursuit
of the defeated foe would annihilate him produced a bitter altercation
between the two men. Forrest's denunciation of Bragg led to his exile
under the guise of transfer to independent command in Mississippi.
Forrest was called upon once more literally to raise a command as he
constructed his famed cavalry corps of new recruits and conscripts
around a nucleus of veterans. Now a major general, dating from December
4, 1863, he led raids against Federal communications and supply lines in
Tennessee and Alabama and stopped various Union raids into Mississippi
for much of the following year. One raid in April 1864 resulted in the
infamous capture of Fort Pillow north of Memphis and subsequent
slaughter of both white Tennessee Unionist soldiers and their African
American comrades. Modern interpretation generally agrees that Forrest
lost control of his troops in this situation. The internecine hatred of
Confederate for Unionist Tennesseans was matched in tragedy by white
Southerners conviction that blacks under arms (whether in uniform or
not) constituted slave rebellion, punishable under antebellum law
and culture by death. In any event, Fort Pillow would forever be a blot
on Forrest's escutcheon. In June 1864, Forrest routed a superior force
of infantry and cavalry under Brigadier General Samuel Sturgis at
Brice's Cross Roads, Mississippi. The next month he thwarted another
invasion column under Major General Andrew J. Smith at Tupelo, or
Harrisburg, Mississippi, where Forrest suffered another wound. The
intent of these Federal operations was to prevent Forrest from raiding
the Tennessee supply lines of William T. Sherman, then actively
campaigning to capture the strategic Confederate rail and supply center
at Atlanta, Georgia. Forrest was kept busy and away from Sherman's rear.
Only in the autumn could he return to attacking railroads in northern
Alabama and Middle Tennessee, climaxing such activity with the capture of the Union
supply base at Johnsonville, Tennessee (upriver from old Forts Henry and
Heiman), on November 3, 1863.
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FORREST LEADS HIS MEN ACROSS LICK CREEK. (PAINTING BY GARY LYNN ROBERTS)
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In many ways, Johnsonville was Forrest's pièce de resistance. Once
more bluff and clever employment of his forces, including use of
captured Federal river craft, secured a brilliant Confederate victory.
This so-called Johnsonville raid netted 4 gunboats, 14 steamboats, 33
artillery pieces, 150 prisoners, and over
75,000 tons of supplies. Total damages to the supply depot itself
approximated $6.7 million. In one historian's opinion, this event
showed Forrest's ingenuity and strength of purpose while strengthening
his reputation as one of the Civil War's top field commanders. Then
Forrest had to cut short his Johnsonville foray to join John Bell Hood's
disastrous Tennessee campaign that foundered before the state capital in
mid-December. Somewhat questionably employed for an independent thrust
to capture nearby Murfreesboro while the main army idly awaited George
H. Thomas' powerful and decisive battle of annihilation, Forrest
nevertheless returned to conduct a brilliant rear guard operation that
ensured escape for a remnant of the Army of Tennessee back to Alabama.
Thereafter, Forrest reorganized his cavalry to defend Mississippi as the
war reached its final stages. He was promoted to lieutenant general to
date from February 28, 1865, but his enfeebled command could not stop
Brigadier General James Harrison Wilson's cavalry raid,
which moved across Alabama (in the image of Forrest's own style) to
destroy Selma, another Confederate logistical center, in March and
April. Forrest recovered in time to surrender his survivors at
Gainesville, Alabama, in May.
After the war, Forrest sought to recover his fortune and life during
Reconstruction, engaging in various business ventures and promoting the
Selma, Marion, and Memphis Railroad as its president.
Ever active and controversial, he became the first grand wizard of
the Ku Klux Klan and campaigned to restore white Conservative Democratic
power in the South. He died in Memphis on October 29, 1877. There an
equestrian statute erected in his memory continues to arouse strong
feelings in the community because of its symbolic presence. He was an
outspoken advocate of speed and ferocity in warfare—the
phrase "war means fighting and fighting means killing"
attributed to him captures well the spirit and appeal of this intrepid
raider. Truly a "wizard of the saddle," Forrest may well have advocated
"getting their first with the most" as a simple but effective maxim of
war. Harsh, even brutal, Forrest was known to respond personally to any
affront to his honor. He bragged of personally killing thirty enemy
soldiers. This Confederate hero of Fort Donelson inspired his men by
personal valor, ability with hand-to-hand combat, and determination to
win victory. Nathan Bedford Forrest personified speed, daring, and
independence of action as a Confederate cavalry leader. Yet his sinister
side at Fort Pillow and with the postwar Ku Klux Klan also suggested the
complexities of a turbulent man in a turbulent era when politics and
race combined with war to create a dark and bloody ground in the
Southern heartland.
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Certainly in one brilliant stroke, Union forces had rolled
back Confederate territory hundreds of miles. All of
Kentucky and most of Tennessee were clear of Confederate defenders.
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Certainly, in one brilliant stroke, Union forces had rolled back
Confederate territory hundreds of miles. All of Kentucky and most of
Tennessee were clear of Confederate defenders. Gone were the rich
granaries, the railroad lines, and many industrial facilities. Nashville
became the first Confederate state capital to fall, reputedly costing
the Confederacy $5,000,000 in lost assets. Such losses sapped the
willpower and loyalty of many residents to
the Southern cause. Beauregard told a congressional friend that "we
must defeat the enemy somewhere to give confidence to our friends." The
Confederate commissioner in Paris, John Slidell, wrote home in March:
"I need not say how unfavorable an influence these defeats, following in
quick succession, have produced on public sentiment" in Europe. If not
soon counterbalanced by some decisive victory, he warned, the
Confederacy could forget any early international recognition.
