CHAPTER III
HENRY AND DONELSON
UR company left Corinth in September and went through North Alabama and Middle Tennessee, and I joined Forrest and arrived in the vicinity of Nashville in November. After scouting and guarding some convoys down the Cumberland River, we were ordered to support the defenses of Forts Henry and Donelson, on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, respectively, just ten miles apart, where the two rivers parallel each other in their northward courses across Tennessee.
I was now to realize, in my first actual experience, the fullness of the horrors that wait upon the tinsel glory of that long-worshiped art of human destruction which men call “war.”
General Forrest had secured, early in the war, several hundred old-style cap-and-ball navy pistols, most valuable weapons for cavalry.
On December 28, 1861, at Sacramento, Ky., we had our first fight with a troop of Union cavalry, about equal in number of men to ours. After a sharp engagement, we succeeded in putting the enemy to flight. The Union troopers lost Captain Bacon, killed, and several men killed and wounded, and we lost two men, killed, and several wounded.
After this skirmish, we retired within the lines at Fort Donelson.
On February 6, 1862, General Grant, assisted by the gunboat fleet under Commodore Foote, vigorously attacked and captured Fort Henry, defended by Gen. Lloyd Tilghman.