23: Chapter XXIII.
<< 22: Chapter XXII. || 24: Chapter XXIV. >>
The news of the fall of Fort Donelson caused great delight all
over the North. At the South, particularly in Richmond, the
effect was correspondingly depressing. I was promptly promoted
to the grade of Major-General of Volunteers, and confirmed by
the Senate. All three of my division commanders were promoted
to the same grade and the colonels who commanded brigades were
made brigadier-generals in the volunteer service. My chief, who
was in St. Louis, telegraphed his congratulations to General
Hunter in Kansas for the services he had rendered in securing
the fall of Fort Donelson by sending reinforcements so
rapidly. To Washington he telegraphed that the victory was due
to General C. F. Smith; "promote him," he said, "and the whole
country will applaud." On the 19th there was published at St.
Louis a formal order thanking Flag-officer Foote and myself, and
the forces under our command, for the victories on the Tennessee
and the Cumberland. I received no other recognition whatever
from General Halleck. But General Cullum, his chief of staff,
who was at Cairo, wrote me a warm congratulatory letter on his
own behalf. I approved of General Smith's promotion highly, as
I did all the promotions that were made.
My opinion was and still is that immediately after the fall of
Fort Donelson the way was opened to the National forces all over
the South-west without much resistance. If one general who would
have taken the responsibility had been in command of all the
troops west of the Alleghanies, he could have marched to
Chattanooga, Corinth, Memphis and Vicksburg with the troops we
then had, and as volunteering was going on rapidly over the
North there would soon have been force enough at all these
centres to operate offensively against any body of the enemy
that might be found near them. Rapid movements and the
acquisition of rebellious territory would have promoted
volunteering, so that reinforcements could have been had as fast
as transportation could have been obtained to carry them to their
destination. On the other hand there were tens of thousands of
strong able-bodied young men still at their homes in the
South-western States, who had not gone into the Confederate army
in February, 1862, and who had no particular desire to go. If
our lines had been extended to protect their homes, many of them
never would have gone. Providence ruled differently. Time was
given the enemy to collect armies and fortify his new positions;
and twice afterwards he came near forcing his north-western front
up to the Ohio River.
I promptly informed the department commander of our success at
Fort Donelson and that the way was open now to Clarksville and
Nashville; and that unless I received orders to the contrary I
should take Clarksville on the 21st and Nashville about the 1st
of March. Both these places are on the Cumberland River above
Fort Donelson. As I heard nothing from headquarters on the
subject, General C. F. Smith was sent to Clarksville at the time
designated and found the place evacuated. The capture of forts
Henry and Donelson had broken the line the enemy had taken from
Columbus to Bowling Green, and it was known that he was falling
back from the eastern point of this line and that Buell was
following, or at least advancing. I should have sent troops to
Nashville at the time I sent to Clarksville, but my
transportation was limited and there were many prisoners to be
forwarded north.
None of the reinforcements from Buell's army arrived until the
24th of February. Then General Nelson came up, with orders to
report to me with two brigades, he having sent one brigade to
Cairo. I knew General Buell was advancing on Nashville from the
north, and I was advised by scouts that the rebels were leaving
that place, and trying to get out all the supplies they could.
Nashville was, at that time, one of the best provisioned posts
in the South. I had no use for reinforcements now, and thinking
Buell would like to have his troops again, I ordered Nelson to
proceed to Nashville without debarking at Fort Donelson. I sent
a gunboat also as a convoy. The Cumberland River was very high
at the time; the railroad bridge at Nashville had been burned,
and all river craft had been destroyed, or would be before the
enemy left. Nashville is on the west bank of the Cumberland,
and Buell was approaching from the east. I thought the steamers
carrying Nelson's division would be useful in ferrying the
balance of Buell's forces across. I ordered Nelson to put
himself in communication with Buell as soon as possible, and if
he found him more than two days off from Nashville to return
below the city and await orders. Buell, however, had already
arrived in person at Edgefield, opposite Nashville, and
Mitchell's division of his command reached there the same day.
Nelson immediately took possession of the city.
After Nelson had gone and before I had learned of Buell's
arrival, I sent word to department headquarters that I should go
to Nashville myself on the 28th if I received no orders to the
contrary. Hearing nothing, I went as I had informed my superior
officer I would do. On arriving at Clarksville I saw a fleet of
steamers at the shore—the same that had taken Nelson's
division—and troops going aboard. I landed and called on the
commanding officer, General C. F. Smith. As soon as he saw me
he showed an order he had just received from Buell in these
words:
NASHVILLE, February 25, 1862.
GENERAL C. F. SMITH,
Commanding U. S. Forces, Clarksville.
