Grant Moves South (25 page)

The night had been tough, and none of the men who lived through it ever forgot it; to the end of the war they remembered it as one of the worst trials they had had to endure as soldiers. As they huddled around smudgy little campfires to boil coffee—when light came, the night-time rule against campfires was discarded—they compared notes on what they had been through. Some of the men confessed that the only thing that kept them alive was the thought that the Rebels were just as cold as they were: just as cold, and, because they were used to a warmer climate, probably suffering more. Men of the 12th Iowa recalled that they spent most of the night trotting around in circles just to keep from freezing, with regimental officers improvising strange new tactical commands: “By companies, in a circle, double-quick,
march!
” Skirmishers and pickets renewed the exchange of fire that had never really ceased
during the night. Little harm was done by this firing, and yet the uproar swept the ridges and the hollows with the clamor of battle to stir the pulses of men who had never before been in action.
¹

Grant was recalled as having been in an optimistic and slightly humorous mood. Two Illinois soldiers who had been wounded in McClernand's abortive assault the day before said that as they came limping out of the fight they trudged past Grant, who noticed how battered they appeared and said: “You look disfigured—been hunting bear?” They replied that they had the animal treed and would bring him down next day, and Grant chuckled and ordered a staff officer to get the men to the nearest surgeon. One of the wounded men, who nursed a shattered left arm, lingered to tell the general how he had kept on fighting even though unable to reload his musket; his comrade had loaded for two, and he himself had been able to fire so effectively that a Confederate fieldpiece which was his chosen target fell silent. Grant heard him out, then asked sharply: “You didn't hurt anyone, did you?” The soldier gaped at him, then saw a twinkle in his eye and replied: “Why, General, I dunno—I reckon I just scared 'em and they fainted.”
²

Surgeon Brinton said that Grant had been highly confident that Fort Donelson would presently be taken. He had not ordered his encircling troops to throw up breastworks, and he seemed positive that the Confederates, having been nearly surrounded, would stay meekly in their works. Late in the evening, Grant seems to have considered the notion of a sudden night attack. Brinton said Grant told him: “Doctor, if I was a little more assured of my men I would storm with every man at 12 tonight, but I am not sure of them in a night melee.” Grant unquestionably was confident, although it is doubtful whether he gave any serious consideration to a night attack.

To Halleck, he set forth the situation as it looked to him on the morning of February 14: “Our troops now invest the works at Fort Donelson. The enemy have been driven into their works at every point. A heavy abatis all around prevents carrying the works by storm at present. I feel every confidence of success and the best feeling prevails among the men.” To General Cullum, at Cairo, Grant wrote that it looked very much as if there would be a regular siege, and he called for more artillery ammunition. “The ground
is very broken,” he wrote, and “the fallen timber extending far out from the breastworks, I fear the result of an attempt to carry the place by storm with raw troops. I feel great confidence, however, of ultimately reducing the place.”
³

Clearly enough, Grant's concentration on what he was going to do to the opposing army kept him from thinking very much about what that army might do to him. Up to this point his chief worry seems to have been the possibility that Johnston might send more troops in to relieve the Confederates at Fort Donelson, and he wanted to get some of his own men all the way over to the Cumberland above the town of Dover in order to prevent this. The lay of the land, however, was against him, with high water in the Cumberland making the low ground impassable, and to Halleck he confessed that “it was impossible, in consequence of the high water and deep sloughs, to throw a force in above Dover to cut off their reinforcements. Any force sent for such a purpose would be entirely away from support from the main body.”
⁴
Nevertheless, he remained hopeful. With the help of Foote and the gunboats it ought to be possible to force the troops in Fort Donelson to surrender before any Confederate supports could arrive.

