 After the fall of Fort Henry, Albert Sidney Johnston suddenly became concerned with the defenses at Fort Donaldson along the Cumberland River. Brigadier General Bushrod Johnson was the commander in charge of Donaldson on February 7th, but Johnston started sending in reinforcements with new commanders to strengthen the Fort's defenses. He first sent Brigadier Generals Gideon Pillow and Simon Bolivar Buckner along with the soldiers in their command to defend the Fort. Before the Battle of Fort Donaldson would take place, another Brigadier General, John Floyd, former United States Secretary of War, would also be sent to take command of the Fort. So there were four Brigadier Generals at Fort Donaldson during the battle. According to the US Army regulations, which the Confederacy adopted, the hierarchy of two officers of the same rank would be decided according to who was given the commission first. And if that was on the same day, it would be according to who had the higher rank previously, and if that was the same, who got that commission first. So this put Floyd clearly at the top in Bushrod Johnson at the bottom of the four Brigadier Generals. Pillow outranked Buckner, but the two generals did not care for each other. I told the background two episodes ago about how the two of them established a heated rivalry during a previous political campaign, and the wounds had never healed. So Fort Donaldson, when the attack began, was a situation in which the rankings alone would suggest that Confederate leadership was incredibly concentrated and should have been a great benefit to the Fort's defenses. The reality was probably the opposite. John Floyd may have had the highest rank, but he was a political appointee, and everyone knew it. He had no real military experience, and since he had been the United States Secretary of War only a year earlier, his loyalty was in question. The general consensus among the men at the Fort, and historians seem to agree, is that the hierarchy ran in the opposite direction from ability. John Floyd didn't know what he was doing. Pillow was probably less technically qualified than Buckner, but the real issue between the two of them was their unwillingness to work together very well. Pillow was angry that Floyd, a political appointee, outranked him, and neither he nor Buckner wanted to cooperate with the other, though on the battlefield Buckner would be less willing to put their animosities aside, likely because Pillow technically outranked him only by the date of their appointments. So although I won't go into any details about all the planning and insubordination, these generals constantly worked against each other. Different historians placed the blame more heavily at the feet of one man or another, but it seems certain that they all share some of the responsibility for the outcome of the battle. On paper, the combined Confederate leadership at Fort Donaldson should have had an easy time against Ulysses S. Grant, who didn't even have the confidence of his own commander, who actually was working to replace him even after the capture of Fort Henry. In fact, the replacement that General Halleck had in mind to take over Grant's command was a retired officer named Ethan Hitchcock, and the only reason that Hitchcock declined the offer of command was that he believed Grant was already doing everything that he could. In other words, Grant's potential replacement had more confidence in Grant than his own commander. So on the Union side, you have an officer that nobody in Union leadership had any real confidence in, and on the Confederate side, you have a total of four brigadier generals and a single fort. But if Grant's superiors had little confidence in him, the men under him were who were important. When one soldier from Indiana was captured right before the attack on Fort Donaldson, he was interrogated at a Confederate camp. They asked who commanded the Union army near the fort, and the soldier answered, General U.S. Grant. The Confederates asked where Grant was from, as they'd never heard of him before. The soldiers gave a prescient reply that showed well-placed confidence in his commander, quote, You will soon know him well enough, end quote. Over the course of the next few days, the soldier would be proven correct. I'm Chris Calton, and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. In the previous two episodes, we've looked at the Union and Confederate forces around Kentucky and the Mississippi River and the Battle of Fort Henry, which was the Confederacy's poorly constructed defense of the Tennessee River. In the next two episodes, we will be looking at the much more exciting Battle of Fort Donaldson, in which Ulysses S. Grant earns national fame. The move on Fort Donaldson came on the morning of February 12th. The gunboats started down the Cumberland River at 4.30 in the morning, moving slowly against the river currents. A few hours later, Grant's army of now roughly 15,000 men started moving overland from Fort Henry 12 miles away from Donaldson. The first contact between Union and Confederate soldiers on this day came when a group of Northerners came upon a cavalry regiment under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest is probably more famous, or infamous, as the case may be, than any other figure in this story other than Ulysses S. Grant. He became rich as a Tennessee slave trader prior to the war, and he's most well known for his role as