want to get outside of washington, d.c., get into places we don't normally do programming and really make a commitment to getting outside the beltway to produce programming for all the c-span networks. throughout the weekend here on american history tv on c-span 3, watch personal interviews about historic events on oral histories. our history book shelf features some of the best-known history writers. revisit key figure battles and events during the 150th anniversary of the civil war. visit college classrooms across the country during lectures in history. go behind the scenes at museums and historic sites on american artifacts. and the presidency looks at the policies and leg says of past american presidents. view our complete schedule c-span.org/history, and sign up to have it e-mailed to you by pressing the c-span alert button. this week on the civil war, author kendall gott discusses the battle of fort doneson, a

pivotal victory for the union in 1862. mr. gott is the author of "where the south lost the war" an analysis of the fort henry, fort donelson campaign. this took place at the visitor's center in dover, tennessee. it's 50 minutes. >> the purpose of today is not really 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 have 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 my book i'd love for you to buy that. but there's some others out there, too, dr. cooley wrote an excellent book on the battles of the south and the short film

that's involved here and the interpretation with the rangers. by all means seek those out for the blow by blow. we'll have more of the macro level for this here. it is exciting to be here for the 150th anniversary. as historians we look back and we think 150 years is a long time. but really it isn't. we're talking -- may depend on who we are. great grand fathers, maybe great great grandfathers, just a couple generations have really passed here. but obviously the world has change add great deal in the last 150 years. it's exciting to be here but a little bit mel malancholy as well. a number of men died in this battle. it's almost a shame this battle is not as well remembered as it should be in my opinion. if you ask any high schooler out there in the country the to name a civil war battle what do you think is going to happen?

get it isbu gettysburg will probably be the top one there. i'm going to say some heresy so to speak, my personal opinions. but when you think of the importance of the battle at fort donelson it's overshadowed by shilo six weeks later corinth after that, bull run prior to this battle. but you're getting into fredricksburg, an antietam, fredricksburg. little fort donelson gets overshadowed. i think that's also changing, too. the work here at the park is helping to educate people and interpretation of this battle is also improving. and i'll get in more detail with that. but again, think of what is going on here in the winter of

1862. the union had suffer add big defeat back in the east with the battle of bull run, first mannasses. not much has really happened since that period february of 1862. you have six, seven months with the agitated public in the north in particular, okay, guys, where are we going? let's march onto richmond. and things aren't going that way. president lincoln is also exasperated with the lack of activity. what's it take? it finally takes a brigadier general in cairo, illinois battling his superior, general hallet, let's move. 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 6. a week or so later he'll finally

get over here to fort donelson across the 12 miles separating the two rivers and seize fort donelson and finally win. so why is it forgotten? was it just maze to look too easy? the guys who fought here both sides are going to say well, it wasn't an easy fight at all. fort henry did fall under a gun boat attack. but if you'd check with the men of the uss essex who took a hit in the boiler and 80 some of the crew were scalded, most of them died, it wasn't an easy fight. if you come over here to fort donelson after the battle and ask if that was an easy fight, the guys who were lived through the blizzard, the guys who had made the march over, the guys who had made the series of attacks on morrison's attack, smith's attack, confederate breakout on the 15th if they ask it was an easy fight, no. those guys gave their all for it. so when i feel that fort donelson is somehow for gone

the, to me it's a travesty because these gentlemen and the ladies supporting them also were kind of besmirching their memory here. there's so much more importance that is often give ton this battle. fort donelson, fort henry fell. so what? i'll answer that. fort henry is on the tennessee river. and the tennessee river was one of the major commercial trafficways of the united states at that time. crops and other goods that were produced in the deep south were shipped by steamboat up the missouri -- or i'm sorry, down -- i'm thinking kansas again. take the man out of kansas, i guess, but can't take kansas out of the guy. so sent down to tennessee to cairo and other points down to market. same for cumberland. in the civil war we talk a great deal about the railroads.

