The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct, Volume 1 (of 2) / A Narrative and Critical History

by George Cary Eggleston

After the battle of Belmont he planned and proposed a campaign which he hoped might reverse the existing situation at the West and give to the Union arms their first important and strategically significant victory.

Two great and practically navigable rivers, the Cumberland and the Tennessee, rise in the very heart of what was then the Southern Confederacy. Upon substantially parallel though vastly varying lines, they flow westward and northward till they debouch into the Ohio River within a few miles of each other.

At a point near the boundary between Kentucky and Tennessee where these two rivers flow within eleven miles of each other, the Confederates had erected two fortresses to command them—Fort Henry and Fort Donelson.

These fortresses gave to the South control of the two rivers. It was Grant's idea that by the reduction of these works he might reverse this condition of affairs, and make of the two rivers facile avenues of Federal access to the heart of the Confederacy, where now they served the Confederates as roadways of approach to positions of the utmost strategic importance to the side that should master and hold them.

But Grant was only a brigadier-general of volunteers, in no way entitled to plan campaigns or to make suggestions for campaigns. Halleck had command of the department, with headquarters at St. Louis. Halleck was a major-general in the regular army and Grant's "superior officer." Halleck disliked, distrusted and detested Grant, and so when Grant asked permission to move against and reduce the Confederate strongholds on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, Halleck's reply was in effect an injunction to the inferior officer to mind his own business.

Grant was so sure, however, of his ability to accomplish this vitally important task that he persisted in his entreaties and many weeks were consumed in fruitless negotiations for the privilege of doing great work in a great way. At last through the influence of Commodore Foote, commanding the naval forces in that quarter, the discredited volunteer general was graciously permitted by his martinet superior to undertake and execute the first operation of the war which crowned the Federal arms with a victory of strategic importance. This permission, though long solicited, did not come to Grant until the very end of January, 1862, and it was in February that the combined land and naval forces moved for the capture of the Confederate strongholds.

The expedition moved first up the Tennessee river. Grant had about 15,000 men, a force which was presently swelled by reinforcement to 27,000. But his advance was delayed and the fleet, with scarcely any assistance from him, captured Fort Henry on the sixth of February. Then the gunboats steamed down the river to its mouth and thence up the Cumberland to assail Fort Donelson. In the meanwhile Grant pushed across the narrow neck of land between the two fortresses and closely invested that fort. The fleet made a determined assault but was beaten off in a badly crippled condition. Grant continued to assail the enemy's works throughout three days of storm and sleet and suffering, and at the end of that time the fortress surrendered with about fourteen thousand men in addition to a Confederate loss in killed and wounded of about two thousand. The greater part of the garrison had previously escaped.

This was the first conspicuous victory achieved anywhere by the Federal arms. Its moral effect was incalculable and strategically it was of the utmost importance. It made an end for the time being of the war in Kentucky which had been going on for some time, involving actions of some individual importance, though they had no vital bearing upon the strategic history of the war. It made Federal instead of Confederate highways of the two great rivers that in their course penetrated almost to the heart of the Confederacy. It made easy prey of Nashville as a vantage point from which the Federal forces might penetrate the South and assail its strongholds of resistance. Still further, as the event showed, it opened the way for that campaign which, as many critics think, resulted at Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, in the strategically decisive action of the war.

However that may be, by the accomplishment of his object in this campaign General Grant had achieved one of the most conspicuous and to the country one of the most enheartening victories that were accomplished by any general on either side from the beginning to the end of the war. He had every right to expect commendation. He had every right to expect permission to go on from conquest to conquering, and to have such forces placed at his command as might be necessary for the carrying out of his enterprises. But Grant was still only an officer of volunteers badly at outs with his department commander, and those were the days of red tape, the days in which achievement counted for nothing as against "rank" and "seniority."

It is true that Halleck, who had never risen above the grade of captain in the regular army, was at best only Grant's equal in "old army rank." But he had the favor of General Scott as Grant had not, and so, ex-captain that he was, he had been made a major-general in the regular service while Grant remained a mere brigadier-general of volunteers. It is true that Grant had captured two fortresses of enormous strength while Halleck had captured nothing whatsoever anywhere on earth. It is true that Grant had received the surrender of a powerful and important fort with fourteen thousand prisoners in addition to a loss on the part of his enemy of two thousand in killed and wounded, while Halleck had never received the surrender of anybody and never did to the end of the story. But Halleck was a major-general in the regular army in spite of his resignation during his captaincy—Grant also having been a captain when he resigned—and so Halleck as department commander was authorized not only to restrain Grant from this expedition, as he had done during two months of precious opportunity, but afterwards to suspend him for many weeks from command, to place him under virtual arrest and for weary weeks to restrain him from carrying out those obviously easy supplementary enterprises with which he desired to glory-crown his achievement. Grant wanted to march on Nashville, which lay helpless before him and offered to the Federals a strategic position of incalculable value. Halleck ordered him to go to his tent and hammock instead.