the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Just as an interesting piece of trivia, by the way, his great grandson, Nathan Bedford Forrest III, was the first American general killed in action during World War II, so that might be useful on trivia night one day. But at this moment, he was a cavalry colonel for the Confederacy. When he saw the Union infantry line advancing, he had his men dismount and hold a line against them. Forrest's men were much more well equipped than most of the Southerners at Fort Donaldson. A shortage of arms and ammunition meant that a lot of the Southerners were armed with shotguns or hunting rifles, neither of which were very effective for combat. Forrest's men were armed with breech loading rifles, putting them at an advantage of arms against the Union infantry. For several hours, they held off the Union advance before Forrest ordered his men to fall back. February 12th wasn't a very exciting initiation of the battle to come. The Union advance was slowed not just by Forrest's cavalry and other Southerners, but by problems within their own regiments, such as friendly fire from the 29th Illinois, that took out a handful of Union men. Grant also rejected his West Point training and neglected to have his men entrench, a decision made because his men didn't have the proper tools and Grant wanted to advance too quickly to make it worthwhile, but it also meant that the Union forces were vulnerable. Grant apparently believed that the Union gunboats would be able to make quick work at Fort Donaldson just as they had with Fort Henry, but this would not be the case. But the Confederate leadership wasn't eager to take the advantage. Full Floyd was not on site just yet, so Gideon Pillow was still in charge, and he was telegraphing Floyd and Albert Sidney Johnston to request reinforcements. Floyd and Buckner wanted to abandon the fort, but Pillow thought he could hold it if he had more men, and Johnston ordered Floyd and his troops to make their way to Donaldson, where Floyd would take command. But Floyd hadn't received much in the way of specific instructions from General Johnston, and he apparently believed that the goal of his movement to Donaldson was to hold the fort only long enough for Johnston to move his own army out of Bowling Green, Kentucky, and into Nashville, so Floyd apparently believed that he was just going to hold off the Union advance for a little while, whereas Johnston believed that they could hold the Cumberland River entirely. Meanwhile, Grant's immediate superior, Don Carlos Buell, who had up to this point refused to send Grant any reinforcements of his own, finally realized that he was looking overly cautious and ordered some of his men to reinforce Grant, though their arrival would take some time, as most of the Union transport ships were already occupied carrying supplies for Grant's army. So the first day of the battle was largely uneventful, aside from a handful of skirmishes and the movement of troops. When the battle really commenced on February 13th, neither side was very well prepared. The defenses around Donaldson were set so that the outer defense stretched in three columns, from the fort itself around the nearby city of Dover that sat just down river from Donaldson. Unlike the Union infantry, the Confederates were entrenched, but not very effectively, as their trenches were hastily dug and incomplete. The fort itself had a more effective battery than Fort Henry did, giving it a better defense of the river. Grant's strategy for the 13th was to test the Confederate lines to look for weak points. The attack came first from the river, even though most of the Union ships were still making their way to the battle. But the gunboat the Carindalette was present, and it opened fire on the fort. As the gunboat and the fort fired on each other, each side landed one good hit. For the Union, the second to last shell they sent toward Fort Donaldson, hit one of the fort's cannons, dismounting it. The commander of the river batteries, Captain Dixon, was ducking to avoid the shells when the explosion sent a tool flying, hitting him in the head and killing him instantly. A handful of the gunners were also killed or wounded, so the cannon was taken out of commission and the commander of the batteries was dead. Only two shots from the fort hit the Carindalette, but one of them took the ship out. This shot burst through the engine room of the ship and destroyed the boiler. Miraculously, nobody was injured in this, in contrast to the Essex during the Battle of Fort Henry, in which many men were scalded to death when the boiler was hit. The crew avoided any serious disaster, but the ship itself was forced out of the fight by this hit. Although this doesn't sound like much activity, the firing between the Carindalette and the fort took place over the course of most of the day, and it wasn't enough to provide Grant the opportunity to attack from the land while the fort's batteries were tied up. On the 13th, two major assaults were sent against the Confederates. The first came from Brigadier General Charles Smith, who commanded Grant's second division. He pushed against the Confederate right where Buckner was in command. The other assault was waged by Brigadier General John McClearnand, commander of Grant's first division. McClearnand held the line against both the Confederate center and the Confederate left, but for his attack, he sent one of his