(April 8, 2018) Although the Union capture of Fort Donelson on February 16, 1862 is commonly credited to Brigadier General Ulysses Grant, the cause of the outcome is more a matter of a Union, or Confederate, viewpoint. Confederate leadership arguably lost the battle more than Grant won it.
[To support my blog buy my books at My Amazon Author Page]
As the map below illustrates, by 14 February Grant had the Rebel fortifications completely invested on the landward (SxSW) side with the divisions of three commanders: C. F. Smith, Lew Wallace and John McClernand. Although obvious from the beginning of the siege on 13 February that the Confederates must eventually either surrender or attack, Grant’s soldiers had no defensive earthworks. After a naval bombardment failed on 14 February, Grant went to a shipboard meeting on the morning of the 15th with Admiral Andrew Foote to discuss future combined operations. Although Grant did not tell his division commanders that he would be absent that morning he left them with instructions “to do nothing to bring on an engagement until they received further orders, but to hold their positions.”
As Grant should have expected, the Confederates attacked. They chose to assault the south end of the Union line at five o’clock the very morning of the Grant-Foote meeting. Their purpose was to gain an escape route. The attack progressively forced Union General McClernand’s division toward Wallace’s division. At eight o’clock he asked Wallace for reinforcements. Given Grant’s standing orders to “do nothing” Wallace sent a message to Grant’s HQ asking for permission to help McClernand. When Wallace learned that Grant was not at the army’s HQ, he started sending reinforcements to McClernand on his own.
The combined Wallace and McClernand forces finally stopped the Rebel advance at noon. But the Confederates had already won enough ground to open escape roads to both the south and east. Unfortunately they had a diffident commander. Brigadier General John Floyd had assumed command only five days earlier and still relied upon advice from Brigadier General Gideon Pillow, the previous commander. Despite having opened the escape routes, Pillow ordered all of his soldiers back into the Rebel lines about 1:30 PM. Notwithstanding orders from Floyd to retake the field, Pillow argued for time to replenish supplies, which caused a delay that lasted the rest of the day. It was one of the biggest blunders of the war. A lull had fallen over the battlefield for several hours after Pillow’s advance had been stopped at noon during which the Southerners could have escaped.
Grant did not arrive until one or two o’clock in the afternoon. First, he sent a message to the Admiral Foote asking that the navy make a morale-building show of force in front of the Rebel’s river-facing cannons because “a terrible conflict [had] ensued in my absence.” Next he ordered Wallace and McClernand to retire and “throw up earthworks.” But when he learned that the Confederates had uncovered escape paths Grant changed his mind and told the two to counterattack in order to close the escape hatches. Grant also told division commander Smith to attack at the north end, correctly reasoning that the Rebels weakened their lines in that sector in order to make the breakout at the south end.
After Smith penetrated the Rebel fortifications at the north end, the Confederates concluded—probably erroneously—that they would need to surrender. Metaphorically, they viewed Smith as the proverbial camel with his nose under the Confederate tent. The next morning he could fire on the flank and rear of nearly all the Rebel troops. Since it was early in the war Floyd and Pillow feared that they might be hanged for treason if captured. Floyd, for example, had been secretary of war under the president preceding Lincoln, James Buchanan. Pillow was a Major General in the “old army” and a leader in the Mexican war fifteen years earlier. Consequently the two used the only available Confederate boats to escape. Floyd took with him all four regiments from his home state of Virginia. Cavalryman Nathan Bedford Forrest led five hundred of his men on a breakout through saddle-high swamp water. The remaining 11,500 would be surrendered.
The fort’s third-in-command, Brigadier General Simon Buckner, asked Grant for capitulation terms to which the latter famously replied “nothing but unconditional and immediate surrender.” Buckner had hoped for better terms partly because he and Grant were prewar friends. In fact, he had staked the penniless Grant with enough money to get home to St. Louis when the latter arrived in New York City from California after resigning from the army in disgrace eight years earlier. Buckner’s son (Jr.) commanded the Tenth Army at the Battle of Okinawa during World War II. He declined an implied request to discipline a marine for hoisting the Confederate battle flag over the captured Japanese fortress at Shuri Castle.
