War Stories for my Grandchildren

11–16 February 1862

Battle of Fort Donelson

III THE BATTLE OF FORT DONELSON

This was the last letter I was able to write home until after the battle of Fort Donelson. On the 10th our regiment reached Fort Henry on the Tennessee River which had been captured by General Grant only four days before our arrival. On the 12th we marched over to the vicinity of Fort Donelson with the rest of General Grant's army, eleven miles from Fort Henry, and situated on the west side of the Cumberland River. We were a part of the division commanded by General Charles F. Smith, and which occupied the extreme left of General Grant's army. That army, when it went into camp on the evening of February 12, covered the entire front of the Confederate forces. From our encampment the rebel line of rifle-pits and fortifications could be seen, we occupying one series of ridges and the enemy those confronting ours.

General Grant, in his account of this charge, says: "The outer line of rifle-pits was passed, and the night of the 15th General Smith, with much of his division, bivouacked within the line of the enemy. _There was now no doubt but that the Confederates must surrender or be captured the next day._" It was an inspiring sight for us, as we ascended the hill, the general on his white horse, hat in hand, waving us forward into the enemy's lines. He was the hero of the battle. On the 19th General Halleck telegraphed to Washington: "Smith, by his coolness and bravery at Fort Donelson, when the battle was against us, turned the tide and carried the enemy's outworks." General Sherman, in his "Memoirs," has this to say of the capture of Fort Donelson: "He [General Charles F. Smith] was a very handsome and soldierly man, of great experience, and at Donelson had acted with so much personal bravery that to him may be attributed the success of the assault."

The capture of Fort Donelson was the first important and complete victory which had been won by the Union armies since the war began, and it was hailed with great joy throughout the North as the harbinger of further victories. General Sherman, ten years after the event, characterized it as "the first real success on our side in the Civil War. Probably at no time during the war did we feel so heavy a weight raised from our hearts, or so thankful for a most fruitful series of victories."