Foote would do his part. That morning, on his four ironclads, men were busy shifting chains, lumber, bags of coal and other materials to the upper decks of the warships, as a defense against plunging shot. The ironclads would steam up to the works in line abreast, as at Fort Henry, with the two wooden gunboats hanging back to do what they could at long range. If the Confederate water batteries could be silenced the whole river front could be sealed off, and the place might come into Union possession as simply as Fort Henry had done. Preparations took most of the morning, and the noon hour was well past when the ungainly “turtles” began splashing laboriously against the current, driving on to action stations. Foote himself was in and out of the pilothouse on the flagship,
St. Louis
. He had a megaphone with him, and when one of his ships failed to keep position he would hail it with the command: “Steam up!” When the Confederate works were still about a mile away,
St. Louis
opened fire, followed by the others. Foote was a stickler for accuracy, and when
Carondelet
opened rapid fire (at the expense, thought the Flag Officer, of effective gun-laying) the megaphone
came into use again, and
Carondelet
was told to fire more slowly.

Trying to fit this fight to the Fort Henry pattern turned out to be a big mistake. The Confederates had plenty of guns bearing on the river, but most of them were comparatively light, outranged and outweighed by the powerful naval ordnance; at long range Foote could hit the Confederates at very little risk to himself, but when he got closer he increased the effectiveness of the Southern guns, and as the range closed from a mile to five hundred yards and then to four hundred and less, the gunboats took a fearful pounding. Closing the range increased the naval gunners' problems, because the Fort Donelson batteries were high above the level of the river; at close range the gunboats consistently overshot their targets, and some of Foote's shell arched clear across the Confederate camp and came down in the Union lines beyond. Foote's guns did knock the earthen parapets to pieces, but the Confederate guns remained fully operational; nothing short of a direct hit would put a piece out of action, and once the inexperienced Southern gun crews saw that the heavy Union fire was not really hurting them they cheered and stuck to their work bravely.

The Confederates were pounding the gunboats hard. Decks were slippery with blood, carpenters were busy plugging shot holes along the waterlines, fire-control parties were dousing flames in the woodwork, and flagship
St. Louis
received fifty-nine hits. One of these demolished her pilothouse, killed the pilot, wounded Foote, and put the steering gear out of action, and at almost the same moment
Louisville
's tiller ropes were shot away; the two big steamers ponderously swung about, end for end, in the current, and began to drift down out of action.
Carondelet
and
Pittsburgh
closed in to cover them, collided, three of the fleet's four pilots were down,
Carondelet
was struck along the waterline so many times she was almost in a sinking condition—and eventually all four vessels went back downstream out of range, with fifty-four casualties and a humiliating defeat to show for their pains. Jubilant Confederates capered and yelled at the sight, and it was painfully obvious that what had beaten Fort Henry was never going to beat Fort Donelson.
⁵

Grant's headquarters were in a little farmhouse owned by a Mrs. Crisp, situated perhaps five hundred yards behind C. F. Smith's battle line and six miles or more, by bad roads, from the downstream
landing on the Cumberland. From a point near the river, Grant witnessed the repulse of the gunboats; returning to headquarters, he ordered the new troops which had disembarked from their transports just before Foote went into action formed into a division and placed under Lew Wallace's command. This division, green soldiers under a green general they had never seen before, was put into the middle of the Union line, and McClernand moved farther to the right in an attempt to cover the half-flooded lowlands to the south of the town of Dover.

Across these lowlands ran a road which led from Dover to Clarksville and ultimately to Nashville—a possible escape route for the Confederates in the Fort Donelson lines, if the Confederate command chose to use it. If Foote had been able to knock out the water batteries and get his gunboats upstream that road would have been blocked by his guns; but since he had been beaten, the road would be open unless McClernand could seal it off with his troops. McClernand's shift to the right was designed to accomplish this, but he had much ground to cover and his lines were stretched thin, especially on his extreme right, where the Clarksville road ran. Whether Grant realized, on the night of February 14, that his weakness in this area invited a Confederate counterattack, or whether this was something he planned to attend to the next day, is not quite clear. One thing that may have influenced his thinking was the fact that the Confederate position was potentially very strong; given a few days, Floyd and Pillow might (as Grant saw it) make the place almost impregnable. Grant began to fear that he would have to bring up tents and put on a regular siege, but—as he himself confessed later—he “had no idea that there would be any engagement on land unless I brought it on myself.”
⁶

