after donelson, some trumped up stuff. he was relieved when he was victorious. if he was not victorious, he would have been fired, too, certainly. the effect of it in the long term, what i would suspect is that they would have -- the union would have mounted another expedition, they might are done it differently, might have been bloodier but it would have happened. with the iron identify clad gun boats, if 20,000 guys didn't do the job, they would come back with 40,000. it would have happened. it would have postponed that, though. and this was a place to attack. this was the weak link in the line. and it was going to come here. so, long answer to your question, that's what i think -- it would have happened eventually -- >> there was already discussion in the north among some people about saying, let the south go

at that point because they were so discouraged and there was no -- there was no win. >> yeah, could be. you know, with donelson, with with the success of donelson the way it happened, that kind of talk went away. if it happened with donelson was a failure, maybe. also, too, donelson is the first blow confederacy for gaining foreign recognition. could have been possible for the confederacy getting foreign recognition with successful defense of donelson and henry? we're getting a little gray are. >> it could have cost >> well, as they say in politics, too, if -- if you didn't hear, could have cost the presidential election. could be. but two years is an awful long time in politics. yes, sir. >> when henry fell, the navy took henry. the army hadn't got there yet.

with belmont and with seeing columbus, shouldn't the navy have anticipated more elevation of their guns? >> yeah, probably. >> you know, because that was -- that was a major problem for them. >> yeah, it was. the gun boat design was interesting. the gun boats were designed for antiship opeon the guns have tr elevating. >> right. yeah, they probably should have. but they didn't have much intelligence here at ft. henry or ft. donelson. they knew of their existence. ft. donelson -- even today people have trouble spelling the name, for pete's sake. i still get ft. donaldson, i get e-mails like that. so, yeah, they probably -- in hindsight, they should have. but there's a couple things -i' argument with shooting -- not being able to shoot high enough. on the river here, most of the shots were overshot.

so, they were able to elevate. but what the gun boats here, here at the time on floodwaters, very choppy, the boat's bouncing. looking down the hill at the guns, they look pretty big. i challenge -- not challenge, but i encourage any of you to walk guard to the gun line and walk back. it's a thin little line with a couple black dots. and if you're a couple hundred yards away and you got this big 46-pound cannon trying to hit that one little dot, pretty tough target. le away, weren't they? >> at first. then they closed in. like at ft. henry they closed in as close as they could, almost point blank. that's when the gun boats got in trouble. they were able to shoot down into the unprotected parts of the boat. okay. yes, sir. >> with the advent of the telegraph being used in war, didn't that lead to more

micromanagement by politicians and generals -- >> the short question was, is with the advent of the telegraph, was there an increase in micromanagement? certainly, that wouldn't happen. look what happened to e-mail. that never -- how many of you deal with e-mail, by the way, on a regular basis? happens all the time. yes, it did happen. in fact, grant had problems with hallic. he's up in -- hallic's up in st. louis and he's telling grant while he's at ft. henry, do an run, take clarksville, and grant's looking at the map and he knows what's on the ground and he says, that's impossible but i do know what grant is able to say to himself is, i know the boss is getting impatient, he wants me to move. i need to cut the bridge at clarksville in order to do that i have to take ft. donelson. so, grant is being micromanaged but he's able to deal with it. part of that is because he's 500

miles away. don't you wish you had that with your boss? >> at the same time you also had feedback going to washington, where lincoln is sitting there and -- >> in this particular case, grant is insulated from that, to his betterment. grant is dealing directly with hallic. hallic is not let any of that stuff from washington or anywhere else filter down. hallic is in control. of the communications. hallic discussing things with mcclelland, discussing things with booeuhl, the war departmen. grant not part of that because hallic is looking at grant as a subordinate. you do my bidding, no more, no less. and he's dealing directly with grant. so, yes, it can be a possibility, a problem with micromanaging. but grant was able to correctly selectively ignore some things, but he got the tone of what

hallic wanted out of that, so he was able to operate successfully. yes, sir. >> couldabore about columb columbus, belmont, how that impacted this area when the war came to ft. henry. >> sure. if you look at the map of confederate defenses in '61 and '62, the mississippi river had about seven major fort fictions, starting at columbus down past memphis to vicksburg. there was about seven of them. and they're all fairly substantial works. if you get to columbus, kentucky, it's well worth the trip. if you see what they have built there and what's still around there, you see these walls that are 20, 30 feet high. they're 30 to 40 feet wide. they're massive construction. then you see the little chicken scratchings in the water battery at ft. donelson. you can see where the