GENERAL:—The landing of a portion of our troops, contrary to my
intentions, on the south side of the river has compelled me to
hold this side at every hazard. If the enemy should assume the
offensive, and I am assured by reliable persons that in view of
my position such is his intention, my force present is
altogether inadequate, consisting of only 15,000 men. I have to
request you, therefore, to come forward with all the available
force under your command. So important do I consider the
occasion that I think it necessary to give this communication
all the force of orders, and I send four boats, the Diana,
Woodford, John Rain, and Autocrat, to bring you up. In five or
six days my force will probably be sufficient to relieve you.
Very respectfully, your ob't srv't,
D. C. BUELL,
Brigadier-General Comd'g.
P. S.—The steamers will leave here at 12 o'clock to-night.
General Smith said this order was nonsense. But I told him it
was better to obey it. The General replied, "of course I must
obey," and said his men were embarking as fast as they could. I
went on up to Nashville and inspected the position taken by
Nelson's troops. I did not see Buell during the day, and wrote
him a note saying that I had been in Nashville since early
morning and had hoped to meet him. On my return to the boat we
met. His troops were still east of the river, and the steamers
that had carried Nelson's division up were mostly at Clarksville
to bring Smith's division. I said to General Buell my
information was that the enemy was retreating as fast as
possible. General Buell said there was fighting going on then
only ten or twelve miles away. I said: "Quite probably;
Nashville contained valuable stores of arms, ammunition and
provisions, and the enemy is probably trying to carry away all
he can. The fighting is doubtless with the rear-guard who are
trying to protect the trains they are getting away with." Buell
spoke very positively of the danger Nashville was in of an attack
from the enemy. I said, in the absence of positive information,
I believed my information was correct. He responded that he
"knew." "Well," I said, "I do not know; but as I came by
Clarksville General Smith's troops were embarking to join you."
Smith's troops were returned the same day. The enemy were
trying to get away from Nashville and not to return to it.
At this time General Albert Sidney Johnston commanded all the
Confederate troops west of the Allegheny Mountains, with the
exception of those in the extreme south. On the National side
the forces confronting him were divided into, at first three,
then four separate departments. Johnston had greatly the
advantage in having supreme command over all troops that could
possibly be brought to bear upon one point, while the forces
similarly situated on the National side, divided into
independent commands, could not be brought into harmonious
action except by orders from Washington.
At the beginning of 1862 Johnston's troops east of the
Mississippi occupied a line extending from Columbus, on his
left, to Mill Springs, on his right. As we have seen, Columbus,
both banks of the Tennessee River, the west bank of the
Cumberland and Bowling Green, all were strongly fortified. Mill
Springs was intrenched. The National troops occupied no
territory south of the Ohio, except three small garrisons along
its bank and a force thrown out from Louisville to confront that
at Bowling Green. Johnston's strength was no doubt numerically
inferior to that of the National troops; but this was
compensated for by the advantage of being sole commander of all
the Confederate forces at the West, and of operating in a
country where his friends would take care of his rear without
any detail of soldiers. But when General George H. Thomas moved
upon the enemy at Mill Springs and totally routed him, inflicting
a loss of some 300 killed and wounded, and forts Henry and Heiman
fell into the hands of the National forces, with their armaments
and about 100 prisoners, those losses seemed to dishearten the
Confederate commander so much that he immediately commenced a
retreat from Bowling Green on Nashville. He reached this latter
place on the 14th of February, while Donelson was still
besieged. Buell followed with a portion of the Army of the
Ohio, but he had to march and did not reach the east bank of the
Cumberland opposite Nashville until the 24th of the month, and
then with only one division of his army.
The bridge at Nashville had been destroyed and all boats removed
or disabled, so that a small garrison could have held the place
against any National troops that could have been brought against
it within ten days after the arrival of the force from Bowling
Green. Johnston seemed to lie quietly at Nashville to await the
result at Fort Donelson, on which he had staked the possession of
most of the territory embraced in the States of Kentucky and
Tennessee. It is true, the two generals senior in rank at Fort
Donelson were sending him encouraging dispatches, even claiming
great Confederate victories up to the night of the 16th when
they must have been preparing for their individual escape.
Johnston made a fatal mistake in intrusting so important a
command to Floyd, who he must have known was no soldier even if
he possessed the elements of one. Pillow's presence as second
was also a mistake. If these officers had been forced upon him
and designated for that particular command, then he should have
left Nashville with a small garrison under a trusty officer, and
with the remainder of his force gone to Donelson himself. If he
had been captured the result could not have been worse than it
was.
Johnston's heart failed him upon the first advance of National
troops. He wrote to Richmond on the 8th of February, "I think
the gunboats of the enemy will probably take Fort Donelson
without the necessity of employing their land force in
cooperation." After the fall of that place he abandoned
Nashville and Chattanooga without an effort to save either, and
fell back into northern Mississippi, where, six weeks later, he
was destined to end his career.
