The three-day bloodbath that was the Battle of Gettysburg fatefully turned the tide of the Civil War against the Confederates and has long been recognized as a pivotal event in the nation’s history. With a staggering 50,000 men killed or wounded, it was the deadliest battle of that war. It is not possible for the human brain to comprehend such horror, such loss.
But was it the most important battle?
Judging from the number of books, articles, documentaries and movies made about it you could be forgiven for thinking so. In fact if you ask anyone to name the most important battle of the Civil War you’re more than likely to hear that it was Gettysburg.
By the time of that horrific event, seventeen months had passed during which an obscure Union officer had come out of nowhere to show the North how to fight. He was a man who had “fight” flowing in his veins. His veins also had a little whiskey flowing in them as well.
President Lincoln had agonized for months after the war began over the lack of fighting spirit in the leader of his Federal Army. That leader was a self-important egotist named General George B. McClellan, then commanding the United States Army of the Potomac. Lincoln had observed that McClellan, although a superb organizer and mobilizer of troops, seemed unable or unwilling to “take the fight” to the enemy.
He also observed that McClellan was a snob who thought himself the social superior to Lincoln. Indeed, in letters to his wife, McClellan disparages Lincoln as an “embarrassing” bumpkin. Lincoln, however, bemoaned only the fact of McClellan’s avoidance of head-on conflict. He didn’t give a fig what the little general thought about his social status.
But then, in February, 1862, at Fort Donelson on Tennessee’s Cumberland River, the guy who would come out of nowhere to show the North how to fight to win did exactly that. He was General Ulysses Simpson Grant and despite being a graduate of West Point, he was less an “officer and a gentleman” than a “cut to the chase” brutal annihilator with a narrow focus on killing the enemy.
He was also an occasional heavy drinker, to the extent that his officers sometimes had to help him get to bed. Some of Lincoln’s cabinet members and army officers were jealous of Grant’s victory at Fort Donelson and the huge wave of sudden nationwide popularity it gave him. They warned the President that Grant was a drunk and urged his removal from command. Lincoln didn’t care. Grant fought. Grant won!
“Well,” Lincoln responded, “I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.”
Fort Donelson came into Grant’s gunsights on the Cumberland River after the recent fall of nearby fort Henry on the Tennessee River. Together, these two forts stood as guardians against any waterborne Union advance into the heartland of the South and now one of them had fallen.
Grant sought to attack Donelson from the land side, while his Union gunboats blasted away from the river approach. The Confederates gave back as good as they got for a time but the Union’s numerical and material superiority eventually overwhelmed them.
The Confederate commander at Fort Donelson was General Simon Bolivar Buckner. Late at night on February 15, he saw the handwriting on the wall. Union forces more than doubled his own. He and his soldiers were all but surrounded. After arguing with his generals, he made the decision to surrender his force. And he did it against their wishes. They strongly advised him not to surrender, that they could still fight. They also knew that if they left soon, in the dark of that freezing night, escape was possible.
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