Fort Henry
Civil War Tennessee

American Civil War
February 6, 1862

By February 1862, Fort Henry, a Confederate earthen fort on the Tennessee River with outdated guns, was partially inundated and the river threatened to flood the rest. On February 4-5, Brigadier General U.S. Grant landed his divisions in two different locations, one on the east bank of the Tennessee River to prevent the garrison's escape and the other to occupy the high ground on the Kentucky side which would insure the fort's fall.

Flag-Officer Andrew H. Foote's seven gunboats began bombarding the fort.  Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman, commander of the fort's garrison, realized that it was only a matter of time before Fort Henry fell. While leaving artillery in the fort to hold off the Union fleet, he escorted the rest of his force out of the area and sent them safely off on the route to Fort Donelson, 10 miles away. Tilghman then returned to the fort and, soon afterwards, surrendered to the fleet, which had engaged the fort and closed within 400 yards.

Fort Henry's fall opened the Tennessee River to Union gunboats and shipping as far as Muscle Shoals, Alabama. After the fall of Fort Donelson, ten days later, the two major water transportation routes in the Confederate west, bounded by the Appalachians and the Mississippi River, became Union highways for movement of troops and material.

Result(s): Union victory

Location: Stewart County and Henry County, Tennessee, and Calloway County, Kentucky

Campaign: Federal Penetration up the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers (1862) Next Battle in Campaign Campaigns

Date(s): February 6, 1862

Principal Commanders: Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant and Flag-Officer A.H. Foote [US]; Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman [CS]

Forces Engaged: District of Cairo [US]; Fort Henry Garrison [CS]

Estimated Casualties: 119 total (US 40; CS 79)


Line engraving after a drawing by Rear Admiral Henry Walke, published in the "History of the Great Rebellion", by Harper. The print depicts the Federal gunboats Saint Louis, Carondelet, Essex and Cincinnati bombarding Fort Henry

Situation Prior to Start of Campaign - Click to enlarge Map


Tennessee State Battle Map
State Battle Maps
American Civil War Exhibits
Civil War Timeline
Women in the War
Civil War Summary
Documents of the Civil War
Civil War Cooking
Civil War Submarines
Kids Zone Causes of the War


Chattanooga Tennessee City History Current Weather Hotel Motel camping and attractions
 
Web AmericanCivilWar.com
Volcano-Pictures.INFO

Civil War History Book Club Reading Titles


The bloodbath at Shiloh, Tenn. (April 6-7, 1862), brought an end to any remaining innocence in the Civil War. The combined 23,000 casualties that the two armies inflicted on each other in two days shocked North and South alike. Ulysses S. Grant kept his head and managed, with reinforcements, to win a hard-fought victory. Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston was wounded and bled to death, leaving P.G.T. Beauregard to disengage and retreat with a dispirited gray-clad army. Daniel (Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee) has crafted a superbly researched volume that will appeal to both the beginning Civil War reader as well as those already familiar with the course of fighting in the wooded terrain bordering the Tennessee River. His impressive research includes the judicious use of contemporary newspapers and extensive collections of unpublished letters and diaries.

An act of love but also of careful scholarship, This Great Battlefield of Shiloh tells the story of the construction of a National Military Park there and of the people who made it. Everyone interested in the battle will want to read what happened there after the fighting stopped, and anyone interested in the process of reunion after the Civil War will learn that a field of such carnage became a site of reconciliation and nationalism

The first major battle in the Western theatre of the American Civil War, Shiloh came as a horrifying shock to both the American public and those in arms. For the first time they had some idea of the terrible price that would be paid for the preservation of the Union. On 6 April 1862 General Albert Sidney Johnston caught Grant and Sherman by surprise and very nearly drove them into the River Tennessee, but was mortally wounded in the process. Somehow Grant and Sherman hung on and the next day managed to drive back the hordes of grey-clad rebels.

War in Kentucky: From Shiloh to Perryville

by James Lee McDonough
By mid 1862, Union gains in the Mississippi Valley and in Tennessee and Kentucky had brought the Confederacy to a point of strategic crisis. This valuable addition to the growing literature on the Civil War in the West tells how the Union then failed to press home its advantage while the Confederacy failed to force Kentucky into the Confederacy. The climax of these events was the little-known Battle of Perryville, in which a greatly inferior Southern force under Braxton Bragg managed a draw against Don Carlos Buell's Union army but also effectively terminated the Confederate invasion of Kentucky. McDonough has researched thoroughly and written clearly, making this book informative and accessible to a wide range of Civil War students.

Cozzens follows up his magisterial account of the Battle of Chickamauga, This Terrible Sound (1992), with an equally authoritative study of the Chattanooga campaign that followed it. Braxton Bragg (who sometimes seems unfit to have been at large on the public streets, let alone commanding armies) failed to either destroy or starve out the Union Army of the Cumberland. In due course, superior Northern resources and strategy--not tactics; few generals on either side come out looking like good tacticians--progressively loosened the Confederate cordon around the city. Finally, the Union drove off Bragg's army entirely in the famous Battle of Missionary Ridge, which was a much more complex affair than previous, heroic accounts make it. Like its predecessor on Chickamauga, this is such a good book on Chattanooga that it's hard to believe any Civil War collection will need another book on the subject for at least a generation.

Sources:
U.S. National Park Service
US Military Academy
U.S. Library of Congress