From the time of leaving Cairo I was singularly unfortunate in
not receiving dispatches from General Halleck. The order of the
10th of February directing me to fortify Fort Henry strongly,
particularly to the land side, and saying that intrenching tools
had been sent for that purpose, reached me after Donelson was
invested. I received nothing direct which indicated that the
department commander knew we were in possession of Donelson. I
was reporting regularly to the chief of staff, who had been sent
to Cairo, soon after the troops left there, to receive all
reports from the front and to telegraph the substance to the St.
Louis headquarters. Cairo was at the southern end of the
telegraph wire. Another line was started at once from Cairo to
Paducah and Smithland, at the mouths of the Tennessee and
Cumberland respectively. My dispatches were all sent to Cairo
by boat, but many of those addressed to me were sent to the
operator at the end of the advancing wire and he failed to
forward them. This operator afterwards proved to be a rebel; he
deserted his post after a short time and went south taking his
dispatches with him. A telegram from General McClellan to me of
February 16th, the day of the surrender, directing me to report
in full the situation, was not received at my headquarters until
the 3d of March.
On the 2d of March I received orders dated March 1st to move my
command back to Fort Henry, leaving only a small garrison at
Donelson. From Fort Henry expeditions were to be sent against
Eastport, Mississippi, and Paris, Tennessee. We started from
Donelson on the 4th, and the same day I was back on the
Tennessee River. On March 4th I also received the following
dispatch from General Halleck:
MAJ.-GEN. U. S. GRANT,
Fort Henry:
You will place Maj.-Gen. C. F. Smith in command of expedition,
and remain yourself at Fort Henry. Why do you not obey my
orders to report strength and positions of your command?
H. W. HALLECK,
Major-General.
I was surprised. This was the first intimation I had received
that General Halleck had called for information as to the
strength of my command. On the 6th he wrote to me again. "Your
going to Nashville without authority, and when your presence with
your troops was of the utmost importance, was a matter of very
serious complaint at Washington, so much so that I was advised
to arrest you on your return." This was the first I knew of his
objecting to my going to Nashville. That place was not beyond
the limits of my command, which, it had been expressly declared
in orders, were "not defined." Nashville is west of the
Cumberland River, and I had sent troops that had reported to me
for duty to occupy the place. I turned over the command as
directed and then replied to General Halleck courteously, but
asked to be relieved from further duty under him.
Later I learned that General Halleck had been calling lustily
for more troops, promising that he would do something important
if he could only be sufficiently reinforced. McClellan asked
him what force he then had. Halleck telegraphed me to supply
the information so far as my command was concerned, but I
received none of his dispatches. At last Halleck reported to
Washington that he had repeatedly ordered me to give the
strength of my force, but could get nothing out of me; that I
had gone to Nashville, beyond the limits of my command, without
his authority, and that my army was more demoralized by victory
than the army at Bull Run had been by defeat. General
McClellan, on this information, ordered that I should be
relieved from duty and that an investigation should be made into
any charges against me. He even authorized my arrest. Thus in
less than two weeks after the victory at Donelson, the two
leading generals in the army were in correspondence as to what
disposition should be made of me, and in less than three weeks I
was virtually in arrest and without a command.
On the 13th of March I was restored to command, and on the 17th
Halleck sent me a copy of an order from the War Department which
stated that accounts of my misbehavior had reached Washington and
directed him to investigate and report the facts. He forwarded
also a copy of a detailed dispatch from himself to Washington
entirely exonerating me; but he did not inform me that it was
his own reports that had created all the trouble. On the
contrary, he wrote to me, "Instead of relieving you, I wish you,
as soon as your new army is in the field, to assume immediate
command, and lead it to new victories." In consequence I felt
very grateful to him, and supposed it was his interposition that
had set me right with the government. I never knew the truth
until General Badeau unearthed the facts in his researches for
his history of my campaigns.
General Halleck unquestionably deemed General C. F. Smith a much
fitter officer for the command of all the forces in the military
district than I was, and, to render him available for such
command, desired his promotion to antedate mine and those of the
other division commanders. It is probable that the general
opinion was that Smith's long services in the army and
distinguished deeds rendered him the more proper person for such
command. Indeed I was rather inclined to this opinion myself at
that time, and would have served as faithfully under Smith as he
had done under me. But this did not justify the dispatches which
General Halleck sent to Washington, or his subsequent concealment
of them from me when pretending to explain the action of my
superiors.
On receipt of the order restoring me to command I proceeded to
Savannah on the Tennessee, to which point my troops had
advanced. General Smith was delighted to see me and was
unhesitating in his denunciation of the treatment I had
received. He was on a sick bed at the time, from which he never
came away alive. His death was a severe loss to our western
army. His personal courage was unquestioned, his judgment and
professional acquirements were unsurpassed, and he had the
confidence of those he commanded as well as of those over him.
<< 22: Chapter XXII. || 24: Chapter XXIV. >>