confederate majority of effort was. where they were concentrating was the mississippi river. they knew that's what the federals wanted -- they wanted to control the mississippi. so, they built ft. -- ort on th mississippi river. for the tennessee river, you had ft. henry and hyman, across the river from each other. that's it. that's all they have. and ft. henry is built in a swamp. ft. hyman was uncomplete, on the kentucky side. ft. donelson was stronger, but even then it only -- 14 guns along the river. columbus had dozens on the river. you could just see where they're focusing their effort. it wasn't here on the tennessee or cumberland river. it was on the mississippi. so, when -- to get to your question, as ft. henry in particular fell, that gave the ability of the union to come up the tennessee and swing over and

get behind columbus, cut the rail line off. once that's done, whoever stuck up there in columbus is trapped. once ft. henry fell, been quickly apparent to the confederates, we need to pull our guys and big guns out of columbus or we're going to lose them. without a shot columbus falls and occupied by a regiment infantry from the union side. >> wasn't much of a battle? >> wasn't a battle. zero. they just pulled back. next is island ten on the tennessee line. and that -- that came a quick battle, too. iron-clads ran the batteries and then the union got behind -- union army got behind the fort. nothing there to stop them. so, ft. henry, ft. donelson set off that chain reaction as that because ft. henry did. just fell right behind it. yes, sir.

i'm sorry. >> the location before henry, was it not doomed from the way it was set he bat. the location of ft. henry was set -- was bkirkman's old landing. i don't know why they built it there. a number of gentlemen -- captain taylor was probably the most colorful. people found problems with it.n summer of 1861 when the river was low. low water. and the fort did have a great field of fire. for three uninterrupted miles, you point a cannon, three miles. and that's pretty good. what they didn't take into account was the river floods. and captain taylor was an artilleryman that came out from nashville to teach the guys how to shoot the big guns. and during one of his afternoon walks, he's up above the hills

around the fort. kind of noticing these mud rings up on the trees. he asks the local farmer, what the hell's this? that's mud rings from the floods. you got to be kidding me? kind of, okay, mud ring here. it's over the fort. the mud rings are -- you've got to be kidding. he's writing a report, to the state of tennessee, to the confederate engineer bureau, confederate army and guys come out and take a look at it and they say, well, too late. just keep building. and that's really what happened. was there some bureaucratic deal, real estate deal on this? i don't know. did some senator's nephew own that land? i don't know. but from an engineering standpoint, what were you people thinking about? at the time of the battle, i

think you're mostly familiar with it, the river was rising. the confederate gunners were standing in water, finding their guns. it was this close entering the powder magazine, which would have flooded the powder. if grant would have waited one more day, he wouldn't have had to fight ft. henry at all. it would have been under water. you know, that was the timing of it. so, commander at ft. henry at the time, he's looking at the army moving around his rear and he's looking at the gun boats. he's looking at the water and says, i'm out of here. he sends his guys to ft. donelson. so, leaving behind the skeleton crew at of heavy batteries to hold off the union. yeah, i don't know how to explain why they chose that site. any site along that stretch of the river, go a mile up, mile south, any position would have been better than that one. even today if you go out there, since the dam was built in

'33-'34, under tennessee valley authority, it's under about 20 feet of water. and i'm not sure there's much of anything left under it. the existing photos from 1932 had a picture of an old man. and the fort was -- the fort wall, fort north wall of ft. henry was probably about three feet high when they were originally 10 to 20 feet high. it's been eroded by that time. now being under water and the sediment and all that, i can't imagine anything's left of it. unfortunately. it would be neat. sir, you had a question earlier. >> yeah. who was the overall commander again for that region? and did he catch -- >> north or south? >> south. and did he catch a lot of flack for not better -- having in-depth defense? >> yes. overall regional commander for south was albert sydney johnson, western department. yes, he did catch a lot of flack for it. albert sydney johnson was actually the second highest ranking confederate general in the army at that time.

very distinguished career, indian fighter, been in regular army before the war. was department commander in the pacific right before the war and came across the prairie to fight in the civil war. he had a tough job. the south had a departmental system in their -- in how they worked things. johnson was responsible for raising armies, equipping them, dealing with all the governors, getting supplies from the governors. he was a military guy but also a politician. you know, he had to deal with the politicians. hard, hard job. where the union had a far more streamlined central authority here. general johnson will catch heck for the failure of ft. henry, ft. donelson, and he's scrambling to recover from that, which leads to the battle of shilo. he is forming the -- after ft. donelson, ft. henry fall, the new union army of tennessee will move to pittsburgh landing,

south of here. general albert sidney johnson is collecting every force he can, bowling green, nashville, and this is his counterstrike. that's where the battle of shilo comes about. someone else? you already asked one. you already asked one, too. come on. >> when they made their breakout, there were a lot of other people that went along with him. now, did they -- the different grig a brigade generals say you want to go? >> it was a case by case basis. the question is when nathan bedford forest escapes, he takes his own command but what about the other guys that went with him? about 800 to 1200 guys went with forest. the question is, was it -- well, i'll just say. it was a case by case basis.

