Hi Jim,

I study this campaign intensely as I live 25 miles from Donelson and am president of the area Civil War Roundtable and Friends of the Ft. Donelson Campaign and lead guided tours of it.

Some things for you:

1) Both Cooling's and Gott's books are worth reading and cover the events from a somewhat different take. Gott's is more of a command study as he teaches at the US Army Command & General Staff College. Both show how this area was crucial for the Confederacy for it was their largest concentration of iron furnaces and the two rivers lead right into the CS heartland.

2) Grant was not planning for any long siege that I have ever seen. Recall that he was under Halleck's command and if there was a skittish Union officer at the time seeing all sorts of Confederate boogey men marching all around, it was Halleck. Grant BARELY got to pull off this campaign at all as Halleck feared right until he got the surrender telegram (for Donelson) from Grant that Grant was doomed and that it would reflect badly on him.

As someone has already noted, Grant was going to attack Donelson if the Confederates had not surrendered. He was receiving reinforcements constantly, which the Confederates knew about, and had simply massed more men that could have broken through. Smith's attack of the 15th had already taken a large section of the Outer Works as is.

3) The Confederates were NOT cut off! The Cumberland River to Clarksville and Nashville was wide open and steamers were dropping off troops and supplies right up to the surrender. The last troops off the boat were some 400 Mississippians whose place was then taken by Floyd's VA troops for their escape. This whole brigade (save some men) was taken out by the boats. The Federals had not emplaced artillery on their right flank to interdict the river, although that could have been done by Grant as there are a couple hills on that flank.

4) The Confederate strategy for Donelson is a classic case of the left hand and the right hand not agreeing with the focus. This violates one of the Army's 9 Principles of War. A.S. Johnston, being department commander, vacillated and should have taken Floyd's suggestion of massing the CS forces at Cumberland City after the fall of Henry. This would leave a token force at Donelson with the mass of maneuver at Cumberland City on Donelson's left flank - and also squarely on the railroad from Clarksville/Nashville for supplies. Floyd, and Buckner agreed by the way, that this position was superior as it would adhere to Johnston's admonition of not getting the forces bottled up in Donelson and therefore captured possibly. It was Gideon Pillow that forced the massing at Donelson - and his belief was hugely reinforced by the CSA attack on the 15th that Donelson could be held and that he (Pillow) was correct. Buckner disagreed and he went to Donelson to basically withdraw his division - but Grant's move changed all that.

Cumberland City would have been on Grant's right flank and this would have not only given the Confederates a secure supply/retreat line, but it also gave them latitude of manuever against Grant as he came across the ithsmus towards Donelson. This terrain was perfect for a defensive stand (which Pillow did NOT even try to do on any large scale as Grant did march over) as well as maneuver from concealed positions.

With Grant having two large CS forces in his rear (left and right, Bowling Green and Columbus, KY respectively) and a possible CS force at Cumberland City, had Johnston come down to lead the troops Grant would have been toast - assuming, of course, that Polk at Columbus would ever obey ANY orders to send forces to help! Johnston needed to realize that he simply did not have enough men to hold all three places (he only had 45,000 men stretched from Cumberland Gap to Columbus - not even close enough to what he needed. He also got no help from Deep South governors and only very token help from Jeff Davis, so he should have left a token force at Bowling Green, either under his command or Hardee's, and then either he or Hardee should have taken troops to Cumberland City while ordering the abandonment of Donelson (save a token garrison) to fight the battle for Nashville at Cumberland City.

Once Donelson was invested, despite the defeat of the gunboats, it could not be saved. People forget that Foote had other gunboats coming online and the mortar boats would also soon be available (they did not miss the campaign by mucha s is) and the Confederates NEVER won a battle where the Union Navy worked with the Union Army!

5) To deal with these two Confederate forces, Grant had been raiding against Columbus since October, 1861, with Belmont and the January raid reinforcing in Polk's mind, that Columbus was the most important place on God's green Earth! Hence, he would never allow a man to leave it for it would surely fall if he did - and he was inept enough not to see that once Grant got to Donelson and once Henry had fallen with the Tennessee River open into central Alabama (as US Navy Lt. Phelps showed with his gunboat raid) that Columbus was no longer tenable (like Pemberton would not realize once Grant had crossed the river and defeated Bowen at Grand Gulf)!!! Thus Grant had the measure of Polk - as he would do with Pemberton, and knew that Polk would not attack him - even though he should have!

