572

THE CAMPAIGN OF SHILOH.

division, nearly 10,000 strong, later in the afternoon of the 14th. By thattime the evaenation of Bowling Green , determined upon, as I have said, on the7th,—and commenced on the 11th of February,—had been completed, the Con-federate rear-guard having marched out of the town at 3:30 p. m. on the 14th.

Satisfied, as affairs stood, that Nashville and the Yalley of the Cumberlandcould only be defended successfully at Donelson and by the crushing defeatof General Grant in that quarter, an end to which all other considerationswere evidently of minor military importance, I had insisted, as I may repeat,upon that as the one evident exigent operation. That the resolution to giveup Bowling Green and to begin such a movement as early as the 11th of Feb-ruary ought to have removed every possible objection on the part of GeneralJohnston to going at once in person with fully ten thousand of his BowlingGreen army, I am very sure must be the ultimate professional lesson taughtby the history of that most disastrous Confederate campaign! Nothing wereeasier in the exigency than the transfer from Bowling Green to Donelson bythe night of the 13th of February of ten thousand men, after General Johnstonhad decided that the immediate abandonment of Kentucky was an imperativenecessity. | Thus, on the morning of the 14th, General Grant’s army of 15,000men could and should have been confronted with nearly if not quite 25,000men, who, promptly handled, must have so effectually beaten their adversary,taken at such disadvantage, before the advent of Lew Wallace that afternoon,as to have enhanced the victory for the Confederates by the immediate defeatof Wallace also.

What happened from the policy adopted by the Confederate general inchief may be briefly stated: Fort Donelson was surrendered at 2 a. m. on the16th of February, and with it 11,600 men. In the expressive words of Gen-eral Johnston’s telegram, which reached me at Corinth, “We lost all.” Andas in the business of war, as in all other material human affairs, “ the omis-sion to do that which is necessary seals a commission to a blank of dangers,”so was it now. The failure to employ opportunely all possible availableresources against General Grant, and the consequent loss of Donelson, withits invaluable garrison, carried immediately in its train the irrevocable lossof Nashville also, with the early abandonment of Middle Tennessee. Anotherirrevocable consequence was the evacuation of Columbus, with incalculablemoral detriments. And had the stroke consummated at Donelson been vigor-ously pressed to its proper military corollary,—Buell being left to look after theremains of Johnston’s army,— General Grant’s victorious army of 25,000 men,with the resources of transportation at its disposal, might have been thrownwithin ten days, at latest, after the fall of Donelson, upon the rear of GeneralPolk’s forces at Columbus and their easy capture thus have been assured.

Going no farther in the direction of Columbus than Jackson, in West Ten-nessee, fifty-seven miles north of Corinth, I there established my head-quarters, and called thither Colonel Jordan, my chief of staff, who had goneto Columbus direct from Virginia (with Captain D. B. Harris, my chief engi-

| It is noteworthy that in the movement to Nashville from Bowling Green , Breckinridge’s divisionwas marched twenty-seven miles one day. — G. T. B.