by those who knew him well, that such has been his habit for the last five or six years.

If he really believed that Grant had not done any drinking "for the last five or six years" he was undoubtedly misinformed. The total abstinence was not so completely total, after all, as the quoted paragraph above would lead one to believe, for Rawlins says further on that a gentleman had given Grant a case of champagne as a present, and that the general had drunk a few glasses, "but on neither occasion did he drink enough to in any manner affect him." He refers Washburne to a number of gentlemen, giving their names and standing in the world, and asks the Congressman to inquire of them. He wants to nail the lie to the mast of contumely, once and for all:

Have no fears; General Grant by bad habits or conduct will never disgrace himself or you, whom he knows and feels to be his best and warmest friend (whose unexpected kindness toward him he will never forget and hopes some time to be able to repay). But I say to you frankly, and I pledge you my word for it, that should General Grant at any time become an intemperate man or an habitual drunkard, I will notify you immediately, will ask to be removed from duty on his staff (kind as he has been to me), or resign my commission.

H

men, he was fearful of his own ideas . . . afraid to put

them to the test. He knew as well as Grant that Fort Henry and Fort Donelson were strategic points of great importance, but he did not think a campaign against them was feasible. That-and bad manners-accounts for his turning away coldly while Grant was outlining a plan for taking these forts.

Grant, on the contrary, was a doer rather than a thinker. Action was the essence of his military system. After the rebuff from Halleck he talked with Flag Officer Foote, who commanded the gunboat flotilla on the Mississippi, and persuaded Foote-who loved action as much as Grant himselfto join him in approaching Halleck again with a proposal for an expedition against the Confederate forts.

With the army and the navy both pulling at his coat-tails General Halleck finally agreed to the expedition against Fort Henry.

§ 2

Smoke came up the Tennessee river like an advancing black wall on the morning of February 6, 1862. The river steamers burned pitch pine under their boilers, and at a distance they made one think of a house afire. Behind the gunboats came the transports, crowded with the seventeen thousand men of Grant's army.

While the land forces were being put on shore three miles below the fort, Foote advanced with his vessels and opened fire. There had been a rise in the river and the ground near the fort was covered with water. Long before the troops could flounder across the half-drowned land and get within striking distance the gunboats had shot the fort to pieces, and the Stars and Stripes was flying over the place.

Grant and his staff rode into the captured works at about three o'clock in the afternoon. They found only seventyeight prisoners. The remainder of the garrison, 2,600 in number, had been sent over to Fort Donelson before the fort surrendered. Captain Jesse Taylor, of the Confederate army,

wrote:

Here I first saw General Grant, who impressed me, at the time, as a modest, amiable, kind-hearted but resolute man. While we were at headquarters an officer came in to report that he had not as yet found any papers giving information of our forces, and, to save him further looking, I informed him that I had destroyed all the papers bearing on the subject, at which he seemed very wroth, fussily demanding, "By what authority?" Did I not know that I laid myself open to punishment, etc., etc.? Before I could reply fully, General Grant quietly broke in with, "I would be very much surprised and mortified if one of my subordinate officers should allow information which he could destroy to fall into the hands of the enemy."

"Fort Henry is ours," Grant wired Halleck; "the gunboats silenced the batteries before the investment was completed," and he added: "I shall take and destroy Fort Donelson on the 8th and return to Fort Henry."

This message sounded like news that required three cheers and a day's celebration to do it justice, but Halleck wired back that Grant should remain where he was, strengthen the defenses of Fort Henry, and await reënforcements.

Grant Takes a Chance

217 Grant either disobeyed orders or did not receive this message in time I do not know which-for he was soon on his way toward Fort Donelson. He did not take and destroy it on the 8th; the roads were too deep in mud for the troops to move, although there was a distance of only twelve miles to travel.

His army began to march on the 12th, and on the 13th he had 17,000 men in front of the formidable nest of trenches that the Confederates had established on the Cumberland river. They had more than 20,000 men in Fort Donelson. Ninety miles distant—to the east—the Confederate commander of that military district, Albert Sidney Johnston, had his headquarters at Bowling Green, with 14,000 men.

As soon as Fort Donelson was threatened General Johnston abandoned Bowling Green, but instead of going to the relief of Donelson he marched straight to Nashville. Perhaps the reason for his movement was that he thought the fort strong enough to stand up against Grant, without his assistance.

Fort Donelson, with its outlying rifle pits and redans, covered a large area. It was in the shape of a half-circle, with the flat side resting against the river. The terrain was extremely irregular-broken by hills and gorges. The work was strong and extremely difficult to approach, as its front was protected by entanglements of felled trees.

The investment of a fortified position by a besieging force smaller in numbers than the troops occupying the works is considered by competent authorities to be foolhardy in the extreme. But the foolhardiness of any military venture depends on the circumstances. In this instance Grant thought the circumstances were in his favor. He had only 17,000 men at first, though reënforcements arrived in a day or two which raised his effectives to 27,000.

The garrison in Fort Donelson was commanded by General John B. Floyd, who had been the secretary of war in Buchanan's cabinet. At that time he was under indictment in

Washington for embezzlement of public funds while at the head of the War Department. He was not guilty of this charge -the money had been taken by a subordinate-but it lay heavily on his mind.

Floyd had also been accused in the Northern press, and in Congress, of having sent large quantities of arms from Northern arsenals to the South when war became imminent and while he was in the President's cabinet. This accusation was also without a vestige of truth. It is discussed at length by Rhodes (Vol. III, p. 125) and by Channing (Vol. VI, p. 285). I give these authorities, in order that any one who loves details may look them up.

Instead of being favored in the way of arms and ammunition, the Southern arsenals had actually less than their proper quota at the outbreak of the war.

Floyd was wholly lacking in initiative and inspiration. The second in command, General Gideon J. Pillow, was even worse as a commander of men. Pillow was an irascible, supercilious know-it-all to whom it was impossible to give advice, or even to impart information. The third general in the fort was Simon B. Buckner. Perhaps you will recall him. He was in Grant's class at West Point-and it was he who had lent Grant the money to pay his hotel bills in New York when Grant was on his way home, in disgrace, from the Pacific Coast in 1854.

During the 13th the Federals extended their works around Donelson, and the Confederates behaved as if they were paralyzed.

On the same day Grant, acting with the urgent immediacy that characterized all his movements, made an attack on the fort. Not much was gained at that time, and the attack was renewed on the 14th. Then Foote's gunboats came up the river and engaged the fort's heavy batteries. All day long the sonorous tom-tom of the brazen guns echoed among the hills. The gunboats got the worst of it. Some of them were put out of action, and Flag Officer Foote was wounded.