The Battle of Fort Donelson was fought from 11 to 16 February 1862 in Tennessee. After taking Fort Henry, Ulysses S. Grant marched his army overland to Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River and surrounded it, while Union gunboats tried and failed to silence its river batteries. On 15 February the Confederates attacked the Union right and opened a road to Nashville, but their generals called the troops back. That night the two senior commanders, Floyd and Pillow, slipped away, and Nathan Bedford Forrest led his cavalry out. On 16 February Simon Bolivar Buckner asked for terms, and Grant replied: “No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.2 I propose to move immediately upon your works.” Buckner surrendered more than 12,000 men.
In February 1862 the Union had little to celebrate. Then, from the frozen hills above the Cumberland River, came news of a Confederate army surrendered whole, and of a little-known general named Ulysses S. Grant who had offered it no terms at all.
Part of The greatest battles of the Civil War · Before: The First Battle of Bull Run · Next: The Battle of Shiloh
The river gateway to the South
In early 1862 the Confederate line in the West stretched across Kentucky and Tennessee, and two forts guarded the rivers that pierced it3: Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, the river to Nashville4. On 6 February Union gunboats forced Fort Henry to surrender, and Grant marched his army about twelve miles overland to Fort Donelson1, arriving on 12 to 13 February and probing its outer lines.
Gunboats against the batteries
On 14 February Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote brought his ironclads up the river to repeat the success at Fort Henry. This time the fort's water batteries, firing from higher ground, badly damaged several of the gunboats and drove them off5, and Foote himself was wounded. Grant settled in for a siege as reinforcements arrived and the weather turned bitterly cold.
The breakout that was called off
Hemmed in, the Confederate commanders decided to break out. On the morning of 15 February troops led by Gideon Pillow, with Forrest's cavalry, struck John McClernand's division on the Union right and drove it back, opening the road to Nashville. Grant, away conferring with Foote when the attack began, rode back, rallied his men and ordered a counterattack. Then, to the dismay of his fellow generals, Pillow ordered the troops back into their trenches1. That afternoon Charles F. Smith's division seized part of the Confederate outer works on the opposite flank, and Lew Wallace's troops retook the lost ground on the right.
The night the generals fled
At a council in the early hours of 16 February the Confederate generals agreed that they could not hold. John B. Floyd, a former U.S. Secretary of War who feared trial if captured, handed command to Pillow, who passed it to Simon Bolivar Buckner. Floyd escaped by steamer with some of his troops2 and Pillow crossed the river by small boat. Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest, refusing to surrender his command, led several hundred cavalrymen out through the icy waters of a flooded creek.
Unconditional surrender
Buckner, who had known Grant before the war, asked for an armistice to settle terms. Grant answered: "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." Buckner accepted, and more than 12,000 Confederates became prisoners. The Confederates had to abandon southern Kentucky and much of Middle Tennessee, Nashville fell within days, and the North rang with celebration. Grant was promoted to major general, his initials were said to stand for Unconditional Surrender, and within weeks his army was on the road to Shiloh. Fort Donelson is now preserved as a National Battlefield.