word got out that forest was going to make a run for it, break out. if you had a horse, like if you're an artilleryman and you had a horse, get on the dang horse and follow him. if you're on foot, that's kind of tricky. a lot of guys would have loved to have break out but they were on foot. they knew they had to cross the creek down there and then once they even got clear of ft. donelson, the fear was being overtaken by union cavalry. a lot of guys didn't make the big choice, bold choice to escape. it really came down to if you had a horse, got word there was even a breakout, and if you wanted to or not. that's how it came down to. gants cavalry, a cavalry battalion under lieutenant gant didn't go with forest. he asked them to go, alerted them, didn't to want go. other guys were begging to go. so, it was really an absolute -- by that time it was an individual decision. some guys tried to cross the

river, some guys tried to race through the lines. and that's -- that's what makes head counting after the battle so tough because there's some guys that they were captured, put on the roll, but they had an opportunity, they just walked away. loose as a prisoner, but where the heck is he? so, record keeping was very lax on both sides during this campaign. which makes it kind of fun as a historian, but if you're looking for a definitive answer, there's sometimes i have to say, i don't know, because there's no definitive answer for that. >> even after prisoners they walked away? >> one more time? >> after they had surrendered, some of them walked away? >> yes. absolutely. most famous case is brigadier general johnson, surrendered with his guys. he didn't sign any paperwork but he was within the lines. most of the guys are being put onto transport. a couple more boats left to go. captain, how about you and i,

we'll go? that's what they did. they walk up the lines, found a couple horses and they split. they were gone. he paid a price for that, too. question? >> yes. first off, thank you for being here. i think your book is fabulous. the life of the common soldier. based upon your research that you've done, for a moment can we step back 150 years right now, february 11th, 4:00 in the afternoon, what's going on both sides? obviously digging crazily, the southern troops are -- >> on the 11th it's pretty chaotic what's going on now. what you have -- it was reenacted today. bless the reenactors. they had a reenactment of the guys camped out at ft. henry and they made that march from ft. henry to ft. donelson, much like they did 150 -- 149 years, so many months and days -- a couple

days. they made that march. god bless them. they made that march with the leather and nasty weather, they went ahead and did that. back to your question. what's going on right here, 4:00 in the afternoon? chaotic. general tugman allowed himself to be captured at ft. henry. that was not his original plan, by the way. he was going -- he sent colonel hyman to ft. donelson. wrote back to ft. henry to check up on gunners about to open fire on the federal gun boats and he got caught up in a battle. and he got all animated, you know, the combat does that. you got all excited. he was serving the guns with the rest of them. oops, you know, and he got surrendered. so, now we're -- the days after that, colonel hyman is here but he happens to be the ranking colonel of this whole confederate column. reminder, general togman not just commander at ft. henry, also ft. donelson, a combined command, he commanded both forts

can and allowed himself to get captured there, leaving the rest of his garrison without a leader. i find a little fault with him on that. conduct was very heroic, very brave officer. i'll certainly not take that away from him but he got caught up and got captured with henry. bushrod johnson will be sent here -- that would have been yesterday, i believe. but that was very quickly overshadowed because general billow will be sent here and later -- it would be tomorrow, i believe, will be general floyd will show up, along with general buckner. very chaotic going on here. what confederates are doing on the 11th is still recovering from the ft. henry ordeal and the long march and nasty road here. general gilmer should be here any time, major of engineers, and he'll start sketching out the what we now known as outer defenses. and that -- that might be happening right now. starting to dig tonight, how's

that? digging party. >> wow. >> so, that's what's going on now. just comes to mind at this time, the big guns, the columbia columbia down there, and the 6 1/2 inch rifle, aren't even in operation yet. not even mounded. they are wanted for spare parts, both of those. they did test the columbia a few weeks ago, but it hit the carriage that it's on and they needed some extra parts. those are being forged in clarksville. and again the six-inch rifle is missing a couple of parts too. and the 6 1/2 inch rifle about an hour before the gun boat fight will be finally in operation. the columbia is in operation by that time, but because of the damage done to the carriage, it can only traverse a little bit. so it can only fire in one direction. so what they did with what they had was pretty remarkable.

