Originally aired on February 13, 1998 - In part 181 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson examines the events that occurred at Fort Donelson.
#181 – Fort Donelson
A general has to have a number of qualities to be successful. Not the least of them is luck. No commander in the Civil War was luckier than General U. S. Grant. In the winter of 1861-1862, Grant undertook a campaign to seize Forts Henry and Donelson. The Confederate forts guarding the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. A glance at a map shows that those two waterways were lifelines into the heart of the western theatre.
Grant’s plan for both forts was to use naval gunboats to bombard them from the river while he attacked with infantry on the land side. On February 6th naval vessels opened fire Fort Henry. It quickly surrendered. Not so much from Union pressure as from the fact that the flooded Tennessee River had consumed the bottom half of the fort and was still rising.
Grant then marched his men to Fort Donelson. There he planned the same army/navy offensive. Yet Donelson was different from Henry. Fifteen acres of high ground protected a dozen heavy guns with a clear field of fire down the river. Outside Donelson was a circle of earthworks that ran along ridges overlooking steep wooded ravines. Some 17,000 Confederates under the joint command of Generals John B. Floyd, Gideon Pillow and Simon Buckner packed the lines.
On a cold and overcast February 14, seven Union gunboats steamed up the Cumberland and opened fire on Fort Donelson. Confederate gunners replied with deadly accuracy. Soon three of the boats were drifting dead in the water with the naval commander mortally wounded. Yet the Confederate generals inside Donelson concluded that they were hopelessly besieged. Surrender was only a matter of time.
So at dawn the next morning, Confederates attempted a breakout attack. Billy Yanks were preparing breakfast when 10,000 screaming Confederates suddenly burst through the woods with muskets blazing. Two hours of fighting caused the Union line to bend back. The road to Nashville and safety was open for the Southerners.
Grant was not even on the field when the battle began. He had encamped downriver. His leaderless army would surely have lost the battle and Grant his career had not a Confederate general given victory away. Gideon Pillow was in command of the Confederate attack. After his men fought through the Union works and into the clear Pillow began to have visions of a flank assault around the next bend or an ambush just down the road. Anxiety got the better of him. Pillow turned his soldiers around and they fought their way back into Fort Donelson.
By then Grant was on the field. He discerned at a glance what the situation was. Grant promptly launched an assault of his own at the other end of the line. It shattered the Confederate defenses just as darkness fell. The Fort Donelson garrison was trapped. Generals Floyd and Pillow skedaddled from the scene. That left General Buckner to ask his old friend Sam Grant on what terms he would accept the surrender of Donelson.
Grant’s reply is one of the famous quotations from the Civil War, “no terms but unconditional surrender can be accepted”. On February 16, 1862, Donelson fell into Union hands. So did 13,000 prisoners, a dozen canon and tons of supplies. A week later Federals occupied Nashville. And in domino fashion the Confederates had to relinquish large sections of western and middle Tennessee to Union occupation.
Most importantly for Northern morale the Union at last had a war hero. A plain-spoken, unpretentious officer from Illinois had won two battles without being present when needed. Thereafter, U. S. Grant was hailed as “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. With a good deal of luck on his side Grant would be in the forefront all the way from Donelson to Appomattox.