brigades to push against the Confederate center. In both assaults, the Union would find out that conquering Fort Donaldson would be much more difficult than Fort Henry. Smith's assault faced a number of challenges. He was looking for any opening on the Confederate right, and he was slowly moving his men around the enemy line, but the terrain made things difficult. One of his brigades was ordered to fix their bayonets and ready a charge, but the move against the Confederate defenses was uphill, as the soldiers moved in, in the words of one regimental officer, quote. At the foot of the hill, the enemy poured on us a terrible fire of musketry, grape and canister, with a few shells, end quote. The Confederates had also felled a number of trees around their entrenchments to make it even more difficult for the Union to advance against them. For hours, the Northerners continued to slowly push against the Confederate right, but they were constantly halted by enemy fire, felled trees, and the natural incline of the ground around them. Finally, after losing several dozen men in a single regiment killed or wounded, they backed off. McClearnand's assault went even more poorly. He was probing the Confederate left, and as he looked for a weakness there, he decided to send his weakest brigade under the command of Colonel William Morrison to push against the well-fortified Confederate center. This was a costly decision. At first, though, it looked like the assault was going well. The terrain was much more favorable to the Union advance than smithsmen were dealing with. As they moved in, they faced no enemy fire, but as they got close enough, Morrison himself was suspicious of how easy the advance was progressing, later writing quote. He had advanced within less than fifty paces of the enemy's works without his offering any opposition, and were making our way slowly, but surely, they were undoubtedly waiting for us, end quote. As the Northerners closed in, the Confederates remained hidden in their trenches, waiting patiently as the brigade under the command of Adolphus Hyman, the man for whom the undefended Fort Hyman was named, if you remember from the previous episode. This was the Fort captured without resistance at the outset of the Battle of Fort Henry. In that attack, the Confederates left without a fight, but this time, they would hold to their ground. Along with his infantry, he had a couple of batteries supporting him. When the Union men were within spitting distance, he ordered the Artillerists to open fire with all their guns. The Confederate Artillerists suffered from return fire and lost a good handful of men, but the destruction against the Union line was devastating. The Northerners were driven back only to try their advance a total of three times before finally giving up, and each advance cost them several men. The Confederate casualties amounted to about forty men. The Union lost upwards of two hundred or more, though different sources give different estimates. The worst fate befell the Union wounded, who were left on the ground, unable to escape. The Artilleries set the surrounding foliage on fire, and the flames spread along the hill, burning those who could not escape alive. One of these Confederates left an account of, quote, one poor wretch who had strength enough left to crawl up the breastworks on our left this morning, and was helped over the logs and laid on a blanket by a fire, but death soon relieved him, end quote. Another southerner later wrote, quote, the groans and screams of the poor helpless men suffering this double torch were agonizing, but no help was sent, and death finally put an end to their misery, end quote. The sight of enemy soldiers burning alive and their cries of agony were too much for some of the Confederates who actually broke ranks to try to pull the Union men out of the flames. As the sun set, the fighting settled down, but this offered no respite for the soldiers, particularly the Northerners. The past few days had seen relatively good weather for February in the Upper South, but a snowstorm decided now to sweep through the area. Most Union troops were without shelter. Instead of sleep, they had to keep moving to avoid freezing to death or losing limbs to the frostbite. One soldier wrote that, quote, even the horses after their manner betrayed the suffering they were enduring, end quote. Many of the soldiers had left their coats back at Fort Henry, and although later reports exaggerated this, some men had no blankets. Typically, soldiers would avoid lighting a fire at night as it could be a target for enemy fire, but faced with the terrible cold, many regiments decided to risk it. One officer said he would, quote, rather be shot and have his men shot by Rebs than all of us freeze to death, end quote. Apparently other regimental commanders agreed, and several companies built fires. To keep the blood circulating, the men were ordered to march double time in circles around the fire, though at least one account attributes this to an order made by a regular soldier that everyone else mistook as an officer's command. Either way, it probably saved some of the men from frostbite, but at the expense of a much needed night's sleep between days of combat. Things looked up for the Union on the 14th as roughly 6,000 reinforcements arrived on transport ships during the night. But more importantly, the Union gunboats under Andrew Whole Foot finally arrived, giving Grant