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THE CAPTURE OF FORT D0NELS0N.

MAJOR-GENERAL MORGAN L. SMITH. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.

maintain against each other al-most without intermission. Thereis little pause in the exchange ofshells and round shot. The care-ful chiefs have required their mento lie down. In brief, it looks asif each party were inviting theother to begin.

These circumstances, the sharp-shooting and cannonading, uglyas they may seem to one whothinks of them under comfort-able surroundings, did in factserve a good purpose the day inquestion in helping the men toforget their sufferings of thenight before. It must be remem-bered that the weather hadchanged during the precedingafternoon: from suggestions ofspring it turned to intensifiedwinter. Prom lending a gentle hand in bringing Foote and his iron-cladsup the river, the wind whisked suddenly around to the north and struckboth armies with a storm of mixed rain, snow, and sleet. All night thetempest blew mercilessly upon the unsheltered, tireless soldier, making-sleep impossible. Inside the works, nobody had overcoats; while thou-sands of those outside had marched from Fort Henry as to a summer fete,leaving coats, blankets, and knapsacks behind them in the camp. Morethan one stout fellow has since admitted, with a laugh, that nothing was sohelpful to him that horrible night as the thought that the wind, which seemedabout to turn his blood into icicles, was serving the enemy the same way;they, too, had to stand out and take the blast. Let us now go back to thepreceding day, and bring up an incident of McClernand ’s swing into position.

About the center of the Confederate outworks there was a V-shaped hill,marked sharply by a ravine on its right and another on its left. This Col-onel Heiman occupied with his brigade of five regiments — all of Tennessee but one. The front presented was about 2500 feet. In the angle of the V, onthe summit of the hill, Captain Maney’s battery, also of Tennessee , had beenplanted. Without protection of any kind, it nevertheless completely swepta large field to the left, across which an assaulting force would have to comein order to get at Heiman or at Drake, next on the south.

Maney, on the point of the hill, had been active throughout the precedingafternoon, and had succeeded in drawing the fire of some of McClemand’sguns. The duel lasted until night. Next morning it was renewed withincreased sharpness, Maney being assisted on his right by Graves’s batteryof Buckner’s division, and by some pieces of Drake’s on his left.