The night of February 14 was gloomy enough, in the Union camp. The weather remained bad, and when the newly arrived 20th Ohio reached the downstream landing, at twilight, and its Colonel Charles Whittlesey rode off to report to the Commanding General, he found the Crisp farmhouse looking almost deserted. Whittlesey hitched his horse to a peach tree in the yard and went inside, to a shadowy room where a handful of officers huddled about a fire in the hearth. A man whom Whittlesey described as “the smallest and least noticeable” of the lot was sitting at a table, dictating to an aide
who wrote by the light of a tallow dip. It developed that this small officer was General Grant. Whittlesey went over and presented himself. He had recently seen Grant's father and sisters and he had messages from them, which he delivered verbally. Grant listened without comment; then, learning that Whittlesey was about to return to his regiment at the steamboat landing, he asked Whittlesey to tell Foote that a good many of his heavy-duty shells were coming over the Confederate works and exploding inside the Union lines.
⁷

Whittlesey rode back to his troops. Early in the morning of February 15 a message from Foote reached headquarters. Foote's wound made it impossible for him to ride a horse or to move about with any comfort, and since it was clearly necessary for Commanding General and Flag Officer to have a conference, Foote asked that Grant come to the flagship at the downstream landing. This Grant was quite willing to do, and shortly after dawn on February 15, while the shivering troops were dragging themselves out of their uncomfortable bivouacs—and with an ominous amount of marching and grouping of troops going on inside the Confederate lines—Grant started to ride to the steamboat landing. Division commanders—McClernand, Wallace and Smith—were instructed not to bring on an engagement in his absence. The 20th Ohio was plodding up to the Union camp this morning, and its soldiers remembered meeting Grant, accompanied by a single orderly, as he rode down to consult with Foote.

From across the woods and ravines came the sound of musketry, with the heavier crash of fieldpieces now and then distinguishable. If this made any especial impression on Grant's consciousness there is no record of it. There had been a good deal of intermittent skirmishing and artillery dueling throughout each day ever since the armies came into contact; no one at a distance from the field seems to have suspected that what was going on this morning was any different from the ordinary routine.
⁸

On the flagship Grant got bad news. Foote believed he should take his entire fleet back to Cairo or Mound City for repairs, and he urged Grant to entrench and prepare to hold his position until the fleet could return, which would be in ten or fifteen days. This was not at all to Grant's liking, and he asked Foote if he could not remain
on the scene, damaged ships or no, while the army finished the job. In the end, something of a compromise was worked out. Foote would take the two worst-damaged boats downstream for repairs, leaving the others to give what support they could. Grant, on his part, would entrench at least a part of his position, and would wait for reinforcements before trying to fight for a decision. Orders were given to have entrenching tools unloaded from a transport at the landing and forwarded to the troops. Somewhere around noon the conference ended, and Grant got into a rowboat to get over to the landing and return to the field. As he got out of the boat Captain William S. Hillyer, one of his staff officers, came riding to the landing, white-faced; during Grant's absence the Confederates had struck a powerful surprise blow on McClernand's position, and the Union Army was close to outright disaster.
⁹

The strategic motives that led the Confederates to mass troops at Fort Donelson in the first place have never been entirely clear, but by the evening of February 14—which is to say at the conclusion of Foote's unfortunate assault with the gunboats—the Confederate commanders in the fort knew perfectly well what had to be done next. They had to save their army, which meant an immediate retreat. That they had just beaten off the gunboats made no difference; they saw the situation just as Grant saw it—Fort Donelson was a trap, and the Confederate Army would be lost if it stayed there. Somehow, the encircling Union line must be cracked; the road south must be opened at all costs so that the Confederates could get out and rejoin Albert Sidney Johnston, who had evacuated Bowling Green and was believed to be on the road to Nashville. During the evening Confederates Floyd, Pillow and Buckner laid their plans, and at dawn their troops were massed for an attack.