well, the railroads were important and gained more importance as it went on. in 1861 and '62 the main routes were the rivers cumberland and this region. when fort 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 the tennessee commerce was now cut off. same went for the cumberland. something even more important on the cumberland was the city of nashville. nashville was the 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 donelson and fort henry hell, i also include fort

heimen, when they fell tennessee was gone for the con fed rates. the iron works, the subsistence crops, any cotton that was grown in this area was eliminated from the confederacy for basically the rest of the war. with middle tennessee gone, also fell columbus, the big gibraltar of the west on the mississippi river. with the federals able to get in behind it it was untenable for the con fed rates and it felt. so in one campaign, two short battles, most of tennessee would be removed from the confederate cause. now, here's where i'm going to get into trouble with some historians but i'm going to make this bold assertion here. i cannot name another more decisive campaign in the entire war. none. maybe vicksburg.

maybe appamattox but that came at the end. what happened in those two? well, vicksburg and the entire confederate army was captured just like here and the mississippi river was open. that's a pretty significant event. it took them several months to do it but that's significant. appamattox was attacked and that caused a chain reaction for the rest of the confederate armies to fall. antietam big battle. glorious battle of the american continent certainly up to that time. what to do to accomplish. nothing. lee's army was able to retreat intact. the army on the potomac broke off and they reconstituted and they went to fighting again. gettysburg. lee invades pennsylvania. he gets all the way up causes

some havoc. army potomac beat him 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. both sides broke contact, went to their respective sides to regroup and they fought again. here at fort donelson, the confederate army is captured and intact. 16,000 guys. big army. 16,000 guys were captured. all their equipment, all their artillery, all the ammunition, all the supplies. grant's army lived on supplies for several weeks after capturing dover where all the confederate supplies were. middle tennessee lost. western tennessee pretty much gone after that very quickly because the con fed rates couldn't hold it, they just 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 essentially a two-week campaign. again, is there any other civil war battle that is so decisive with such short loss and so dramatic? i'm pose this as no. so it does make me sad in a way that fort donelson does not get the recommendation that it does. this is a critical event here. 150 years ago happening right here at fort donelson, fort henry and then fort heimer over that way. okay? and something else that fort donelson is going to do for particularly for the union side, you've heard earlier, doug richardson came up and gave general grant's orders. general grant in february 1864

was a brigadier general in charge of cairo and illinois. it's back water again. it's back water now, too. but he was just a lowly guy, unknown. yeah, he was a captain in the mexican war. 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, but he has one thing going for him. he almost loses a lot of battles. but he ends up winning them in the end. and he's going to do -- belmont, he's learning in trade. this is back in december of '61. he almost loses his shirt physically at belmont. he learns his lessons there, comes here. he has more learning to do. but he's learning his trade. and he's learning it through success. the con fed rates on the 15th come this close to pushing him back to the river and defeating

him. but he springs back. the subordinate commanders under grant are also learning their trade. gentlemen such as at that time colonel logan will go on to high rank, james mcpherson. general mccler nor, he will rise to a point and off he goes. lou wallace, of ben hur fame he'll start on a pretty good rise but he'll have some troubles. but generals and the kernel colonels are learning their trade. the union army that landed at fort henry on the fifth of january, most of them were pretty novice guys. they're just learning the drill and how to fire and so forth. a number of these guys have fought in missouri. and they have had some combat

experience. not two years but they have some. they've been under fire at fort henry and fort donelson they're going to get some more of that experience. six weeks after fort donelson they have shilo. 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 cairo to fort donelson to shilo to corinth to vicksburg, to chattanooga, to atlanta, to savannah, up to the carolinas. these guys are going to be everywhere. and they're going to be leaving a trail of victories in their path. the army of the cumberland will be alongside them. but the army of the tennessee, rock-hard hitting victorious type guys, they have their setbacks obviously. but this is where that army's

