On Feb. 13, 1862, one of the 10 most costly Civil War battles began in earnest. It was a battle for Fort Donelson, a Confederate earthworks fortress rising about 100 feet above the western shore of the Cumberland River in extreme north and western Tennessee. Its armament consisted of two batteries with a total of 12 pieces of large artillery, the purpose of which was to control the upper river from penetration by Union vessels. Were the fortress to fall it would open the way for Union assault deep into Confederate territory. Nashville would be at immediate high risk.
The Confederate force defending the fortress was essentially besieged. It arced around the fortress with each flank bordering on the river. The Union troops opposed it on all fronts, creating an encirclement that barred land escape.
The Union gunboat USS Carondelet, an ironclad under the command of Commander Henry Walke, started the "the ball" with a 9:05 a.m. bombardment of the river fortress. The Confederate guns answered and began an exchange of fire that lasted for two hours, at the end of which time the Carondelet suffered a damaging hit and was forced to retire temporarily. During the bombardment the fortress suffered only one hit of any significance. The Carondelet resumed the fight from a greater distance and the two sides exchanged long-range fire in cat-and-mouse fashion for much of the afternoon, to little avail.
Soon after Walke's bombardment began the Union commander, Ulysses S. Grant, told his subordinates to probe the enemy lines but avoid battle. In spite of his orders, three bloody and significant assaults unfolded, beginning in the morning and extending into the afternoon. Gen. C.F. Smith ordered two of the assaults and John A. McClernand the third. All were repulsed and at the end of the day each side still held the same territory it did at the start. Grant learned that he was facing a determined foe.
The battle continued Feb. 14. The day before, the combat had been primarily on land. Rebel reinforcements had arrived, and the fort held. The next day the attack came from the waters of the Cumberland River. A Union flotilla, including four ironclad and three conventional gunboats led by Flag Officer A. H. Foote blasted away at the artillery protecting the river. The guns, situated on their high bluff, survived with little damage. The gunboats on the other hand were not so lucky. The USS St. Louis and USS Louisville both suffered damage to their steering mechanisms and floated away downstream. The day belonged to the Confederate defenders.
That evening the ranking three Confederate general officers, John B. Floyd, Gideon Pillow and Simon Bolivar Buckner held a war council. They reached a consensus that the best plan was to evacuate the fort. Since Foote's gunboats made it impossible to evacuate troops via the river in large numbers , they would accomplish it by mounting an offensive on the Union right flank, creating a "hole" in the Union line through which to escape to Nashville.
The battle plan unfolded to perfection on the morning of Feb. 15. Pillow's troops routed the right side of the Union line under the command of John A. McClernand. By 1 p.m., the way out of the Donelson trap lay wide open. McClernand's division virtually ceased to exist as a fighting force. The Confederates stood within a hair of smashing Grant's Army. But it was not to be.
Because Pillow opted to continue the offensive rather than order the evacuation through the hole he had created, he managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The Hoosier general, Lew Wallace, later to gain fame as the author of "Ben Hur," seized the initiative to reorganize Union forces to create an effective battle line that blunted the Confederate offensive. The punch had gone out of it by 1:30 p.m. Grant, who had been absent up to this point counseling with Foote down river from the fort, arrived on the scene and organized Union counter attacks that sealed off Confederate escape routes. By nightfall the Confederate gains had been given back.
The Confederate triumvirate held council again that evening and into the morning of the 16th, ultimately deciding to surrender, an event that would be the most infamous of its kind in the entire war. Both Floyd and Pillow had political reasons for not wanting to risk falling into the hands of the U.S. government. Therefore, Floyd resigned his command over to Pillow, who in turn passed it on to Buckner, who intended to suffer his fate with his troops. His two associates took a handy rowboat and saved themselves and many of their respective troops to fight another day. Seeing a distasteful situation developing, at 4 a.m. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and most of his 500 cavalrymen quietly gathered their horses and simply burst through the Union lines to fight another day.
Later in the day Buckner asked his old friend U.S. Grant his terms for surrender. Grant gained an immortal nickname with his response: "No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted."
The 15,000 Confederate troops that were surrendered held the three generals in the highest contempt. The troops had plenty of fight left in them and an abundance of supplies and ammunition with which to forge their way out a second time. They felt as if they had been sold down the river.
Compiled by members of the CW150 Committee of Warren's Sutliff Museum.