Preliminary movements and attacks (February 12–13) On February 12, most of the Union troops departed Fort Henry, where they were waiting for the return of Union gunboats and the arrival of additional troops that would increase the Union forces to about 25,000 men. USS
Carondelet was the first gunboat to arrive up the river, and she promptly fired numerous shells into the fort, testing its defenses before retiring. Grant arrived on February 12 and established his headquarters near the left side of the front of the line, at the Widow Crisp's house. , March 15, 1862. On February 11, Buckner relayed orders to Pillow from Floyd to release Floyd's and Buckner's troops to operate south of the river, near Cumberland City, where they would be able to attack the Union supply lines while keeping a clear path back to Nashville. However, this would leave the Confederate forces at Fort Donelson heavily outnumbered. Gen. Pillow left early on the morning of February 12 to argue these orders with Gen. Floyd himself leaving Buckner in charge of the fort. After hearing sounds of artillery fire, Pillow returned to Fort Donelson to resume command. After the events of the day, Buckner remained at Fort Donelson to command the Confederate right. With the arrival of Grant's army, General Johnston ordered Floyd to take any troops remaining in Clarksville to aid in the defense of Fort Donelson. On February 13, several small probing attacks were carried out against the Confederate defenses, essentially ignoring orders from Grant that no general engagement be provoked. On the Union left, C. F. Smith sent two of his four brigades (under Cols.
Jacob Lauman and
John Cook) to test the defenses along his front. The attack suffered light casualties and made no gains, but Smith was able to keep up a harassing fire throughout the night. On the right, McClernand also ordered an unauthorized attack. Two regiments of Col.
William R. Morrison's brigade, along with one regiment, the
48th Illinois, from Col.
W.H.L. Wallace's brigade, were ordered to seize a battery ("Redan Number 2") that had been plaguing their position.
Isham N. Haynie, colonel of the 48th Illinois, was senior in rank to Colonel Morrison. Although rightfully in command of two of the three regiments, Morrison volunteered to turn over command once the attack was under way; however, when the attack began, Morrison was wounded, eliminating any leadership ambiguity. For unknown reasons Haynie never fully took control and the attack was repulsed. Some wounded men caught between the lines burned to death in grass fires ignited by the artillery. General Grant had Commander Henry Walke bring the
Carondelet up the Cumberland River to create a diversion by opening fire on the fort. The Confederates responded with shots from their long-range guns and eventually hit the gunboat. Walke retreated several miles below the fort, but soon returned and continued shelling the water batteries. General McClernand, in the meantime, had been attempting to stretch his men toward the river but ran into difficulties with a Confederate battery of guns. McClernand ultimately decided that he did not have enough men to stretch all the way to the river, so Grant decided to call on more troops. He sent orders to General Wallace, who had been left behind at Fort Henry, to bring his men to Fort Donelson. With Floyd's arrival to take command of Fort Donelson, Pillow took over leading the Confederate left. Feeling overwhelmed, Floyd left most of the actual command to Pillow and Buckner. At the end of the day, there had been several skirmishes, but the positions of each side were essentially the same. The night progressed with both sides fighting the cold weather. Although the weather had been mostly rainy up to this point in the campaign, a snowstorm arrived the night of February 13, with strong winds that brought temperatures down to 10–12 °F (−12 °C) and deposited 3 inches (8 cm) of snow by morning. Guns and wagons were frozen to the earth. Because of the proximity of the enemy lines and the active sharpshooters, the soldiers could not light campfires for warmth or cooking, and both sides were miserable that night, many having arrived without blankets or overcoats.
Reinforcements and naval battle (February 14) At 11:00 a.m. on February 14, Floyd held a council of war in his headquarters at the Dover Hotel. There was general agreement that Fort Donelson was probably untenable. General Pillow was designated to lead a breakout attempt, evacuate the fort, and march to Nashville. Troops were moved behind the lines and the assault readied, and they broke through Union lines, but Grant sent them back to Fort Donelson reeling. Pillow, normally quite aggressive in battle, was unnerved and announced that since their movement had been detected, the breakout was sent back. On February 14, General Lew Wallace's brigade arrived from Fort Henry around noon, and Foote's flotilla arrived on the Cumberland River in mid-afternoon, bringing six gunboats and another 10,000 Union reinforcements on twelve transport ships. Wallace assembled these new troops into a third division of two brigades, under Cols.
