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THE STRATEGIC MEANING OF FORT HENRY'S SURRENDER
While newspapers in the North trumpeted the news of Grant's and
Foote's success, the South recoiled in shock. Dramatic proof of the
importance of Fort Henry's surrender soon followed. As Grant
consolidated his position on the Tennessee, Foote sent Lieutenant Commander
Seth L. Phelps and his three wooden gunboats on a 150-mile sweep all
the way to northern Mississippi and Alabama. Phelps's orders were to
break the railroad bridge at Danville and then to "proceed as far
upriver as the stages of water will admit and
capture the enemy's gunboats and other vessels which might prove
available to the enemy."
(click on image for a PDF version)
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ATTACK ON FORT HENRY —
On February 6, 1862, General Grant decided that everything is in place
to move against Fort Henry. Flag Officer Foote will attack by water
while the Union Army will surround Forts Henry and Heiman. The gunboats
make better time on water than the army made over muddy roads. The
gunboats are able to silence seven of the fort's 11 heavy guns and
capture the fort before the Union army arrived.
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Phelps's squadron seized the railroad bridge without trouble and
destroyed the tracks for a distance on either side of the span. Further
on at Cerro Gordo, they captured the unfinished gunboat Eastport,
one of the fastest prewar steamboats on western rivers, which
Confederate authorities were slowly converting from civilian to
military use. Quantities of iron and timber used for this purpose
were also seized. Phelps left the Tyler to guard the prizes and
continued upriver to Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Near Florence, at the foot
of the shoals, citizens frightened by reports of Yankee atrocities
pleaded for mercy, but Phelps assured them that the Federals were
"neither ruffians nor savages" and left their bridge and the town
unhurt. "Total war" against civilians and the economic
underpinnings of conflict had not yet become official Union policy. Still,
as one Alabama soldier, Henry Semple, wrote his wife from Montgomery on
February 9, "This may be a very disastrous blow to us."
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ALABAMA LOYALISTS WILDLY GREET UNION GUN BOATS. (HW)
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THE USS TYLER, ONE OF FOOTE'S THREE WOODEN GUNBOATS. (USAMHI)
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Phelps then made his way leisurely back downriver unimpeded by the
Confederates. He destroyed a Rebel encampment at Savannah, Tennessee,
before retrieving the Tyler, Eastport, the iron plate, and the
timber. Along the way, he reported later, numerous loyal Unionists had
flocked to the riverbanks to cheer the Stars and Stripes and demonstrate
great affection for the Union. But he admitted that such feelings were
not universal and places existed where tales of Yankee "burning, destroying, and
plundering" had caused the inhabitants to flee to the woods at the
approach of his gunboats. Still, he tied up at the Union-held Fort Henry
on February 10, smiling with success amid cheers from Grant's
soldiers.
As would be the case with most so-called raiding operations
(whether by gun boats or cavalry) during the Civil War, Phelps's success
proved short-lived. Within days, Confederate troops restored railroad
service on the Memphis line and began persecution of the supposed
Unionists along Phelps's route. In the absence of a major effort to
exploit the Fort Henry victory by actually occupying the territory
transited by the naval sweep, elapsed time permitted Confederate authorities
to regain control of the upper reaches of the Tennessee River. In the
meantime, Phelps's report caused the North generally, and President
Lincoln in particular, to anticipate early renunciation of rebellion in
the Confederate heartland. Such hopes would be dashed by several more
years of warfare. For the moment, however, the fortunes of the Union
boded well as a result of the victory at Fort Henry.
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