Hence, Grant brilliantly pinned Columbus into place while Buell, threatening to move and actually moving somewhat timidly against Bowling Green from the Munfordville, KY area (he was just like McClellan in many respects and basically was only moving once he realized that Grant, and by extension his rival department commander Halleck would greatly benefit from Lincoln's attention should they win, that he might finally get into the war!) pinned A.S. Johnston down at Bowling Green.

6) An argument can be made that the Union gunboat raid of Lt. Phelps from Ft. Henry, taking out the Memphis-Clarksville & Louisville RR bridge over the Tennessee River and then continuing down to Florence, AL. made Ft. Donelson untenable on its own. Phelps' raid faced very little Confederate opposition as there were simply no Confederate forces of note to protect the interior once Johnston's crust defenses were broken (as they already had been at Mill Springs in January, 1862 - Thomas not being able to follow that up due to very bad roads in that area).

So imagine if Grant had decided to load up transports after Henry's fall and taken troops to Florence, thus cutting the vital Memphis & Charleston Railroad - the most important in the Confederacy - instead of even going after Donelson? He could have done so easily dispatching token forces to mask Donelson while he moved south. The Confederates would have been powerless to stop him and the collapse of Department No. 2 would have happened anyway but with Union forces deep in the South.

There also would not have been a Battle of Shiloh had this happened.

So why didn't Grant do this? He wanted to bag the garrison at Donelson since he missed the Henry garrison (due to flooding roads) so that he would not only capture the vital forts but also their troops. And Halleck was a factor. Halleck was the very personification of Jomini and saw these places not as a means to an end causing the collapse of the Confederate defense lines in the West, but rather as bases for further operations (see his conduct of the Corinth Campaign after Shiloh). It was Halleck that wanted Grant to capture Clarksville BEFORE he took Donelson - which, if you read a map, would be very hard to do (also very stupid as it would have left sizeable CS forces in his rear)!

7) Someone posted something about rifled muskets possibly being a factor at Donelson ahd they been there. Some units had them there, and from all the combat reports I have read, other than the Dimmock rifles of Birge's Western Sharpshooters (14th Missouri) with which they engaged ONLY in sharpshooting (causing havoc in Porter's TN Battery, for example), the hilly and wooded terrain negated any alleged rifle effectiveness. As it was, even the flintlock smoothbores of the 10th Tennessee Infantry were firing buck & ball rounds which sent out four projectiles per trigger pull rather than 1 per pull with rifles. The fighting on the Confederate breakout was very brutal and high casualties were inflicted on several units. It was buck & ball rounds that caused the human havoc at Shiloh and even Antietam, so these rounds were as deadly when used as rifled bullets.

In addition, as both Paddy Griffith and Brent Nosworthy have shown, the troops were rarely properly trained in the use of backsights for their rifled muskets and so often missed! Smoothbores have a higher muzzle velocity than rifled muskets and a flatter trajectory (modern tank guns, 120MM or higher, are all smoothbores now) whereas rifled musket bullets fire in an arc called a Parabolic Curve. Some Civil War units preferred smoothbores and buck & ball for their hitting power, especially at places where woods were involved.

8) In the end, Grant won because of his flexibility, a trait that teh ebst commanders all have, as well as his tenacity. He made mistakes, as all commanders do, but he also showed what he would show on an even greater scale at Vicksburg and in facing Lee in Virginia. The Confederates, by contrast, are a shining example of how NOT to wage a campaign as mostof the senior officers involved fought with each other over direction, refused to obey orders and even the top guy - Johnston - acted more like a district commander than a department commander. It was up to him to force his subordinates to obey and carry out his plans. The trouble is, those planse changed - a lot - as the campaign unfolded.

So see who won here and who lost and compare the leadership styles to see why one did and one did not.

I teach this campaign to the US Army at Ft. Campbell at times and they love learning this one for the command phases.

Sorry for the long tome - but there were some misconceptions about this campaign that I wanted to clear up.

Greg Biggs
Clarksville, TN