this week, we discuss the battle of fort donelson. mr. gott is the author of "where the south lost the war." this program took place at the fort donelson national battlefield visitors senter in dover, tennessee.

it's 50 minutes. >> my purpose today is not to give the down and dirty blow by blow of the battle. i've been asked to give a few random thoughts about the 150 years that passed since the battle and the importance of the battle. and i'll focus my remarks on that. for more detailed analysis of that, of course i would love for you to buy my book. there are some others out there, too. there was an excellent book on the battle itself. and then the short film involved here and the interpretation with the rangers. we think 150 years is a long

time but really it isn't. great grandfathers, maybe great, great grandfathers, just a couple generations have really passed here. obviously, the world changed a great deal in the last 150 years. it's exciting to be here. but a little bit melancholy as well. a number of men died in this battle. and it's kind of -- it's almost a shame that this battle is not as remembered as well as it should be in my opinion. if you ask any high schooler out there in the country to name a civil war battle, what do you think is going to happen? gettysburg is going to be the top one there. in the presence -- in my remarks, i'm going to say something -- some here say, so to speak. when you think about the importance of the battle of fort donelson it is overshadowed by shy low six weeks later.

vicksburg was a good one. you have bull run which is prior to this battle. you're getting into fredericksburg and gettysburg and so forth. so little fort donelson in the middle of nowhere out in the western theater gets overshadowed by many other things. i think that is unfortunate. but i think that's also changing, too. the work here at the park and -- is helping to educate people and interpretation of this battle is also improving. i'll get in more detail of that. but, again, think of what is going on here in the winter of 1862. the union suffered a big defeat in the east that the battle bull run of course manassas. not much happened since that period since the february of 1862.

president lincoln is wonder about the lack of activity. it finally takes this brigadier general battling his superior to say let's move. and finally that word comes. and general grant, as the story goes, will come with a combined force or joint force, army and navy and will quickly take fort henry. and that would happen on february 6th. a week or so later, he'll come and finally get over to fort donelson across the 12 miles separating the tennessee and cumberland river. so why is it forgotten? is it made to look too easy? the guys that fought here are going to say it wasn't an easy fight at all.

if you check with the men on the uss essex who took a hit in the boiler and 80-some of the crew died, it wasn't and easy fight. if you come over here to fort donelson and ask if that was the easy fight, the guys that lived through the blizzard, the guy who's made the march over, the guy who's made the series of or confederate breakout on the 15th. if you ask them was that an easy fight, no way. these guys gave their all for it. so when a field at fort donelson is forgotten, to me, it's a travesty. these gentlemen and the ladies supporting them also were kind of in recent memory here. there is so much more importance that is often given to this battle.

the tennessee river was one of the major traffic ways at that time. crops and goods that were produced in the deep south were shipped by a steamboat up the missouri and -- i'm thinking kansas again. take the man out of kansas. so down the tennessee and other points along and out through the mississippi down new orleans and out to market. same with -- for cumberland. in the civil war we talked a great deal about the railroads. well, the railroads were importantme important. but in 1860 and 1862, the main arteries of commerce were the rivers. particularly the cumberland and tennessee in this region. when for the henry fell, there was no other confederate fortification between fort henry all the way down to the head of navigation. and the union, navy at that

moment controlled the tennessee river with the commerce. that whole section of the -- on either side of the banks of tennessee, commerce is now cut off. nashville was a capital of tennessee, still is. with the control of the cumberland gone, nashville fell like that. not a shot was fired. so the absolute significance militarily of the fall of fort donelson was this. when fort henry fell and fort donelson, when they fell, tennessee was gone for the con fed rats. the iron works, the crops, any cotton that was growing in this area. it was eliminated from the confederacy for the rest of the war. with middle tennessee gone, also fell columbus, the big gibralter

of the west on the mississippi river. so in one campaign, most of tennessee will be removed from the confederate cause. i cannot name another more decisive campaign in the world. maybe vicksburg. what happened in vicksburg? well, vicksburg, and entire confederate army was captured, just like here. and the mississippi river was open. that's a pretty significant event. they took them several months to do it. but that's significant.

the fconfederate army was attacked and that caused a chain reaction for the rest of the confederate armies to fall. antitum, big battle. what did that accomplish? not bad. they went to fight again. gettysburg. they invade pennsylvania. get us all the way up to cause some havoc. they meet them in a three-day pitch battle. very dramatic. i'm not trying to undercut the heroics and the sacrifices these gentlemen made in these battles, but what did gettysburg prove?

nothing. they fought again. here's is fort donelson. the army is intact. that's a big army at that time. 16,000 guys were captured. middle tennessee lost. western tennessee, gone pretty much after that. they withdrew without firing a shot. eastern tennessee wasn't really friendly to the confederate cause anyway. so you can argue that in one swoop all of tennessee is gone in a two-week campaign. again, is there any other civil war battle that is so decisive with such short loss and so dramatic in effect?

