February 1862, Forts Fall, Rumsellers Revolt, and Grant Earns His Nickname

By Gary Far­row, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

The North Star report­ed that things were look­ing up for the North. The Union Navy secured anoth­er vic­to­ry and a beard­ed, soft-spo­ken small man from the West appeared on the scene to accom­plish what elud­ed the Union gen­er­als who came before. In addi­tion there is a sto­ry of “boys being boys” in Brat­tle­boro and Cap­tain R. W. Laird mak­ing a trip back home to Danville.

North Star February 1. 1862

Sword Pre­sen­ta­tion

Capt. R. W. Laird of Com­pa­ny H., 4th Reg­i­ment Ver­mont Vol­un­teers, was pre­sent­ed with a splen­did sword, at Camp Grif­fin, VA on Jan 20th, as a slight token of high esteem in which he is held by the men of his com­mand, for his ener­gy and untir­ing zeal in their behalf.

Cap­tain Laird returned to his home in West Danville, last week Thurs­day. We under­stand that he has returned with recruit­ing orders, and will enlist recruits for the Ver­mont Brigade.

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North Star February 15, 1862

Cap­ture of Fort Henry

Offi­cial Account of the Action

Wash­ing­ton, Feb 7 Sec­re­tary Welles has received the fol­low­ing despatch.

Flag Ship Cincinna

Off Fort Hen­ry, Tenn. Riv­er Feb 6, 1862

The gun­boats under my charge… after severe and rapid fire of the hour and a quar­ter, we have cap­tured Fort Hen­ry. We have tak­en Gen. Lloyd Tilgh­man and his staff, with six­ty men, pris­on­ers. The sur­ren­der of the gun­boats was uncon­di­tion­al, as we kept an open fire upon them until their flag was struck. In half an hour after the sur­ren­der, I hand­ed the fort and pris­on­ers over to Gen. Grant com­mand­ing the army, on arriv­ing at the fort in force.

…The Essex had a shot in her boil­ers, after fight­ing most effec­tu­al­ly for two thirds of the action, and was oblig­ed to drop down riv­er. I hear that sev­er­al of her men were scald­ed to death, includ­ing two pilots. She, with the oth­er gun­boats, offi­cers and men fought with the great­est gal­lantry. The fort…was defend­ed by Gen. Tilgh­man with the most deter­mined gallantry…

(Signed)

A. H. Foote. Flag Officer

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Fur­ther Particulars

Cincin­nati, Feb 7 The Gazette and Commercial’s Cairo cor­re­spon­dent of the bom­bard­ment and cap­ture of Fort Henry: -

Gen Tilgh­man is dis­heart­ened, He thinks it one of the most dam­ag­ing blows of the war. In sur­ren­der­ing to Flag Offi­cer Foote he remarked, “I am glad to sur­ren­der to so gal­lant offi­cer.” — Flag Offi­cer Foote replied, “You do per­fect­ly right sir, in sur­ren­der­ing, but you should have blown my boat out of the water, before I would have sur­ren­dered to you.”

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For all its gal­lantry, the cap­ture of Fort Hen­ry, which sits on the bor­der of Ken­tucky and Ten­nessee, was not a major bat­tle, but it was a vic­to­ry nonethe­less for the North that was still despon­dent over the loss at Bull Run. More impor­tant­ly, it gave the Union con­trol over the Ten­nessee Riv­er, which pro­vid­ed a major high­way into the deep South. Gen­er­al U.S. Grant’s army was sup­posed to have tak­en part in the oper­a­tion; how­ev­er, bad weath­er pre­vent­ed his troops from get­ting to Fort Hen­ry in time. His mes­sage to his boss, Gen­er­al Hen­ry Hal­leck in the West­ern The­atre, was “Fort Hen­ry is ours, I shall take and destroy Fort Donel­son on the 8th,” was sug­ges­tive of a new con­fi­dent and aggres­sive fight­ing spir­it that would inform Grant’s future endeav­ors and dis­tin­guish him from his peers.

Mean­while, there was debauch­ery and indig­na­tion on the home front.

War and General News Items

- The Mont­pe­lier Free­man pub­lish­es the fol­low­ing, being the first attack of the gal­lant eighth under Col. Thomas.

