General Grant captured at Fort Donelson fifteen thousand men, seventeen thousand muskets, and sixtyfive pieces of artillery. The Confederates had lost two thousand five hundred in killed and wounded, and nearly four thousand escaped in steamers in the night up the river or made their way on horseback through the creek on the south of the fort. General Grant's force at the time of the surrender amounted to twenty-seven thousand. His losses during the siege were four hundred and twenty-five killed, and one thousand five hundred and sixteen wounded and missing.

The capture of Fort Donelson was the first great Union success of the war, and it electrified the loyal portion of the Republic. While the Army of the Potomac, with its skilled generals, its perfect equipment, and its great numerical strength, was unable to get out of sight of the dome of the Capitol, General Grant (known to but few) had marched from victory to victory, until this glorious success had crowned his arms. Those great water-highways, the Cumberland and the Tennessee Rivers, were free from the Confederate domination; Nashville, the capital of Tennessee, surrendered to the troops of Buell-for Fort Donelson had been its defense: Columbus, on the Mississippi, and Bowling Green, a hundred miles to the east (where the Confederates had collected one of their largest armies), were turned and both speedily evacuated.

President Lincoln appointed Grant Major General of Volunteers, his commission bearing date of the surrender (February 17th, 1862), while the Northern States echoed with salutes in honor of his brilliant achievement. General Halleck, however, was induced to believe that General Grant "had resumed his former bad habits," and he directed him to place a subordinate in command and to

report at Fort Henry-on the flimsy pretext that he had not reported the strength of his regiments.

General Grant replied, stating that he had reported almost daily the condition of his command, and saying in conclusion: "You may rely on my carrying out your instructions in every particular to the best of my ability." This did not satisfy General Halleck, who again complained, but in the name of General McClellan, then Commander-in-Chief, who had (he said) telegraphed from Washington advising his arrest. General Grant, in a

manly reply, vindicated his course, denied the charges, and concluded by saying: "There is such a disposition to find fault with me that I ask to be relieved from duty until I can be placed right in the estimation of those higher in authority." General Halleck found that he had gone too far, and, accepting General Grant's statements, he restored him to his command.

The capture of Fort Donelson was a grand inspiration to the troops in the Southwest. It settled the determination there to sweep all the defenses from the rivers, even to those at Vicksburg, the boasted Gibraltar of the Mississippi. This henceforth became the final objective point of General Grant's operations.

CHAPTER VIII.

VHE SURPRISE AT CORINTH-GRANT'S PERSISTENCY-THE SECOND DAY'S VICTORY ~HALLECK TAKES THE FIELD AND MOVES SLOWLY ON CORINTH-AFTER AN ATTEMPT TO SUPERSEDE GRANT HE IS PLACED IN COMMAND OF THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE-EXPEDITION AGAINST VICKSBURG-CAPTURE OF PORT GIBSONBATTLE OF EDWARDS STATION.

W

THEN General Grant returned to his command he made preparations for an advance on Corinth, the junction of two great Southern railroads, one running from Memphis to Charleston, and the other from the Ohio River to Mobile. While waiting for the Army of the Tennessee, then on its way from Nashville under General Buell, he divided his forces into six divisions under Generals Sherman, Hurlbut, McClernand, Prentiss, Smith, and Wallace, and they were mostly encamped at Pittsburg Landing, on the west bank of the Tennessee River, without intrenchments, and prepared for the coming advance rather than for defense. Grant's head-quarters were at Savannah, on the opposite bank, about nine miles lower down, where he was awaiting the arrival of General Buell.

Meanwhile, Albert Sidney Johnston had been so bitterly criticised throughout the Confederacy for the reverses at Fort Donelson, Fort Henry, and Nashville, that he determined to concentrate all his available forces and strike a decisive blow before General Grant's army

started for Corinth and before he could be reinforced by Buell. Approaching the Union army on Sunday, the 6th of April, he found himself directly in front of his foe, and that foe ignorant of his approach. "Tonight," said he exultingly to his staff, as he sprang into his saddle, "we will water our horses in the Tennessee River." General Grant, in a narrative of the bloody fight which followed, does not admit that the Union army was surprised, neither does he adequately note the fury of the first Confederate assaults nor the excessive vigor with which they were followed up. Colonel T. Worthington, a graduate of West Point, who commanded the Forty-sixth Ohio Volunteers, and other Union officers took a different view of the assault, and admitted that the Union troops were surprised at Shiloh MeetingHouse and were badly demoralized.

General Bragg, of the Confederate army, said in a sketch of the battle which he wrote: "Contrary to the views of such as urged an abandonment of the attack, the enemy was found utterly unprepared, many being surprised and captured in their tents, and others on the outside in costumes better fitted to their bedchamber than to the battle-field." General Preston, another Confederate leader, says: "General Johnston then went to the camp assaulted; it was carried between seven and eight o'clock; the enemy was evidently surprised; the breakfasts were on the mess tables, the baggage unpacked, and knapsacks, stores, colors, and ammunition abandoned."

General Grant was breakfasting at his head-quarters at Savannah when the distant firing proclaimed a heavy engagement. Hastily sending an order to Buell's army to move forward with all possible speed, he galloped to the spot, and under his energetic lead his retreating troops assumed the offensive. Although suffering from