so -- something else at fort donelson is going to do for the union side. you heard earlier doug richardson came up and read general grant's orders. general grant was a brigadier general and tourism was in illinois. it's back water and he was just a lowly guy, unknown. yeah, he was a captain in the mexican war and he faded from the army very quickly after

that. this battle is going to put him on the glide path to success here. he has a lot of competition out there. he has one thing going for him. he almost loses a lot of battles. he ends up winning them in the end. and he's going to -- you know, learning the trade. this is back in december of '61. he almost loses his shirt physically. he learns his lessons there. he comes here. he has more learning to do. but he's learning his trade. and he's learning it through success. the con fed rats federates comee to pushing him back and defeating him. but he springs back. the kmapdecommanders on the groe also learning their trade. colonel logan will go on to hire james mcpherson.

the general will rise to a point and off he goes. lou wallace. he will start on a pretty good rise. but he'll have some troubles. but the generals and the regiment are all learning their trade here and what is more important is the men are learning their trade. a number of these guys fought missouri and they have had some combat experience. not two years. they've been under fire. at fort donelson, they're going to get more experience. six weeks after fort donelson they have more experience. you are seeing here the core, the nugget of the army of the tennessee being born. and the army of the tennessee is going to be one of the most

successful armies in the union and in the civil war. those guys are going to march from fort donelson to siloh to vicksburg to chattanooga, atlanta, savannah, unthrough the ca carolinas. they're going to be everywhere and leaving a trail of victories in their path. the army of the tennessee, rock hard hitting victorious type guys, they have their setbacks obviously. but this is where that army is born. right here at fort donelson. conversely on the southern side, the legacy is going to be different. the guys that were sent here fort donelson, very ad hoc affair. most came in from bowling green. and even the guys that were

stationed here up until that time at fort henry and donelson and heiman, they spent most of their time digging. a little bit of drill. they were novice troops. they did very well for what training they had. they did very well. they made up for that lack of training with just bull headed tenacity. but when the prisoners are taken from fort donelson, they're going to be in the prison camps for six months before they're exchanged or paroled. the southern army out here which will become the army of tennessee, army of tennessee, they're not going to -- that initial core of experience is gone. the combat experience that they had here at fort donelson is locked away in the union prison camp for six months. so it's shiloh. because the con fed rats lost 16,000 guys in the army. shiloh was this close of a

victory for the south. can you imagine if you threw 16,000 more con fed rats on there. what would have happened at battle of shiloh? they were denied that battle. and they could have gone the other way. another fort donelson legacy. so another -- i'm going to badger this point. donelson campaign was so pivotal and it breaks my heart that it's not as remembered as it should be. lessons for today, a lot of studies for command, command and control personalities. fort donelson campaign, what makes it a fun campaign is looking at the personalities on the union side they had more of a traditional unified command. you had the commander in st. louis and the grant in cairo. say what you will about general

hallick. he may have overwhelmed the telegraph lines with notes to grant telling him to do this and that. but grant always knew, at least what hallick wanted him to do. it may not have been possible for some of the things he wanted. he didn't understand what was on the ground. he gave grant enough trust to do what was right. conversely on the other side, the confederates, it's the exact opposite. you had sidney johnson in bowling green in charge of the whole western department. fort henry fell. we have to reinforce fort donelson. you take your brigade, you take your regimen. you take your division and go. and oh, i have four brigadier genels at donelson. whoever is senior, just take command. and the communications between

all of those, of the four brigadier generals one johnson the lowest ranking one, he was forgotten. i didn't know there were four. he was forgotten. buckner, the next junior guy, he didn't communicate directly as far as we know. but the two others, they were sending their commander updates. if can you imagine the theater commander getting updates from two different generals down there going what the heck? and they're both saying different things, by the way. this is before e-mail but can you relate. you have e-mails from two different guys and they're saying different things, who do you believe? and general johnson never firmly established chain of command. it led to chaos. and particularly during the

discussions of what to do on the 15th of february, the day before the surrender, this all comes to a head at the dover hotel which is nicely still standing. and it becomes a disaster for the confederates. so today it's fun to stud dwli battle because of the personalities involved. and the personalities don't matter anymore today, do they? everybody is on the same team? application and new tenologies. another neat thing about this campaign, which i don't understand, too, why it doesn't get more attention than it does. mission of railroad, that was still a fairly new technology in here. and i have to get some looks. i see them already. railroad? yeah, there are no railroads here in dover, tennessee. but in order to get troops here, you need a railroad.