Col. Thomas Reg­i­ment in Arms -

Not against the rebels in Seces­sion, but against the rum­sellers in Brat­tle­boro. It appears that some of his sol­diers had been fur­nished with liquor; the Colonel had remon­strat­ed, but with­out effect. Again the sol­diers returned to camp intox­i­cat­ed. Col. Thomas indig­nant to such law­less­ness, ordered out an armed com­pa­ny and, with pledge in hand led them into the vil­lage, vis­it­ed each hotel and gro­cery store sus­pect­ed and demand­ed of the land­lords to sign the pledge to sell no more liquor to his sol­diers. A refusal to com­ply would make their liquor “con­tra­band of war” and con­signed to destruction.

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- John Crit­ten­den is deeply affect­ed by the news from Ken­tucky and has not been in the House since the report of the bat­tle of Som­er­set was received. Although he has two sons in the Union army, the pres­ence of one in the rebel army, his eldest, over­whelms him with grief.

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US Con­gress­man Crittenden’s dilem­ma was not that uncom­mon, espe­cial­ly in bor­der states like Ken­tucky. There were many instances where broth­er was pit­ted against broth­er. In addi­tion, men who went to the Army or Navy mil­i­tary acad­e­mies or fought in Mex­i­can War togeth­er, often found them­selves fight­ing on oppo­site sides of the conflict.

The Union vic­to­ry at Fort Hen­ry cre­at­ed a prob­lem for the com­man­der of South­ern forces. Gen­er­al Albert Sid­ney John­ston, who was betwixt and between over his lim­it­ed options, con­cen­trat­ed all avail­able men to defend Fort Donel­son, which over­looked the Cum­ber­land Riv­er. He could pos­si­bly coun­ter­at­tack to retake Fort Hen­ry; or, he could relin­quish Ken­tucky and use his forces to defend Nashville’s vital fac­to­ries and depots. John­ston chose to send 12,000 troops to Fort Donel­son and defend Nashville with the remainder.

Grant and Foote would attempt anoth­er one-two punch.

 North Star February 22, 1862

Fort Donel­son Taken!

15,000 men cap­tured — Floyd escaped with 5,000

3 Gen­er­als Tak­en Prisoner

The Loss Severe on Both Sides

First Despatch — St Louis Feb 16

The city is wild with excite­ment and rejoic­ings. The news has just been made pub­lic that the Amer­i­can flag waves over Fort Donel­son. One of Gen. Gram’s bat­ter­ies was tak­en by our troops. The gun­boats are said to be bad­ly dam­aged. Fur­ther par­tic­u­lars tonight.

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Thir­ty-four years old, the qui­et, soft-spo­ken Grant had sur­round­ed the fort with 25,000 troops. The gun­boats had made an ini­tial attack, but only one of four escaped seri­ous dam­age. The fort’s com­man­der, John Buchanan Floyd, had repulsed two attacks by Grant’s troops. The next day his forces attempt­ed to break out from the fortress but with­out suc­cess. True to form, Grant’s assess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion was who­ev­er attacked first would win, and he meant to be first. On Feb 15, with Foote’s one lone gun­boat for sup­port, Grant ordered a full attack on Donel­son. How­ev­er, Floyd, who North­ern­ers accused of divert­ing Fed­er­al muni­tions to the South just before the seces­sion, man­aged to orches­trate his escape.

The com­man­der left in charge of the fort was Simon Boli­var Buck­n­er, who sent a telegram to Grant attempt­ing to nego­ti­ate a sur­ren­der. Grant’s reply, “[pro­pos­al] to set­tle terms of Capit­u­la­tion is just received. No terms except an uncon­di­tion­al and imme­di­ate sur­ren­der can be accepted.”

The rebels had suf­fered 2,000 casu­al­ties, while the Union incurred 3,000. Such a loss was expect­ed for an assault on a defen­sive posi­tion. By tak­ing the fort, Ulysses S. Grant became a hero overnight earn­ing the sobri­quet “Uncon­di­tion­al Sur­ren­der” Grant. Lin­coln had found a gen­er­al who would fight.

Fort Donel­son became a har­bin­ger of Grant’s will­ing­ness to take heavy loss­es. “Gal­lant” didn’t apply to Grant. Even though the gal­lant Con­fed­er­ate Gen­er­al Robert E. Lee’s troops would take more casu­al­ties, it was Grant who would come to be called the “butch­er” and sym­bol­ize the slaugh­ter that was the Amer­i­can Civ­il War.