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Cumberland And Tennessee Rivers

On January 30, 1862, Department of the Missouri commander Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, whose region extended east to the Cumberland River in Kentucky, after much delay approved an expedition urged by Brig. Gen. U. S. Grant and Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote up the two important rivers leading through Kentucky to Tennessee, the Cumber land and the Tennessee. Grant's plan which he executed along with Flag Officer Foote, whose gunboats were at that time assigned to the army, was to first capture Fort Henry guarding the Tennessee River just inside the Tennessee border with a combined land and water assault.

Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River, were the southernmost points in the Confederate line and formed a concave arc anchored in the east on Cumberland Gap, in the center on Bowling Green, and in the west on Columbus, Kentucky. The forts were constructed in mid- to late-1861 at an ill-advised location where the two rivers closed to within ten miles of each other and then flowed north in parallel courses into the Ohio River. Brig. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman, given command of the forts in November 1861, immediately recognized their weaknesses—particularly those of Fort Henry, located on low ground subject to flooding and commanded by high ground to the east. Tilghman set about to construct new fort—Fort Heiman—on the Tennessee across from Fort Henry, but before it could be completed, Federal forces were on his doorstep.

On Febritary 4, the expedition arrived from Paducah below Fort Henry. The infantry under Brig. Gen. John A. McClernand and Brig. Gen. Charles F. Smith were put ashore on both sides of the Tennessee. On February 6, Foote's squadron, 4 river ironclads and 3 wooden gunboats, proceeded upriver to bombard the fort. Tilghman sent his infantry force overland to Fort Donelson. Only the heavy artillerists remained. With the 4 iron- dads presenting an ominous front line to the fort, Foote opened fire at twelve-thirty P.M. The action lasted less than two hours. Although many shots from the fort hit the irondads, only the USS Essex was disabled. Tilghman surrendered the fort to Foote and Grant's force, after struggling through the muddy approaches, arrived to take control of Fort Henry.

Elated with the ease at which Fort Henry was taken, Grant and Flag Officer Foote straightaway made plans to capture Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. Immediately after the surrender of Fort Henry, Foote sent his 3 wooden gunboats up the Tennessee. They destroyed a railroad bridge and chased and captured several Confederate vessels until they were stopped by Muscle Shoals at Florence, Alabama. Foote meanwhile had returned with all but one ironclad to Cairo, Illinois, for repairs. Grant was anxious to invest the fort as quickly as possible, but it was February 12 before the USS Carondelet returned down the Tennessee, entered the Cumberland, and steamed upriver to Fort Donelson.

Fort Donelson was an extensive earthen fort with outlying rifle pits and two tiers of water batteries. Flooded creeks emptied into the Cumberland upstream and downstream from the fort. In command at Donelson was Brig. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow. Department commander Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, from his headquarters in Bowling Green, Kentucky, dispatched reinforcements to the fort, but erred in not going to Fort Donelson himself to take command. As a result, leadership was the greatest Confederate weakness at the fort. In addition to Pillow, Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd arrived with his command as did Brig. Gen. Simon B. Buckner's forces. Buckner, the only professional soldier among the three, was outranked by two of the less-qualified political generals in the Confederate army.

On February 12, Grant arrived in front of the Fort Donelson perimeter after an overland march from Fort Henry. The next day he spread his forces in a thin line on the land approaches to the rifle pits and his probes found the defenses too strong for an immediate assault. He then awaited reinforcements and Foote, who was en route from Cairo with three city-class ironclads, two of which had just been outfitted and manned. Two wooden gunboats were recalled from the Tennessee River. The Carondelet engaged the water batteries twice on February 13, but her fire was ineffective. That night Foote arrived with his squadron and fresh troops, which, along with the arrival of Brig. Gen. Lew Wallace's command from Fort Henry, swelled Grant's army to 27,000-10,000 more than the combined commands of the three Rebel generals.

Shelling by Foote's gunboats on the afternoon of February 14 was ineffective. Two of the ironclads received damage to their steering, a third received a waterline hit, and Foote was wounded in the action. Perhaps encouraged by the work of the gunners and concerned about the increased strength of Grant's investing army, Pillow the next morning launched a savage attack on the Union right, while Grant was aboard Foote's flagship consulting with the wounded navy commander. The Confederates achieved sweeping initial successes against the position on the right, held by soldiers of Brig. Gen. John A. McClernand's reinforced division, but the Confederates, although they had first hammered and then rolled back four Union brigades, were stymied by a paralysis in their high command. By that time Grant returned and, deducing the Rebels were trying to break out of the fort, ordered a counterattack along the line. By the end of the day the armies on the Confederate left and center had returned to near their original positions. But on the Rebel right, C. E Smith had stormed and occupied part of the works commanding the Confederates' water batteries.

The night of February 15, fearing defeat, Floyd and Pillow planned an escape. They yielded command, placing Buckner in charge of the fort. Floyd, wanted in Washington for unscrupulous acts committed while he was secretary of war, fled to Nashville on a steamboat with about 2,000 Virginia soldiers. Pillow escaped separately. A rising cavalry commander, Lt. Col. Nathan Bedford Forrest, led his troopers and some foot soldiers out of the area on a flooded road leading toward Nashville.

The next morning when Buckner sent word to Grant for the appointment of commissioners to negotiate surrender terms, Grant replied, "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted." While Buckner considered the reply "ungenerous and unchivalrous," he surrendered. Later that day he and his friend and West Point classmate, Ulysses S. Grant, sat down at the Dover Hotel and visited. The dandified Buckner was treated with the respect he was accustomed to by his Federal captors. Grant even settled an old debt with Buckner. The friendship endured. Buckner, who lived into the twentieth century, was one of the last Civil War personalities to visit Grant when he was terminally ill and living at Mount McGregor in upstate New York. Buckner also acted as a pallbearer at Grant's funeral.

