Review - "The Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign: February 6–16, 1862" by Woodworth & Grear, eds.

[The Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign: February 6–16, 1862 edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear (Southern Illinois University Press, 2026). Paperback, 4 maps, table, photos, illustrations, chapter notes, index. Pages:xi,146. ISBN:978-0-8093-3997-6. $24.95]

The Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign: February 6–16, 1862 is the eighth installment of SIU Press's Civil War Campaigns in the West (formerly Civil War Campaigns in the Heartland) series edited by Steven Woodworth and Charles Grear. In addition to adding their own chapters to the volume, the editors have assembled five other contributors. Together, these seven essays examine various aspects of the campaign and its dramatic impact on the course of the war in the West.

Woodworth sets the stage with a general introduction, and Michael Burns begins the anthology with a reminder of the important ways in which extreme environmental conditions shaped the land and naval fighting at both forts. In some cases, such as the heavy flooding at Fort Henry, the unpredictable power of nature overwhelmed man's attempts at military planning, preparation, and conduct. Similarly, a sudden winter cold snap and flooding to potential escape routes directly affected the results of the contest at Fort Donelson. In each case, Union forces were the great beneficiaries of this powerful natural intervention into human affairs.

Blakeney Hill's following essay revisits the army-navy command relationship that bore such bountiful fruit for Union forces during the campaign. Simon Cameron remains widely reviled for his wasteful and corruption-filled tenure as Lincoln's first Secretary of War, but Hill interestingly credits his insistence that the Brown Water Navy remain under the auspices of the army as a key decision. While the inland navy's command and administrative structure would change as the war progressed, the critical first months of army-controlled joint operations on the western rivers (the actions at forts Henry and Donelson being primary examples) established an efficiency and manner of close cooperation between the services that jump-started Union offensives in the heartland West. The result was a pace of combined operations that the more disorganized and resource-poor Confederates proved incapable of countering, and Union forces essentially wrested control of the vast Mississippi River Valley by mid-1863. This was a stupendous achievement that many would not have thought possible at the war's beginning.

Next, Nathan Bedford Forrest biographer Brian Steel Wills revisits Forrest's role in the campaign, which ended with his command's daring escape from the trap at Fort Donelson just before the Confederate garrison surrendered to Union forces. In Wills's view, and that of others he cites, Fort Donelson was a watershed moment in Forrest's image and development as a cavalry commander, his iron drive and leadership traits demonstrated there catapulting him along the path to becoming the western Confederacy's most feared mounted warrior. It also exposed a fiercely independent streak that would impact his later career both positively and negatively.

The Confederate breakout attempt is examined most closely in Jonathan Steplyk's chapter. While this critical episode in the campaign has already been exhaustively examined in the literature, Steplyk's adds a fresh element to the discussion by following the day's battle in the context of a clash between competing military principles, matching Confederate surprise against Union security. Perhaps more than most, Steplyk credits Union picket placement and skirmish lines, in both developing and impeding the Confederate attack, for becoming major obstacles to Confederate success on that day. At the same time, he doesn't simplistically reduce the clash to Union security beating Confederate surprise. It is a much more nuanced analysis than that.

Another shining light in terms of fresh material is Sheilah Elwardani's deeper look at a single Confederate brigade and its commanding officer, Gabriel C. Wharton. Her essay reveals what Wharton's recently published letters and his still unpublished memoir tells us about the attempted breakout from Fort Donelson. Wharton was one of the officers that infamously escaped the doomed fort by steamboat with General John B. Floyd, but, unlike Floyd, Wharton managed to get out of it with career and reputation intact. Elwardani informs us that the memoir's primary focus is on Fort Donelson, and it attempts to explain/rationalize the reasons and justifications behind Floyd's controversial decision-making in the matter (although she also notes that over time Wharton attempted to distance himself from Floyd's defense).

The February 15 attack by Union division commander Charles F. Smith's forces against thinly stretched Confederate defenders opposite the Union left, which seriously endangered the Confederate hold on Fort Donelson itself on that day, is often credited with having a major impact on the Confederate decision to surrender. Steven Woodworth's contribution detailing this assault focuses on the tactics involved, which in some ways presaged more celebrated uses of columnar attacking formations on the Civil War battlefield (notably those employed by Emory Upton at Spotsylvania)

Finally, Civil War Texas expert Charles Grear contextualizes the impact that Fort Donelson had on that state. While Fort Donelson shouldn't be thought of as a Texas battle, the Seventh infantry regiment being its largest and most noteworthy contribution, the battle (combined with Pea Ridge, where a great number of Texan formations fought) nevertheless was a major turning point in Texas's war. As was the case across the Confederacy, the responses of Texas soldiers and civilians to the string of military disasters suffered in the western heartland in early 1862 was a mixture of both demoralization and renewed determination. Prior to that time, most Texas fighting men remained in the Trans-Mississippi theater guarding the state's lengthy land borders and coastline. But, as Grear explains, the twin defeats at Henry-Donelson and Pea Ridge, especially the former, helped propel the passage of national conscription and prompted a new surge in Texas volunteering (part of which was to avoid the stigma of becoming a draftee). Those battlefield defeats, and the massive territorial losses that accompanied them, also prompted the transfer of a great many Texas units eastward across the Mississippi and, in the other direction, civilian and slave refugees to presumed safety in Texas. In those ways, Donelson was a defining moment in the course of Texas's Civil War.

With three major campaign histories (the most recent and best of those being Timothy Smith's) along with a host of other related book-length publications addressing various themes and topics, the Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign of 1862 has been treated quite well in the modern literature. Woodworth and Grear's edited anthology is both a useful new addition to that body of scholarship and a fine new installment in the Civil War Campaigns in the West series. Even the most well-read student of the campaign should find fresh points of interest numerous enough to make The Forts Henry and Donelson Campaign: February 6–16, 1862 a worthy addition to the home library. Highly recommended.