going to be born, right here at fort donelson. and as i said before, the commanders as well. conversely on the southern side, the legacy here is going to be a little bit different. the guys that were sent here to fort donelson to bolster the defenses at the last minute, very ad hoc affair. most of them came in from bowling green. and even the guys that were stationed here up until that time at fort henry, fort donelson and fort heimen snt most of their time digging. a little bit to drill. they were novice troops. but they did very well for what training they had they did very well. they made up for that lack of training. boy, the tenacity. but when the prisoners are taken from fort donelson at the surrender they're going to be up in the northern prison camps for about six months before they exchanged or paroled. the southern army out here which would become the army of

tennessee, army of tennessee, they're not going to -- that initial core of experience is gone. the combat experience they had here at fort donelson is locked away in a union prison camp up for six months. so at shilo, because the confederates had lost 16,000 guys in their army, shilo was this close victory for the south. could you imagine if you threw 16,000 more confederates on that what would have happened at the battle of shilo? those guys were denied that battle. and it could have gone the other way. another fort donelson legacy. so another -- i'm going to badger this point is that donelson campaign was so pivotal, and it kind of breaks my heart that it's not as remembered as it should be. lessons for today. if you look at the fort donelson campaign, a lot of studies for command, command and control

personalities, fort donelson campaign where it kind of makes it a fun campaign. the study is looking at the personalities. on the union side they had more of a traditional unified command. you had general holleck in st. louis command of the west, subordinate commander grant in cairo in charge of the expedition. say what you will about halleck in st. louis but he was good about -- you might overwhelm the telegraph lines with notes to grant telling him to do this and that. but grant always knew at least what halleck wanted him to do. it may not have been possible for some of the things that halleck wanted. but he gave grant enough trust to do what was right and he let him know what he wanted done. conversely on the other side, the confederates, it's kind of the exact opposite. you had albert sidney johnson in bowling green in charge of the whole western department. ooh, fort henry fell. we have to reinforce fort

donelson. you take your brigade, you take your regiment, and oh, you take your division and go. and oh, i have four brigadier generals at donelson? whoever is senior just take command. and the communications between all those, of the four brigadier generals, one johnson the lowest-ranking one was kind of forgotten. many of you are probably wondering four? i didn't know there were four. he was kind of forgotten. general buckner, the next junior guy, he didn't communicate as directly as far as we know with albert sidney johnson in the west. but two others, gideon pillow and john floyd, they were sending their commander -- updates from two different generals down there. are going what the heck? and both saying different things by the way.

the day before e-mail but you can relate. if you have an e-mail from two guys and they're saying different things, who do you believe? well, and to general johnson's to his credit, he never firmly established a chain of command, never firmly established what he wanted done here and it led to chaos. 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 was nicely still standing. and it becomes a disaster for the confederates. so today it's fun to study this battle because of the personalities involved. and personalities don't matter anymore, do they? everybody is on the same team? yeah. okay. application of new technologies. another thing i don't understand

why it doesn't get more attention than it does. the mission of the railroad, that was still a fairly new technology in here. i'm going to get some quiz cal looks. i see a couple already. railroads? there were no railroads here at fort donelson or at dover, tennessee. but in order to get troops here you needed a railroad. from columbus, kentucky or bowling green, you take by rail to clarksville just up the river, get on a steamboat, 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 either boat or railroad to cairo, illinois where they were put on a steamboat and brought up here. railroads is kind of neat. mentioned a telegraph. telegraph is still fairly new here in the united states as well at that time, too. telegraph lines are going to be strung up all over the place. grant is going to communicate by two major means with halleck up

in st. louis. give a note to a guy, goes on the steamboat, goes up. they string a line, telegraph line down from cairo, illinois. and there's that guy with the little key and he's tapping out messages back and forth to splou is. kind of neat. something else i think is really neat that boy if they made a movie about fort donelson it would take $1 million to build this little prop here, an iron-clad gun boat. can you imagine the first time ever seeing one of those things on the river? not like the delta queen. these are big, fat and ugly and they have cannons poking out. they're meant for business. the iron-clad technology isn't all that new. the crimean war they were used as floating batteries and some were steam-powered. 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 awhile. cannons certainly there, steam power for boats, that's great.