another means of taking out Fort Donaldson. If the Confederate defensive line was too strong to break, he now had the power to assault the Fort from the river. On land, he had led his sharpshooters harass the Confederates, who had little recourse with their shotguns and smoothbores. But no significant army engagements took place, as the battle on the 14th would be on the river. On both the Union and Confederate side, the belief was that this would be another Fort Henry, as Foot's flotilla would make quick work of the Fort. Foot's force was actually smaller than the one that attacked Henry a week earlier, and Fort Donaldson was much more well equipped. But he assumed that the strategy that had proven so successful previously would work again here. The gunboat started firing at the Fort from more than a mile away, starting their attack in mid-afternoon. Pillow gave the order to hold fire from all but the two largest cannons as well. Almost immediately, the Confederates had problems. Their best gun was a single rifled cannon, but it got jammed early into the fighting. This meant that as the Union boats started to close in, they were taking almost no fire from Fort Donaldson. But Foot's idea was to anchor his boat only a few hundred yards from the Fort, so they could hit them with everything they had at close range, which would topple the Fort that much more quickly. This was a mistake. When the gunboats were maybe 400 yards away from Donaldson, the Confederates opened fire with every gun they had. Most of the cannons were old smoothbore models, but at this range, they were destructive even against the iron plating of the Union boats. The USS St. Louis was the first gunboat to be taken out. One shell pierced the hull right around the waterline, so that as it rocked in the river, water would pour in through the hull. Another hit broke through the pilot house and killed the ship's pilot. This also happened to be the boat that Foot was on, and the same shot that killed the pilot wounded him in the ankle. Similar damage afflicted the USS Louisville. Early in the fighting, these boats were taken out of commission. The USS Pittsburgh was the next ironclad to go down. It took nearly 40 hits, and by some miracle, only two members of its crew suffered any injuries, with nobody killed. But the boat itself was severely damaged, as several shots tore through its iron plating, opening holes near the waterline, and it was now quickly filling up with water. The ship was taken out of range of the Fort's guns before it sank, allowing the crew to make it to the shore. The worst damage was received by the Karen de Lett, which had been repaired after the damage it suffered the previous day. Part of the damage came when one of the ship's own guns exploded, knocking its crew unconscious. But most of the destruction came from the Confederate shells. As one crewman described it, the shells flew against the ship, quote, taking flagstaffs and smokestacks, and tearing off the side armor as lightning tears the bark from a tree. There was so much blood on the decks that our men could not work the guns without slipping, end quote. Another survivor remembered seeing, quote, three men with their heads off, the sight almost sickened me, and I turned my head away, end quote. This was the fate of the four ironclad gunboats in Foots Flotilla. In total, the Union Navy suffered 54 casualties in this battle, a high count for naval warfare. But from a military point of view, the men were more expendable than the boats that were lost in the battle. The Confederates were elated. At the outset of the battle, they expected to lose, but as they saw the Union ships retreat one by one, they realized that they had the upper hand. One gunner threw his cap in the air in excitement and shouted, quote, come on, you cowardly scoundrels, you are not at Fort Henry, end quote. With the gunboats repelled, General Grant decided that the best thing he could do now was to fortify his own troops around Donaldson and wait for the gunboats to be repaired. He went to speak to Captain Foote, and he would not return to the battlefield until the following afternoon. As the day closed on the 14th, Confederate spirits were high. They finally felt like they were winning the battle. At midnight, the officers called a council of war to discuss their plan of action now that the Union was vulnerable. The goal was to hold the fort long enough to let the Confederate forces retreat to Nashville. The plan they formulated was to have Pillow lead the attack on the Confederate left. Buckner would move his troops to the center of the line, Pillow would break through the Union line and open the door to escape, and Buckner would hold off the rest of the Union forces to cover the retreat. The attack was scheduled to begin as soon as the sun rose, giving the Confederates the element of surprise. Unfortunately, maneuvering troops in the dark night over icy terrain is easier said than done, and not everybody was in position in time. Still the same conditions that slowed the Confederates, particularly the cold weather, hindered the Union, and the Confederate movement went unnoticed by the northern skirmishers who would probably occupy trying to keep warm. The assault began around 6 a.m., and despite the setbacks, the Confederates still had the element of surprise on their side. When the order was given, the Southerners charged out firing at their surprised enemy and sounding