Fort Donelson 1862: Pillow's Halted Breakout and Grant's Knapsack Clue

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In February 1862, after Fort Henry fell, Fort Donelson sat on a 100-foot bluff above the Cumberland River as the key to Confederate Tennessee. Albert Sidney Johnston left it to John B. Floyd, a former U.S. Secretary of War wanted in the North on corruption allegations, who handed operations to Gideon Pillow and Simon Bolivar Buckner, two generals who despised each other. Ulysses S. Grant, under suspicion from Henry Halleck, marched 12 miles overland to lay siege, only for an Arctic front on February 13 to drop temperatures to 10 degrees, freezing muskets, powder and artillery wheels.

Andrew Foote's gunboats were wrecked on February 14 by plunging fire from the bluff, and on February 15 Pillow's dawn assault broke the Union right and opened the road to Nashville. Then Pillow ordered his men back into the trenches. Grant returned, noticed captured Confederates carrying three days of rations, read it as a sign of desperation, and ordered C. F. Smith and Lew Wallace to counterattack. By nightfall the escape route was closed, Floyd and Pillow fled by boat, and Buckner, who had once loaned Grant money, was left to accept unconditional surrender.

• John McClernand's unauthorized probing attacks set the dry winter grass on fire, trapping wounded men between the lines.
• Union troops heard the rebel yell for the first time in the Western theater during Pillow's breakout.
• Attacking Union infantry used Zouave tactics, dropping flat after each Confederate volley and rushing forward during the 20-second reload.
• Nathan Bedford Forrest refused to surrender and led hundreds of cavalrymen out through the freezing, waist-deep water of Lick Creek.
• About 13,000 Confederates surrendered, Nashville became the first Confederate state capital to fall, and admirers began sending Grant thousands of cigars.