i think we have time for one more. ok. you're it. >> how the south -- where the south lost the war was not when they originally planned. >> well, let me pay you off for that one. my publisher is probably -- if he sees this, he's probably not going to be happy. the original title of my book was "where defeated valor was." that was taken off the confederate memorial here. where defeated valor lies. and in the publishing world, when you give a manuscript over, you lose a lot of control over what happens. and it was decided that that would be -- i'm trying to remember, this was 10 years ago, provocative and thought provoking title, and that's what they wanted, and they insisted about it. i had very few options, one to accept it or two, find another publisher. so i was younger and more ambitious, so i said go ahead

and publish it. thank you for the question. that was the original title to the book. and i actually do not make the point that there are so many different points in the war that you cannot say this is where it was lost. but i will make the point like i did earlier, this is the most decisive one. and i challenge anyone to tell me a more decisive battle than this. and by golly, it's real -- i'm real proud to be here, to be part of the commemoration experiences here, and i'm so glad you guys made the time and trouble to make it as well. god bless you all, folks, and thanks for coming. and i'll pass it on to ranger richardson. [ applause ] what an honor to have you here, sir. thank you so much. a few days after the battle, general grant wrote that the name fort donelson will be forever spelled in capital letters across the maps of our

nation. he and so many others recognized immediately how important this battle was in the timeline of the civil war. and this story, the fort henry, fort donelson campaign, has some of the most incredible stories associated with it. there are just thousands of stories, and it is such an honor and a pleasure to be able to share those stories and to preserve the resources here at the park. we here who work at fort donelson, this is our home away from home. we just love being here. but this park is yours. this belongs to you. and so as much of an honor as it is for us to be part of the civil war sesquicentennial this year, we thank you for making this possible. everything we do here is because of your support. so the professor will be outside if you would like to say hello and have him sign your book. thank you for being here, and thank you all for being here as well. have a peaceful and safe day.

thank you for being here. [ applause ] as commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the civil war continues, join us every saturday at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. and sundays at 11:00 a.m. for programs featuring the civil war. for more information about american history tv on cspan 3, including our complete schedule, go to cspan.org/history. and to keep up with us during the week, or to send us your questions and comments, follow us on twitter. we're at twitter.com/cspanhistory. there's a new website for "american history tv" where you can preview our upcoming programs, watch video from our featured weekly series, as well as access the history tweets, history in the news, and social

media from facebook, youtube, twitter, and foursquare. all weekend every weekend on cspan 3 and online at cspan.org/history. hosted by our comcast cable partner, cspan's local content vehicle recently visited many historic sites in shreveport, louisiana's third largest city. learn more about shreveport all weekend long on american history tv. the inevitable end, retribution. here is clyde barrow and bonnie parker, who died as they lived, by the gun. the officers were on the left side of the road nearest the driver. this explains the fact that bonnie's body had more bullet holes than clyde's. any one of these bullets would have been fatal to both, but after having killed 14 people, most of whom were officers of

the law, and having come safely through so many gun battles, it did not seem advisable to fire just one bullet. >> bonnie and clyde were probably some of the most notorious gangsters of the 1930s crime era in the united states because their crime story began in texas, east texas, and involved louisiana, they are very sort of connected to the 1930s story of shreveport as well. probably most people associate bonnie and clyde with a very intense two-year period from 1932 to 1934 when they were involved in a string of armed robberies and murders throughout this part of the united states. we think that bonnie and clyde actually met initially in 1930 when bonnie parker was working as a waitress in dallas, texas, and soon after that, clyde barrow went to state prison. so we know that they resumed their relationship in 1932 in

texas, and their first crime actually took place in hillsboro, texas, not too far from shreveport. the shreveport times was regularly reporting their exploits, you know, in the newspaper. and people in this area kept up with it, just like they did the big gangsters of that era of american history. there was also -- of course, this was the age of john dillinger, the age of pretty boy floyd. as a matter of fact, a lot o al three of those, bonnie and clyde, john dillinger, and pretty boy floyd all lawnforcem year, in 1934. so people were really engaged in that story. probably simultaneously horrified but fascinated by these criminals in the great depression. in early 1934, they were implicated in a prison escape involving a former associate of clyde barrow's in texas, a man named raymond hamilton. they helped him escape from prison. and in the process of that, shot

and killed a prison guard. so that's when really the net of law enforcement began to close around them, was after the murder of the prison guard early in 1934. so it was april of 1934 that collide barrow, we know, was in and around shreveport. as a matter of fact, there was a car that was stolen in shreveport from clyde barrow, he stole a car, and actually abandoned it in kansas. and his fingerprints proved that of course he had been in this area even before he was spotted here. we knew that they were in and about the vicinity. just a few days before the ambush took place, in gibson, louisiana, the -- there was a local cafe here, not too far from where we're standing, called the majestic cafe. and on this street, somewhere between the point we're standing and a couple of blocks from

here, clyde barrow was spotted somewhere near the majestic cafe, and someone in the neighborhood phoned the local authorities. and it was because of that report that law enforcement from the region, texas rangers, knew that they were in the vicinity. and so that's when the net sort of began to close around bonnie and clyde. and their ambush occurred actually just four days after clyde barrow was spotted here on this street. they were ambushed not far from gibson, louisiana, on a rural road. there was actually -- the ambush laid in place by local law enforcement over in that part of louisiana. who knew on good intelligence where they were going to be mov they laid in wait for them on a re