While the Federal navy and Army of the Mississippi were operating against New Madrid and Island Number 10, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee had ascended the Tennessee River and had gone" into camp at Pittsburg Landing, the closest all-weather landing to the Confederate stronghold and strategic railroad town of Corinth, Mississippi, and Crump's Landing upriver from Savannah, where Grant established his headquarters. Grant awaited the arrival of the Army of the Ohio under Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, marching overland from Nashville. The combined armies would then, under the overall direction of department commander Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, march on Corinth.

But the Confederate leadership hoped to attack and crush the Army of the Tennessee's five divisions camped at Pittsburg Landing before Buell arrived. In the weeks following the loss of Fort Donelson and the evacuation of Nashville, Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston used the railroads to rush troops from the Gulf Coast to reinforce his newly constituted Army of the Mississippi, numbering 44,000, gathered in and around Corinth. News of the rapid approach of Buell's troops caused the Confederates to plan their strike before the arrival at Corinth of Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn's Army of the West, then en route from northwest Arkansas. With Gen. P.G.T Beauregard as second-in-command, and corps led by Maj. Gens. Braxton Bragg, William Hardee, Leonidas Polk, and Brig. Gen. John C. Breckinridge, Johnston planned a surprise attack on the Federal camps.

On Sunday morning, April 6, while Grant was at his Savannah headquarters where he was coordinating the deployment of Buell's army, one division of which had reached Savannah on the evening of April 5, the Confederates assailed and surprised the soldiers of Brig. Gen. Benjamin Prentiss's division camped southeast of Rhea's Field and Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman's in their camps around Shiloh Meeting House. Because Grant had expected the Rebels to remain in Corinth, key subordinates had ignored reports from pickets that the Southerners had taken position the previous afternoon within one mile of the Federal encampments. Despite being taken by surprise, most of the Yankee soldiers, including many new recruits in Sherman's and Prentiss's divisions, did not panic and run. Instead, ground was given stubbornly in the face of slashing attacks, first as Hardee's, then Bragg's and Polk’s battle lines were committed in human waves.

As the Federal lines were pushed back, Union troops rallied along a farmer's trace connecting the Corinth and Hamburg roads that was to become the Hornets' Nest. Brigades from Prentiss's command and that of Brig. Gen. W.H.L. Wallace-6,000 men in all—held the Hornets' Nest for more than seven hours against numerous piecemeal attacks launched by Bragg. Meanwhile, on the Federal left, Albert Sidney Johnston, while directing Confederate attacks near Sarah Bell's Peach Orchard, was mortally wounded at two-thirty in the afternoon. Beauregard assumed command, but the Rebel advance was slowing. It was not until five-thirty P.M. that the Confederates, having forced back the Union left and right, massed 62 artillery pieces and hammered the defenders of the Hornets' Nest. Assailed from the front and with Confederates closing in on their flanks, the Union center at the Hornets' Nest gave way.

Though Confederates captured more than 2,000 prisoners there, the Hornets' Nest stand by Prentiss's and W.H.L. Wallace's people gave Grant time to form a new line, backed by 53 cannons, on the high ground behind Tilghman and Dill branches. The Union left was anchored on the Tennessee River and the right on the Snake Creek bottom. By this time, Grant received reinforcements: Brig. Gen. Lew Wallace's division on the right and the first of Buell's army, Brig. Gen. William Nelson's division, on the left. Two timberclad Union gunboats—the USS Tyler and the USS Lexington—added their fire to the army's and the Confederates could not sustain a drive against the final Federal line as darkness fell.

Buell's men throughout the night continued to disembark from steamboats at Pittsburg Landing. By the morning of April 7, Grant's effective force numbered more than 39,000. At six A.M. Beauregard, unaware of the number of Federal reinforcements, prepared to resume the Southern attack. But he was too late, as Buell's Army of the Ohio troops on Grant's left had already seized the initiative. Lew Wallace's division on the Yankee right soon moved out. Grant's troops advanced in a broad front, rolling up the Confederates who had spent the night in the camps of four of his five divisions. After one last attempted thrust in mid-afternoon at Water Oaks Pond, Beauregard ordered a Confederate withdrawal, which by April 8 carried his army back to Corinth. A pursuit force, Sherman's badly mauled division, sent south by Grant on April 8, was met by the Rebel rear guard under Lt. Col. N. B. Forrest at Fallen Timbers. Sherman then broke off the pursuit.

Casualties at the Battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing as the North called it, were the largest in the war up to that time—nearly 24,000 casualties or about 25 percent of the number engaged. This figure was greater than in all the battles fought in the Revolutionary War which lasted more than eight years. After Shiloh, it is said, the South did not smile again. Though he was criticized for being caught off guard, Grant's cool handling of the battle and his timely reinforcements blunted the Confederate attempt to regain the initiative, drive the Union forces from West and Middle Tennessee, and carry the war deep into Kentucky. It also continued the Union campaign to carry the war into Mississippi and sever the Confederacy along the "Father of Waters?' The bloody battle was a harbinger of how the war was to be fought in the three years following the Battle of Shiloh.

Jay Wertzand Edwin C. Bearss. . William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1997.

Guide to the Battle of Shiloh For two of the most chaotic and ravaging days of the War, the Union forces fended off the Rebels at Shiloh. Losses were great - more than 20,000 casualties out of 100,000 Union and Confederate troops. Here, eyewitness accounts by battle participants and explicit directions to points of interest provide an invaluable resource for both travelers and non-travelers who seek a greater understanding of this devastating event.

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