off their famous rebel yell. As soon as the firing started, the Union forces nearest to them, under the command of Colonel John MacArthur, jumped into action. The gray uniforms of the Confederates blended well with the snow, and they had trouble seeing their targets, but they shot at the enemy whenever they could identify one, though the firing wasn't very accurate. Gideon Pillow was all over the field, giving his men orders and encouragement. His strategy was to try to direct his soldiers around the enemy to flank them. The Northerners tried to hold them off, but it wasn't long before they were overwhelmed as the Southerners started appearing behind them, and they were running out of ammunition. The Northerners were now being assaulted from the front, the rear, and their right. The Union officers who tried to encourage their men to stand firm made easy targets for the Confederates who picked them off. As the field started to pile up with dead and wounded, men who ran out of their own ammunition started salvaging what they could from their fallen comrades. As one officer described to the scene, quote, so thickly was the battlefield strung with dead and wounded that I could have trekked across it, stepping almost every step upon a prostrate body, end quote. Hundreds of men fell wounded between both sides during the combat, too many to carry them all to the already overflowing filled hospitals nearby. Many of them were left bleeding in the snow, where in many cases they would linger for days without anybody coming to help them. One regimen alone, the 18th Illinois, fought until it was completely out of ammunition and left the battlefield, leaving behind 250 comrades dead or wounded. The plan for Nathan Bedford Forest and his cavalry was to circle around the enemy, but the terrain slowed them down, forcing his men to dismount and operate his infantry. As a result, the Union line was already breaking by the time they finally arrived to their destination, but they showed up just as one Union battery was trying to hitch the horses to the single operable howitzer they had left. When Forest's men pounced on them, they were forced to retreat, letting the cannon fall into Confederate hands. The Union response was a mess. Grant was currently onboard the USS St. Louis, talking to Captain Foot, unaware of the goings on with his army. His subordinates were reluctant to respond without orders. In the Union center, Brigadier General Lou Wallace, commander of Grant's third division, received word of the attack and refused to reinforce McClearnand, reluctant to abandon the position until Grant gave him new orders. When a second messenger showed up though, Wallace knew he had to do something. With tears in his eyes, the messenger, a regimental officer, said, quote, our flank is turned. The regiments are being crowded back of the center. We are using ammunition taken from the dead and wounded. The whole army is in danger, end quote. It was roughly 8.30 in the morning when Wallace finally decided to reinforce McClearnand, and it would be another hour before they would actually arrive where they were needed. When the new troops showed up, the Union men they were trying to reinforce didn't know if they were friend or foe when the two northern regiments exchanged friendly fire before they realized what was going on. The regiments broke into confusion and the reinforcements may have done more harm than good. Over in the Confederate right, where Buckner was supposed to be covering the retreat, the Confederacy was having a bit more trouble. While Pillow was pressing hard against the Union right, Buckner sent three regiments to press against the Union in front of him. They were driven back by Union artillery. Buckner had his men hold their line, but he refused to push aggressively. Pillow was pushing back against a force that at this moment was maybe twice the size of his own, but Buckner's conservative tactics made it easier for the Union to send new troops against Pillow. Even with the weak assault from Buckner, the Union troops were forced to eventually move back, even though the order to retreat didn't make it to one Illinois regiment. Left behind by their retreating comrades, the 11th Illinois were unsupported when Nathan Bedford Forestsmen made their way up behind them. Now the Union left started to crumble just as the Union right had been doing. Grant's army was now unfolding on both sides, but Pillow's men were running out of ammunition. Pillow wanted to know what was going on. He figured that the way that his men had been cutting down the Union right, the enemy should have broken completely by now. When he came across Forest, he demanded to know what the Colonel had been doing this whole time. Forest presented the captured howitzer as well as a handful of Illinois prisoners and said, a bang orders general by protecting your left flank. Pillow was satisfied. Now his frustration turned to general Buckner. He saw that both lines were breaking, but he suspected that the enemy was falling back to reorganize and what the Confederacy needed was a coordinated assault from both sides. Pillow on the Union right and Buckner on the Union left. So Pillow took off to find Buckner. But when he found Buckner, Buckner and his men were still settled in the trenches, not advancing despite their enemy falling back. Pillow outranked Buckner and he ordered Buckner to press harder against the Union left. Buckner wasn't happy