Battle of Fort Donelson

Background

In the winter of 1861–62 Albert Sidney Johnston held the Confederate line in the West with Leonidas Polk's 12,000 men at Columbus on the Mississippi and William J. Hardee's 14,000 at Bowling Green, Kentucky. Between them the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers ran south into the heart of Tennessee, guarded only by two earthworks some 12 miles apart just below the Kentucky border: Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, outside the village of Dover. Don Carlos Buell had 45,000 Federals at Louisville.

On 6 February 1862 Flag Officer Andrew Foote's gunboats battered Fort Henry into surrender before Ulysses S. Grant's troops arrived; about 2,500 of its garrison marched east to Donelson. Grant wired Henry Halleck that he would 'take and destroy Fort Donelson on the 8th'. Muddy roads, flooding and damage to the gunboats made that impossible, and Halleck used the delay to push reinforcements up the rivers.

Johnston and his generals at first thought Donelson could not be held, then changed their minds on news that Grant had only 12,000 men and that the gunboats had been hurt. Johnston reinforced the fort instead of abandoning it, sending Gideon Pillow, Simon Buckner and finally John B. Floyd, a politician and former US Secretary of War, who took command as senior brigadier. Johnston's instruction to Floyd was to bring the troops to Nashville if the fort was lost. Grant's generals, all but McClernand, backed an attack at a council on 11 February. On 12 February the Federals marched across the neck between the rivers by the Ridge and Telegraph roads, leaving Lew Wallace with 2,500 men to hold Fort Henry.

The armies

Grant's command was the District of Cairo, later the Army of the Tennessee: John McClernand's 1st Division and Charles F. Smith's 2nd, with two cavalry regiments and eight batteries. Lew Wallace's 3rd Division was formed on the field on 14 February from John Thayer's brigade and Charles Cruft's, which was on loan from Buell. Foote brought four ironclads, St. Louis, Carondelet, Louisville and Pittsburg, and the timberclads Tyler and Conestoga, among others. Many of the men lacked overcoats and blankets in the freeze.

The Confederates had three divisions, under Buckner, Bushrod Johnson and Floyd's own (handed to Colonel Gabriel Wharton), with the fort's garrison under Colonel John Head and Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry. Command was split four ways among Floyd, Pillow, Buckner and Johnson, and Pillow in effect superseded Johnson. The fort itself was a modest earthwork on a ridge about 100 feet above the river; its strength lay in the water batteries, a dozen guns under Lieutenant Colonel Milton Haynes, some firing 128-pound shot, and in about three miles of trenches and abatis covering Dover and the fort. Snow, underbrush and flooded creeks, Lick Creek among them, hampered movement around the lines.

The battle

12–13 February: investment. Forrest's cavalry screen delayed the Federal columns most of 12 February before falling back inside the lines; Carondelet arrived and shelled the fort, and Grant set up his headquarters at the Widow Crisp's house. On 13 February Smith, told only to demonstrate, sent Lauman's and Cook's brigades against Buckner's line on the Eddyville road; they stuck in the abatis and fell back, leaving nearly a hundred dead. On the right McClernand sent Morrison's Illinois brigade, without orders, against Maney's battery on Dudley's Hill; the attack failed within about fifteen minutes and the dry leaves caught fire around the wounded. McClernand could not stretch his line to the river south of Dover. That night a snowstorm brought 3 inches of snow and temperatures of 10–12°F; fires were forbidden because of the sharpshooters.

14 February: the gunboats repulsed. Lew Wallace's men and about 10,000 reinforcements reached Grant around noon. At about 3 p.m. Foote's four ironclads, abreast, with Tyler and Conestoga behind, opened fire at about a mile and a half and closed to within 450 yards of the water batteries. The plunging fire of the Confederate guns hit St. Louis 59 times and Carondelet 54; St. Louis lost her wheel and Louisville her steering, both drifted downstream, and Foote was wounded. The attack was over by about 4.30. Grant warned Halleck that he might have to lay siege. Floyd's council, convinced the fort was untenable, decided to break out next morning.