John M. Thayer and
Charles Cruft, and occupied the center of the line facing the Confederate trenches. This provided sufficient troops to extend McClernand's right flank to be anchored on Lick Creek, by moving Col.
John McArthur's brigade of Smith's division from the reserve to a position from which they intended to plug the gap at dawn the next morning. As soon as Foote arrived, Grant urged him to attack the fort's river batteries. Although Foote was reluctant to proceed before adequate reconnaissance, he moved his gunboats close to the shore by 3:00 p.m. and opened fire, just as he had done at Fort Henry. The Confederate artillery pummeled the fleet with heavy cannon fire and the assault was over by 4:30 p.m. Foote was wounded (coincidentally in his foot). The wheelhouse of his flagship, USS
St. Louis, was carried away, and she floated helplessly downriver. USS
Louisville was also disabled, and the
Pittsburg began to take on water. The damage to the fleet was significant and it retreated downriver. Of the 500 Confederate shots fired,
St. Louis was hit 59 times,
Carondelet 54,
Louisville 36, and
Pittsburg 20 times. Foote had miscalculated the assault. Historian Kendall Gott suggested that it would have been more prudent to stay as far downriver as possible, and use the fleet's longer-range guns to reduce the fort. An alternative might have been to overrun the batteries, probably at night as would be done successfully in the 1863
Vicksburg Campaign. Once the Union fleet was past the fixed river batteries, Fort Donelson would have been defenseless. Eight Union sailors were killed and 44 were wounded while the Confederates lost none. (Captain Joseph Dixon of the river batteries had been killed the previous day during
Carondelet's bombardment.) On land the well-armed Union soldiers surrounded the Confederates, while the Union boats, although damaged, still controlled the river. Grant realized that any success at Fort Donelson would have to be carried by the army without strong naval support, and he wired Halleck that he might have to resort to a
siege.
Breakout attempt (February 15) Despite their unexpected naval success, the Confederate generals were still skeptical about their chances in the fort and held another late-night council of war, where they decided to retry their aborted escape plan. At dawn on February 15, the Confederates launched an assault led by Pillow against McClernand's division on the unprotected right flank of the Union line. The Union troops, unable to sleep in the cold weather, were not caught entirely by surprise, but Grant was. Not expecting a land assault from the Confederates, he was up before dawn and had headed off to visit Flag Officer Foote on his flagship downriver. Grant left orders that none of his generals was to initiate an engagement and no one was designated as second-in-command during his absence. The Confederate plan was for Pillow to push McClernand away and take control of Wynn's Ferry and Forge Roads, the main routes to Nashville. The attack was initially successful because of the inexperience and poor positioning of McClernand's troops and a
flanking attack from the Confederate cavalry under Forrest. The Union brigades of Cols.
Richard Oglesby and
John McArthur were hit hardest; they withdrew in a generally orderly manner to the rear for regrouping and resupply. Around 8:00 a.m. McClernand sent a message requesting assistance from Lew Wallace, but Wallace had no orders from Grant, who was still absent, to respond to an attack on a fellow officer and declined the initial request. Wallace, who was hesitant to disobey orders, sent an aide to Grant's headquarters for further instructions. In the meantime, McClernand's ammunition was running out, but his withdrawal was not yet a rout. (The army of former
quartermaster Ulysses S. Grant had not yet learned to organize reserve ammunition and supplies near the frontline brigades.) A second messenger arrived at Wallace's camp in tears, crying, "Our right flank is turned! ... The whole army is in danger!" This time Wallace sent a brigade, under Col.