about taking orders from Pillow, but he complied. While taking fire from the Union line, the Confederates pressed on toward them, dropping to their knees to reload. Because of the snow, many of their old flintlock muskets became useless, but they closed the gap. Meanwhile, Pillow took off once again and saw Union shell take out an entire Confederate artillery team. He found a nearby Virginia infantry regiment and led them to the cannon that no longer had a team to operate it and he took command of the cannon himself, quickly instructing the untrained infantry in how to operate the gun. For another unmanned gun, Pillow sent forest with his dismounted cavalry to take over manning the cannon despite not being trained for it. Just as they had done earlier in the morning, the Union line held until they were out of ammunition, but they were eventually forced to fall back. The Union line was now retreating from all flanks. The Southerners pressed in, now under orders to rely on their bayonets. They moved down a ravine and swarmed on a Union battery covering the retreat. When they met, both sides resorted to hand-to-hand combat. Those who had them fired off pistols, but the rest fought with bayonets, swords or bowy knives. Driving off the Union artilleryists, the Southerners captured another Union cannon as well as several horses. They also captured a hospital tent recovering 60 Confederate prisoners. As the Confederates were losing steam, Nathan Bedford Forrest led his cavalry to wherever they were needed. Forrest's horses took the worst of the fighting. His original horse had suffered several wounds but was still trucking, but now it finally collapsed from exhaustion and blood loss. He mounted one of the recently captured horses that had been pulling a Union cannon. Barely a moment after he mounted it and started moving down the ravine, his new horse was hit in the thigh. As he started to move his limping horse away, a cannonball hit the poor animal square in the body just behind Forrest's legs, ripping through and killing the horse instantly. Over the course of the war, 29 horses would be killed while Nathan Bedford Forrest was riding them. But the Union line had broken and now there was a veritable stampede of Union soldiers retreating. But the Southerners were running out of steam as well. They had driven back the entire Union line which had now crumbled but their leaders ordered them to fall back. The morning looks like a rousing Confederate success but they neglected to take advantage of it. Although this was a mistake, it's easy to understand their hesitation. A gritty account of the aftermath of the morning fight was left by a Virginia soldier. He wrote, quote, our own men had there removed most of the enemy's wounded that they had not carried off with them as they fell back. But the dead were still lying there in numbers that astonished me for the duration of the conflict had not been such as to prepare me for such slaughter. It was terrible. The dead lay in every conceivable position and were shot in every part of the body. Whenever a face was turned up to view as many were, its ghastly power was rendered more horrid by contrast with blood and gaping wounds. The ground was all along, strewn with blankets, canteens, haversacks, knapsacks, guns, cartridge boxes and every kind of equipment. The trees and saplings were all sacrificed in torn and many of the latter cut down by balls. In one place where the battle raged with greatest fierceness where in fact our forces having first driven the enemy back were themselves forced to retreat a little way and there again drove the enemy back. I could but stop and note the marks of the storm that had passed and repast over it. The growth was mostly small and it was cut down by the ball so that it looked something like I have seen a thick growth of corn that had been swept over and cut down and shattered by a severe hellstorm. The dead were mostly slain by the balls of the infantry. Those slain by the artillery were of course more mangled in torn but were not I thought so horrid to look on as those who were killed by smaller arms retained most or all of their features and limbs and thus seemed to force on the mind a stronger realization of the scene around him. End quote. The plan was to open the door for escape but the Confederate leadership did not seem to be of one mind about some of the details of the plan. Apparently, Pillow believed that once his assault opened the door for escape his men would move back to their encampments to retrieve their supplies and equipment and then escape. Buckner on the other hand had his men carry their knapsacks with them so they could flee without returning to their camps. This misunderstanding would prove important in the outcome of the plan. Most importantly, Grant would return to the battlefield during the law and take command. The result would be to turn an undeniable Confederate victory into one of the most important union successes of the war. This will be the topic of the next episode. Historical Controversies is a production of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. If you would like to support the show please subscribe on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher and leave a positive review. You can also support the show financially by donating at Mises.org slash supportHC. If you would like to explore the rest of our content please visit Mises.org. That's M-I-S-E-S dot O-R-G.