Southerners now realized that a long war lay ahead. They sought
scapegoats for the recent disasters. Floyd, Pillow, and even Johnston
felt the sting of derogatory newspaper editorials, congressional
investigations, and other public denunciation. "We are now at the beginning of
the 'wild hour coming on,'" wrote one Mississippi planter, admitting
that he had pretty much given up since Forts Henry and Donelson were
captured. Colonel Roger Hanson had
fought under Pillow in Mexico, and he declared from prison that to be
under the Tennessean's command once in a lifetime was a misfortune but
twice was more than human nature could bear! Floyd and Pillow were
chastised for their actions, incurring congressional censure, and
banished from future positions of high command. Buckner and Tilghman,
by contrast, would emerge from imprisonment with respect and return to
field command. Johnston kept silent publicly, permitting his friend the
Confederate president to shield him from public ire. His attempted
redemption though the counteroffensive in April ended with his tragic
death at Shiloh. Thus passed any chance for answering his critics and
regaining his lost reputation resulting from the Forts Henry and
Donelson campaign.
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NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE WAS THE FIRST CAPTURED CAPITAL OF A
CONFEDERATE STATE. HERE, THE 51ST REGIMENT OF OHIO
VOLUNTEERS CONDUCTS A DRESS PARADE ON MARCH 4, 1862. (LC)
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As for the prisoners of war, their incarceration lasted about six
months. While Buckner, Tilghman, and other officers enjoyed liberal,
rather easy conditions at Fort Warren, their men endured cramped living
quarters, poor prison food, and ill treatment from prison guards. A
rather cavalier conduct of prisoner affairs at this point in the war
permitted some contact with home. The prisoners were prohibited from
discussing political affairs and the war, but they could receive
letters, newspapers, clothing, and other personal items, even money.
Inside the prison camps, there was much leisure time for reflection,
exercise, and games as well as penning prison journals, in order, said
Tennessee engineer J. A. Haydon, to prevent "the rust of Prison life"
from eating inwardly on the heart and conscience. Captain John H. Guy, the
Virginia artillery man imprisoned at Johnson's Island, noted that many
of the games there reminded him of his youth but did not tempt him
from his studies. A college graduate, Guy ordered reading material
sent to his men at Camp Douglas so as to improve their minds during
captivity.
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ORIGINALLY USED TO TRAIN UNION REGIMENTS, CAMP DOUGLAS
WAS CONVERTED INTO A PRISON TO HOLD THE CONFEDERATE TROOPS
CAPTURED AT FORTS HENRY AND DONELSON. (NPS)
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Several regimental mascots accompanied prisoners to the camps. A
pet rooster and various dogs helped maintain morale and, mostly to a
man, the Rebel prisoners remained cocky. One Kentuckian, when questioned
about a prewar occupation by the Camp Chase adjutant, replied disdainfully,
"Lawyer, hell! I'm a gentleman. Put down my occupation as
'Southern gentleman.'" Still others in a Tennessee regiment refused to
march into prison under a carefully hung United States flag, parting
instead to pass to the sides and thus avoid any appearance of tribute or
allegiance. Tennessee major C. W. Robertson wrote confidently in a
colleague's autograph book at Fort Warren that the Southern cause being
just, her people brave, "her ultimate triumph is certain, though
forty Fort Donelsons shall fall." By autumn, most
of these prisoners had been sent down the Mississippi to Vicksburg
under prisoner exchange arrangements. Many subsequently reformed their
old units and went back into Confederate service. Others, having
experienced enough war, returned home quietly to resume civilian lives.
Some joined partisan or guerrilla or home guard contingents.
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A SKETCH OF DOVER, TENNESSEE, MADE SOON AFTER THE FALL OF FORT DONELSON. (FL)
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Guerrilla warfare became widespread throughout much of Kentucky and
Tennessee as the main battles moved further south. A Union Fort
Donelson arose between the old Confederate earthworks and the town of
Dover. It was intended to protect the river traffic from enemy cavalry
and guerrilla raids. For a time, even Dover itself became an armed camp
and the scene in February 1863 of a futile attempt to reestablish
Confederate control of the Cumberland. At this time, Confederate
cavalry under Joseph Wheeler and Nathan Bedford Forrest suffered a stinging
rebuff from an outnumbered Union garrison. The Union accordingly
retained possession of the twin rivers area for the remainder of the
war. Clarksville, Dover, and Forts Henry, Heiman, and Donelson became
positions from which units like the 2d Iowa cavalry and the 83d Indiana policed
the area, reestablished law and order, and continued to chase shadowy
brigands. Fort Henry provided a coaling station for the navy, charged
with patrolling the rivers in light gunboats in an effort to keep supply
lines open to Nashville and the armies operating beyond.
The Federal government also set up a refugee camp and enlistment
depot for former slaves at Fort Donelson. As early as March 1862, the
War Department sought to provide a proper resting place for Union dead
from Fort Donelson. Five years later, once the turmoil of war had
abated, some 670 remains (512 unknown) were placed in a national
cemetery literally on the site of the Federal fort. Needless to say,
Forts Henry and Donelson never became household words in the postwar
South—except, perhaps, as objects of scorn and derision.
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