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 o

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

a reminder, general tillman is not just the commander of fort donelson of fort henry but also fort donelson. he allowed himself to get captured there and leaving the rest of his garrison without a leader. i find fault with general tugman on that. conduct was very heroic, very brave officer. i will certainly not take that away from him but he got caught up with things and captured at henry. bushrod johnson will be sent here that would have been yesterday, i believe. but that was very quickly overshadowed because general pillow would be sent here. and then latered it would be tomorrow i believe general floyd would show up along with general buckner. so very chaotic going on here. what the the confederates are doing on the 11th is still recovering from the fort henry ordeal and the long march and nasty road here. general gilmer should be here anytime. he's the major of engineers at the time. he'll start sketching out what we now know as the outer defenses. and well, that might be happening right now. starting to dig tonight. how's that? digging party. >> wow. that's what's going on now. and wh

he sends his guys to fort donelson. so leaving behind the skeleton crew with the heavy batteries to hold off the union. so, yeah, i -- i don't know how to explain why they chose that site. any site along that stretch of the river go a mile up or mile south, any position would have been better than that one. even today since the dam is built, it's under 20 feet of water. and i'm not sure there is much of anything left. the existing photos from 1932 had a picture of an old man and the fort was made. the fort walls was probably three feet high when they were originally 10 to 20 feet high. and now being underwater, i can't imagine anything is left of it. unfortunately. it would be neat. sir, you had a question earlier. >> yeah. who was the overall commander again for that region? did he catch a lot of flack -- >> north or south? >> did he catch a lot of flack for not having indepth defense? >> the original commander for the south was albert sidney johnson. he was the western department. after it is any johnson was the highe

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,

forte fiction. ft. henry is a good example. those same gun boats did the same thing at donelson, got their butts kicked. what's neat is that the technology is there. and with that technology you have general grant, an army general, he has to play with the navy, vice versa. the navy is part of the game now out here in inland waters. that's brand new also. you have flag officer foote, later admiral, was in charge of the union gun boat fleet. and grant and foote fortunately had a great partnership with this. they're in full agreement. again, the study of ft. donelson, we're losing it if we're not doing it. looking at the first real joint operation here for the civil war. now, there are certain things i should caveat that. there are other operations going on, eastern seaboard, that are army/navy, but this is a great one to study here. novice armies. ft. donelson is fun to study because people are making big mistakes. making basics mistakes of how to handle and distributed ammunition to veteran armies later in the war will not have to deal with. you have that kind of thing going on. command and control, tact