15 February, 6 a.m. to noon: the breakout (CDB90 engagement 175). Pillow and Johnson's divisions, massed on the Confederate left, struck McClernand's exposed right flank at dawn, the attack masked by snow and wind; Buckner, delayed on icy roads, came in later against the Union centre on the Wynn's Ferry road. Grant was away with Foote and had named no deputy. By about 8 a.m. McClernand's brigades, Oglesby's and McArthur's worst hit, were running out of ammunition. Lew Wallace, without orders, held back until a second plea, then sent Cruft's brigade. By late morning the Federals had been driven off the Forge road and back along the Wynn's Ferry road: the road to Nashville was open. Lew Wallace then moved into a blocking position astride the Wynn's Ferry road, and three Confederate assaults on his and Thayer's line failed by about 12.30.

15 February, early afternoon: Pillow's recall. With the way out open, Pillow ordered his men back to their trenches to refit for the evacuation, partly believing Buckner's thinly held line was under attack. Buckner protested; Floyd wavered and then sent everyone back inside the perimeter.

15 February, afternoon: the Union counterattack. Grant rode back 7 miles over icy roads, found McClernand's men with empty cartridge boxes and ordered the right retaken. Guessing that the enemy had stripped his right, he told Smith that all had failed on the right and he must take Fort Donelson. Smith led Lauman's brigade, the 2nd Iowa in front, up the slope near the Eddyville road and over the trenches held by the 30th Tennessee; Buckner's returning men stopped him on a second ridge short of the fort. Lew Wallace's division, led by the 8th Missouri and 11th Indiana, retook the lost ground on the right by about 5.30. By nightfall the Confederates were back where they started.

15–16 February: capitulation. At a council at the Dover Hotel early on the 16th, Buckner said his position could not hold. Floyd handed command to Pillow, who handed it to Buckner. Pillow crossed the river by skiff; Floyd left by steamer with most of his Virginians; Forrest, refusing to surrender, led his troopers and others, somewhere between 700 and 1,000 men, out through the icy backwaters of Lick Creek. Buckner asked for terms. Grant replied: 'No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.' Buckner accepted what he called 'ungenerous and unchivalrous terms'.

Aftermath

The fighting cost Grant about 2,700 men (507 killed, 1,976 wounded, 208 missing in Gott's count) and the Confederates some 1,500 to 2,000 killed and wounded; many wounded on both sides froze where they lay. The surrender then took between 12,000 and 15,000 men, Grant's own range; Cooling puts those sent north at 14,000 to 15,000. Grant also took 48 field guns and 17 heavy guns, about 20,000 stands of arms and great stores of food. It was the first surrender of an entire Confederate army.

Johnston lost nearly a third of his force, men who would be missing at Shiloh. Nashville was evacuated on 23 February, the first Confederate state capital to fall, and Columbus on 2 March. Jefferson Davis wrote that events had cast 'the gloomiest of shadows' on Confederate hopes. Floyd and Pillow were removed from command. Grant was promoted major general of volunteers, and the Northern press dubbed him 'Unconditional Surrender' Grant.

The arguments are about Confederate command. Pillow's recall, with the road open, is the classic lost opportunity; Forrest's ride showed that more could have escaped. Kendall Gott argues that Foote, too, erred, and that a night run past the batteries might have worked. The American Battlefield Trust has questioned the 'Unconditional Surrender' legend, noting that C. F. Smith first proposed the terms and that Grant never claimed the phrase. The ground is preserved as Fort Donelson National Battlefield.

Wargaming it

Fort Donelson is a compact field, about three miles of Confederate trench and abatis around the fort and Dover, on wooded ridges cut by ravines, with Lick Creek's flooded backwaters on the south. It suits a brigade-level game with regiments as units; the breakout and counterattack of 15 February make a single full day, with the gunboat attack of the 14th as a separate naval scenario.

The weather should shape the rules: snow, icy roads and frozen, poorly supplied troops. Confederate units should arrive late and in poor order, as Buckner did, and the Union right should be short of ammunition. Command is the heart of the game. The Union player begins without Grant, who is on the river; McClernand and Lew Wallace act only on their own initiative or a dice roll until he returns. The Confederate player has four quarrelling generals, and the success of the attack might itself trigger a check on whether Pillow orders the men back.

The real victory condition is the road: the Confederates win by getting a set number of brigades out along the Forge or Wynn's Ferry road and away towards Nashville before dark, not by destroying McClernand. Smith's attack on the stripped Confederate right is a tempting counter. What ifs: Pillow presses on and the garrison escapes; Buckner arrives on time; Grant is at his headquarters at dawn; Foote runs the batteries at night and cuts the river.

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