but these molded them all together, that technology. and the technology was such that you could take a 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. fort donelson is not a good example. because those same gun boats did the same thing at fort donelson got their butts kicked. but what's neat is that the technology is there. then with that technology, for instance you had general grant who's an army general, he has to play with the navy and vice versa. the navy is part of the game now out here in the inland waters. that's brand-new also. so you have flag officer-fo off foote was in charge of the gun boat fleet. grant fortunately had a great partnership with this. they were in full agreement. so again, the study of fort donelson, man, we're losing

something here if we're not doing it. is looking at the first real joint operation here certainly in the civil war. now there's things i should caveat there. there's other operations going on the eastern seaboard that are army, navy. but this is great one to study here. i just have a couple of notes here. novice armies coming together. fort donelson's kind of fun also to study because people are make big mistakes. they're making some basic mistakes. how to handle and distribute ammunition. veteran armies later in the war will not have to deal with because it's known. you have that kind of thing going on. supplies. command and control. tactics are all under -- big flux here at this period of the war. so why is fort donelson kind of

forgotten? i mentioned before it bigger battles had come up after this campaign. shilo in particular happened six weeks after this. in fact, i imagine six weeks from now you're all going to be down at the shilo national battlefield park having a good time, too. so shilo certainly was a big one. and it's understandable with the number of casualties and such. but 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 it was a great victory, shilo and so forth that, overshadowed it. we could leave it at that. why would the south want to remember this battle? yeah. they don't like to remember vicksburg, either, but that one's hard to brush aside.

for the southerners, this was kind of an embarrassment. the loss of both the rivers was just so tremendous and traumatic. and they never got it back. so it was hard for them to want to really remember this kind of thing. the generals who fought here, the commanding generals on the southern side, two of them escaped, pillow and floyd. they never received a command after this. and they spent a great deal of their lives afterwards. general floyd didn't live much longer after the battle, by the way. general pillow tried to exonerate himself out of this. but his conduct was fairly questionable. so he never got a command. general buckner, who was the one who actually surrendered the fort, he was up in fort warren, massachusetts for six months. so he was kind of -- he was not allowed to communicate with anybody. so it was his after action report was able to be passed through. but by and large he was out of

reach. and bushrod johnson who walked out of here on his own, he was pretty quiet about the whole thing, too. so 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. okay. now, let's see. in conclusion my actual informal remarks here, it would be a travesty to allow fort donelson to be not remembered as well as it should be. that is remembered obviously is true with you all here. i can't thank you for coming here. but do i see some nice changes coming about. for instance the civil war series, short in nature the kind of reader's digest version on all the battlefields that was commissioned about a year or so ago. fort donelson has the book on that. so fort donelson has been remembered to the new historical series. the work on the park, i've been

watching this park now for about 40 years. coming here when first when i was 11. as 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 of you that remember, particularly the water battery, the cannons were there but they were not mounted into the actual position that they are today. a lot of archeological work has been done there. they've done some great work in restoring. most of the positions out there. a number of other areas of 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 then preserving critical parts of the battlefield. it's really nice to see that. the exhibits here, some i

remember from 40 years ago. there's some that are very new. the story of jake donelson if you weren't here this morning. the rooster that was the mascot of the company for tennessee, the portrait was donated by the family for preservation and at fort donelson battlefield. there are a lot of remarkable things that are going on here at the park. and i'm sure it will continue and 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 assure you that. i can guarantee. some of you will. i can see some of you guys will certainly hope to see you then. but no, 150 years, that's a long time for all of us. we're here for a limited time. fort donelson, it's going to be here after we're gone and hopefully a long time beyond

that. okay. 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 address those. yes, sir. >> if simon henry and donelson had survived that initial -- and grant had been defeated, what would you think that would have had an impact on the civil war? >> okay. and correct me if i'm wrong. i'm going to repeat your question for you. if the forts henry, donelson and hayman survive, they're able to repulse grant, what would have been the impact? right off the grant grant would be unemployed. he'd be working back at his tannery, his farmer's tannery. >> grant was relieved of command after donelson, some trumped up stuff. w