Charles Cruft, to aid McClernand. Cruft's brigade was sent in to replace Oglesby's and McArthur's brigades, but when they realized they had run into Pillow's Confederates and were being flanked, they too began to fall back. Not everything was going well with the Confederate advance. By 9:30 a.m., as the lead Union brigades were falling back, Nathan Bedford Forrest urged Bushrod Johnson to launch an all-out attack on the disorganized troops. Johnson was too cautious to approve of a general assault, but he did agree to keep the infantry moving slowly forward. Two hours into the battle, Gen. Pillow realized that Buckner's wing was not attacking alongside his. After a confrontation between the two generals, Buckner's troops moved out and, combined with the right flank of Pillow's wing, hit W. H. L. Wallace's brigade. The Confederates took control of Forge Road and a key section of Wynn's Ferry Road, opening a route to Nashville, but Buckner's delay provided time for Lew Wallace's men to reinforce McClernand's retreating forces before they were completely routed. Despite Grant's earlier orders, Wallace's units moved to the right with Thayer's brigade, giving McClernand's men time to regroup and gather ammunition from Wallace's supplies. The
68th Ohio was left behind to protect the rear. The Confederate offensive ended around 12:30 p.m., when Wallace's and Thayer's Union troops formed a defensive line on a ridge astride Wynn's Ferry Road. The Confederates assaulted them three times, but were unsuccessful and withdrew to a ridge away. Nevertheless, they had had a good morning. The Confederates had pushed the Union defenders back one to two miles (2–3 km) and had opened their escape route. Grant, who was apparently unaware of the battle, was notified by an aide and returned to his troops in the early afternoon. Grant first visited C. F. Smith on the Union left, where Grant ordered the 8th Missouri and the 11th Indiana to the Union right, True to his nature, Grant did not panic at the Confederate assault. As Grant rode back from the river, he heard the sounds of guns and sent word to Foote to begin a demonstration of naval gunfire, assuming that his troops would be demoralized and could use the encouragement. Grant observed that some of the Confederates (Buckner's) were fighting with
knapsacks filled with three days of rations, which implied to him that they were attempting to escape, not pressing for a combat victory. He told an aide, "The one who attacks first now will be victorious. The enemy will have to be in a hurry if he gets ahead of me." Despite the successful morning attack, access to an open escape route, and to the amazement of Floyd and Buckner, Pillow ordered his men back to their trenches by 1:30 p.m. Buckner confronted Pillow, and Floyd intended to countermand the order, but Pillow argued that his men needed to regroup and resupply before evacuating the fort. Pillow won the argument. Floyd also believed that C. F. Smith's division was being heavily reinforced, so the entire Confederate force was ordered back inside the lines of Fort Donelson, giving up the ground they gained earlier that day. Grant moved quickly to exploit the opening and told Smith, "All has failed on our right—you must take Fort Donelson." Smith replied, "I will do it." Smith formed his two remaining brigades to make an attack. Lauman's brigade would be the main attack, spearheaded by Col.
James Tuttle's
2nd Iowa Infantry. Cook's brigade would be in support to the right and rear and act as a
feint to draw fire away from Lauman's brigade. Smith's two-brigade attack quickly seized the outer line of entrenchments on the Confederate right from the 30th Tennessee, commanded by Col. John W. Head, who had been left behind from Buckner's division. Despite two hours of repeated counterattacks, the Confederates could not repel Smith from the captured earthworks. The Union was now poised to seize Fort Donelson and its river batteries when light returned the next morning. In the meantime, on the Union right, Lew Wallace formed an attacking column with three brigades—one from his own division, one from McClernand's, and one from Smith's—to try to regain control of ground lost in the battle that morning. Wallace's old brigade of Zouaves (
11th Indiana and
8th Missouri), now commanded by Col.
Morgan L. Smith, and others from McClernand's and Wallace's divisions were chosen to lead the attack. The brigades of Cruft (Wallace's Division) and
Leonard F. Ross (McClernand's Division) were placed in support on the flanks. Wallace ordered the attack forward. Smith, the 8th Missouri, and the 11th Indiana advanced a short distance up the hill using
Zouave tactics, where the men repeatedly rushed and then fell to the ground in a
prone position. By 5:30 p.m. Wallace's troops had succeeded in retaking the ground lost that morning, and by nightfall, the Confederate troops had been driven back to their original positions. Grant began plans to resume his assault in the morning, although neglecting to close the escape route that Pillow had opened.
John A. Logan was gravely injured on February 15. Soon after the victory at Donelson, he was promoted to brigadier general in the volunteers. ==Surrender (February 16)==