if you're going to bring them from bowling green, you get rail. you take it by rail to clarksville up the river, get on a steamboat and come down. so railroads are in use. the same for supplies. grant is going to use the railroads for supplies. they all come down by boat or railroad to cairo, illinois and brought up here. so railroads. it's kind of neat. we mentioned the telegraph. the telegraph is still fairly new in the united states here at that time, too. and telegraph lines are strung up all over the place. grant, for instance, is going to communicate by two major means with hallot in st. louis. give a note to a guy. gets on a steamboat, goes to st. louis. here you go, general. the general has a telegraph line from cairo, illinois. and there is that guy with the little key. he is tapping out messages back and forth to st. louis. kind of neat. so i think it's really neat that they made a movie about fort

donelson, it would take a million to build this little prop here. it was an iron clad boat. can you remember the last time you seen one of those on the river? it's not like the delta queen. these are big fat and ugly and cannons pointed out. the iron clad technology is not all that new. but here in the united states, certainly in the 1860s, they were pretty cutting edge. technology had been there all along. iron plate, that's been around for a while. cannons, certainly their steam power for boats. these molded them all together, that technology. and the technology was such that you could take the gun boat and really for the first time take a gun boat and take on a land fortification and with some measure of success. fort henry is a good example. the same gunboats did the same thing here at donelson and got

their butts kicked. but what is neat is that the technology is there. and with that technology, for instance, you have general grant who is an army general. he has to play with the navy and vice versa. the navy is part of the game out here in the inland waters. that's brand new also. so you have flag officer foot, later admiral, was in charge of the union gumbo fleet. and grant and foot, fortunately, had a great partnership with this. so, again, the study of fort donelson, man, we're losing something here if we're not doing it. looking at the first real joint operation here, certainly civil war. now there are things i -- i should caveat there. there are other operations going on in eastern seaboard that are army-navy. but this is a dhsh -- this is at

one to study here. i just have a couple notes here. novice armies coming together. fort donelson is fun to study because people are making big mistakes. they're making basic mistakes of how to handle and distribute ammunition. veteran armies later in the war will not have to deal with. you have that kind of thing going on here. supplies, command and control, tactics are all under a big flux at this period of the war. so why is fort donelson forgotten? it was a bigger battle that came up after this campaign of shiloh in particular. it was six weeks after this. i imagine six weeks from now you'll all be down at the shiloh national battlefield park having a good time, too. so it certainly was a big one.

and it is understandable that number of calgaries and such. why even in their day, when you look at the official records or if you look at the books that are written shortly after the war, fort donelson is rarely mentioned. could it be that the north, although a great victory, shiloh and so forth that, overshadowed. we can leave that down. why would the south want to remember this battle? i don't like to remember vicksburg either. that one is hard to brush aside. for the southerners, this is kind of an embarrassment. the loss of both the rivers is just so tremendous and traumatic. they never got it back. i it was hard to remember this kind of thing. the generals on the southern

side, two of them escaped. they never received a command after this. they spent a great deal of their lives afterwards -- general floyd didn't live much longer after the battle. je general floyd tried to exonerate himself out of this. he never got a command. general buckner who was the one who actual lly surrendered, he s in fort warren, massachusetts, for six months. so he was kind of -- he was not allowed to communicate with anybody. so it was, you know, his after action report was able to pass through. but by and large, he was out of reach. johnson who walked out of here on his own, he was quiet about the whole thing, too. it was kind of an embarrassment to the general officers. so maybe that's why at least the south doesn't remember it quite as well.

it would be a travesty to allow fort donelson not to be remembered. that is remembered, obviously as true with you all here. i thank you for coming here. but i do see some nice changes that are am coucoming about. there is a series that is short in nature and the "reader's digest." of all the battle fields commissioned. fort donelson has a book on that. it has been remembered through a new historical series. the work on the park up and watching this park for about 40 years. coming here when i was first 11. i was a boy scout. a lot of changes have been going on here in the last 40 years and a lot in the last 10 or 15. for those that remember the water battery, the cannons were

there but they were not mounted in the actual position they are today. they've done great work in restoring most of the positions out there. a number of other areas in the park have been acquired. 15 acres is just signed over today. there's more in the works. and it's a nice balance between development, allowing dover to survive and thrive and grow and preserving critical parts of the battlefield. it's really nice to see that. there are some that are very new. story of jake donelson, the rooster that was the mascot of the company h third tennessee. the portrait was donated by the family for preservation and for here and at the national battlefield. there are a lot of remarkable

things that are going on here at the park. and i'm sure it will continue. i certainly hope it does. but again, fort donelson, 150 years ago, remarkable. 150 years ago. i'm not going to be around for the 200th, i can assure you that. i guarantee. some of you will. i can see some of you. you guys will certainly. i hope to see you then. but 150 years, that's a long time for all of us. we're here for a limited time. fort donelson, it will be here after we're gone and hope ffulla long time beyond that. all right. that concludes my formal remarks. i'll open it up for any points of discussion that you would like to make. and we'll see if we can address those. yes, sir? >> if heiman, henry and donelson had survived and grant was defeated, what would you think

that would have had an impact on the civil war? >> okay. correct me if i'm wrong. i don't hear well. i'm going to repeat your question. if the forts henry, donelson and heiman survived, what would have been the impact? right off the bat, grant would be unemployed. he'd be working back at his tannery. and my good colleague jim vaughn made a great point this morning. grant was -- as you know, grant was relieved of the command after donelson. he was relieved when he was victorious. if he was not victorious, he would have been fired, too, certainly. the effect of the long term, what i would suspect is that they would have -- the union would ve another competent decision, they might have done it differently. it might have been