Confederate prisoners from Fort Donelson were shipped to a Chicago prisoner of war camp known as Camp Douglas where living conditions were brutal. About 4,200 of the camp’s prisoners died of disease during the war. Their bodies were eventually dumped into a mass grave at Chicago’s Oak Woods Cemetery. Local activists plan to hold a rally on April 22, 2018 to demand the removal of a statue. Instead they want to erect a statue to Ida B. Wells who was a black journalist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also buried in the cemetery. The commander of the Camp Douglas Sons of Confederate Veterans plans to attend “to have a civil conversation” about adding a monument for Wells but, presumably, keeping the Confederate monument in place. The Confederate plot is managed by the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elmwood, Illinois.
Civil War Chat 
Simpson is not perfect, but he is better than the latest wave of Grant hagiography.
I told Rose he would do well to craft an annotated piece to Grant’s Memoirs that shows where the contemporary evidence lines up and where it does not. Grant’s Memoirs are well written and perceptive, but also crafted by a sick man near death recalling events from 30 years in his past.
It was eye-opening reading soldier letters from the 1864 Virginia Campaign. They do not have the best things to say about Grant’s generalship. Nor did many generals, even after the war.
I had the same reaction because I did not realize how much Grant had himself affected the typical historian’s assessment of his performance.
In truth, Grant lied . . . a lot. One glaring example was his persistent claim after the battle that his army was not taken by surprise at Shiloh.
He would also unjustifiably throw subordinates under the bus in order to try and save his reputation. Lew Wallace and Benjamin Prints are two examples.
He cannot escape responsibility for his scandalous presidency and his vengeful politics. He was, for example, a proponent of the Tenure of Office Act when it was used to impeach President Johnson, but only a year later he was angry with Congress for failing to abolish it completely at his request shortly after *he* became President.
Good post, and I like that you credit Grant for ordering Smith to attack. Grant did not panic at Fort Donelson and he of course was aided by poor Rebel leadership.
They are moving from public monuments to ones in cemeteries. Is there any way to stop this? One also gets the feeling that what would be considered a war crime today (Union prisoner camps was notoriously poorly run) is being washed away as the Just Cause narrative builds steam. The article itself is biased in its use of facts and quotations, but without the more obvious spin of Fox, Salon, MSBC, and the rest of the openly partisan news.
“Is there any way to stop this?”
Historians should examine whether statues to men like Grant should remain. He was awful as a President, lied about his wartime subordinates and rivals (during the war and after), accepted generous gifts from donors who he rewarded with political appointments, expelled Jews from his military district, and too easily compromised the responsibility for moral leadership in exchange for money.
Unlikely to happen since Grant is now among the anointed, something I have seen building since 2007. Yet, I would disagree with removing Grant statues, in part because going tit for tat is destructive. There is much to admire and despise about Grant, which is true of many of the men currently being cast as third-rate villains.
Perhaps Grant statutes should not be removed, but there is so much ignorance of his negative side that it merits discussion. Consider conduct like the two items linked below.
https://civilwarchat.wordpress.com/tag/ulysses-s-grant/
What we need is an honest assessment of the man that is not simply a variant of either corrupt butcher or civil rights hero and military genius. Both fail under scrutiny.
Joseph Rose, *Grant Under Fire* and Frank Varney *General Grant and the Rewriting of History.*
Both are good at pointing out Grant’s flaws, but not his strengths. Rose in particular can sometimes make leaps of logic, such as blaming Grant for the Sultana disaster. Rose is a variation on corrupt butcher, although one with more evidence and more about Grant’s favoritism.
McFeely was much better at being fair to the man. Among the pro Grant crowd, Simpson is the best.
Much of what Simpson writes is based upon Grant’s statements and recollections. He too-readily accepts Grant’s version of events over those of others.
The significance of Varney and Rose is that they are the first modern historians to document that Grant’s version of event was often erroneous in cases where he performed badly. Most modern historians evidently forget that Grant was hugely popular after the war. As a result, his version of events was generally taken as true and passed down to later generations.