Three Books in One: A Covenant of Love, Gate of His Enemies, and Where Honor Dwells

by Gilbert, Morris

  He was correct, for the patrol followed the progress of the ironclads and watched them pitch into Fort Donelson at once. It was three thirty when, at a range of less than two thousand yards, the St. Louis opened fire. The other ironclads followed suit, and shells exploded against the thick earthworks of the fort. General Forrest passed down the line, and Jake heard him say to his aide, “Nothing but God Almighty can save that fort!”

  But Foote had made a serious mistake. He had taken Fort Henry by bringing his fleet to point-blank range and blasting away—but he had either ignored, forgotten, or not known that the lower guns at Henry had been flooded, which had made his task there easy.

  When the gunners at Donelson opened fire with its biggest guns—a ten-inch smoothbore Columbiad and a 32-pounder rifled gun—they practically blew the Carondolet out of the water, smashing the anchor and knocking the plating to pieces. All of the ships came in for a hard battering, and Foote, on board the St. Louis, was wounded in the foot by a shell that crashed into the pilothouse, killing the pilot and carrying away the wheel. Out of control, the ship drifted downstream after the Louisville. The Pittsburg was sinking, and all the while not a single man in the waterside batteries had been hurt.

  Still, the resounding victory over the gunboats did little to lighten the gloom that had settled on Donelson’s three generals. They were convinced that they could not save the fort, and that night they met and planned the breakout. Basically, they intended to slam Grant with a sudden hammer blow, then break out to the south toward a road that led to Nashville. General Gideon Pillow’s men, on the Confederate left facing General McClernand’s division, would attack at dawn. General Simon Buckner would leave a single regiment, the Thirteenth Tennessee Infantry, in the trenches to the right, facing General Smith’s division, and move the bulk of his men to the center. Once Pillow had rolled over the Federal troops, Buckner would strike the hinge and hold the door open while Pillow’s division marched out to safety. Then Buckner would follow, fighting a rear-guard action to make sure that the bulk of the army escaped intact to fight again on more opportune ground.

  It was a good plan, and later on Captain Wainwright explained it to his sergeant and a few of the men, including Jake and Vince. Wainwright laid a sheet of paper on a table in the mess hall, saying, “Here’s a map of the area.”

  “General Forrest says we’ll go with General Pillow, fighting on foot. When we’ve rolled McClernand back, Buckner will pull his division from the right to the center and take Smith out, shoving him back. Then Pillow’s men can get away through the gap in the center. We’ll mount up and help Buckner fight the rear-guard action to make sure the whole army gets out. Get your muskets ready, because we’ll move out to the attack at dawn.”

  All night long the men worked frantically, the cooks preparing three days’ rations, the sergeants making certain that the men had ammunition and that their muskets were in firing order. Jake and Vince, along with the rest of the cavalrymen, saw to their horses, as well, for, as Jake said, “We’ll be needing mounts if this thing works.”

  A winter storm spread misery that night, and a howling wind covered the noise of the Confederates as they made their preparations. By morning the ground was covered with fresh snow, and tree limbs were sheathed in ice.

  As daylight brought a thin line of light in the east, the order came to leave the fort. As soon as they were outside, a line of battle was formed two lines deep. Jake and Vince were in the second line, near the left, and at once the order came to advance. The officers moved back and forth checking the lines, and the sergeants were like hunting dogs, hounding the men and shoving them into position.

  The line struck the picket line of the Federals, catching them completely off guard. When two or three of the Union soldiers fell, the rest scurried away, yelling, and a cry went up from the Confederate officer, “Charge, men!” At once the entire line began to run, and Jake smelled the acrid odor of gunpowder as they rushed into the Union lines firing. The firing of the muskets reminded him of corn popping over a fire, the sound being magnified many times, and from the left came the thunder of artillery.

  A shrill yelling—a yipping noise like high-pitched voices of dogs—arose from the men, and Jake found himself joining in. To his surprise, he felt no fear. He found himself eager to stay up with the line, and glancing over to his right, he saw that Vince was yelling, too. The trooper to his left, a small man named Davis, coughed suddenly then fell on his face, not moving. Jake’s first impulse was to stop and help him, but Sergeant Prince yelled, “Go on! Go on!” and he picked up the pace at once.

  The smoke was getting thicker, and suddenly they ran into a small camp where three of the enemy were trying to reload their muskets. They had been cooking breakfast, and as Jake watched, one of them was struck by a bullet and driven into the fire, knocking the coffeepot down. One of the other Federals threw his musket down and started to run, but a minié ball took the top of his head off before he got ten steps away.

  The other soldier stood there, his empty musket in his hand, his eyes wide with shock and focused on Jake. He was no more than eighteen years old, and Jake lowered his musket, intending to tell him to surrender, but another Confederate ran at the boy and with a savage yell thrust his bayonet into his stomach. The two stood there for one moment, the Confederate grinning, the boy staring at him with a look of reproach. Then the Confederate yanked his bayonet free and, when the boy fell, lifted his musket and stabbed the helpless soldier in the chest, screeching wildly.

  Jake stared at the scene, noting that Vince had stopped, as well, his face pale as paste. “Come on!” Jake yelled, and the two of them rushed to catch up with the line. As they advanced, shadowy figures were moving ahead of them, and soon they encountered a line of solid fire. Jake fired at them, then fell to the ground to reload. He saw Vince standing upright, reloading, and yelled over the crash of musketry, “Vince! Get down!” They moved forward slowly, for the Yankees had stiffened their line.

  For the next three hours they were surrounded by smoke, confusion, and death. The battle was not one line against another. Instead, it was broken up into hundreds of small fights as units got separated from their brigades. But the Federals were shoved back, and a cry of victory went up from the Confederates as they gave way.

  “Now’s the time for General Pillow to get this army out of here,” Jake panted. “The door’s wide open!”

  Captain Wainwright’s hand had been wounded, and he was wrapping it in a handkerchief. “Yes, but it won’t stay open long. Grant’s going to find out pretty soon what’s going on. He’ll not stand to lose, not Grant!”

  An hour later, the firing on the left had picked up, and Wainwright nodded. “Hear that? We’ve missed our chance. Some stupid general thought we could take on the whole Federal Army! Now we—”

  The firing was heavy, and Jake could not hear the rest of Wainwright’s words. He turned around and saw that the captain was facedown on the ground. When he rolled him over, he saw a small black hole in his temple. Jake put the officer’s head down, moved down the line to Sergeant Prince, saying, “Captain Wainwright’s been killed.”

  Prince stared at him, then said, “This thing’s gone sour. No way we can get out of here.”

  His words were prophetic, for an hour later the Confederates were retreating. As they fell back, Vince yelled, “Look, Jake—!”

  Jake turned to see Jeremiah Irons bending over a soldier. Jake glanced at the Yankee lines, which were driving toward them. “Come on!” He ran, bent over to grab Irons by the arm. “Come on! The Yanks are right behind us!”

  Irons got to his feet and looked at the advancing line of Federals; then the three of them moved back. Jake fired, sending one of the enemy down; then as he was reloading, he heard Vince cry out. He whirled, expecting to see Vince down, but it was Irons who was lying on the ground and Vince running to him. Jake leaped to the wounded man’s side, looking for his injury.

  “It’s in his chest, Jake,” Vince crie
d. “We’ve got to get him out of here.”

  “Grab his legs,” Jake said, and the two of them dropped their muskets and picked Irons up. His eyes were open, glazed with shock, and as the two men carried him across the field, he fainted. A sergeant yelled at them to leave him, but when he saw that it was an officer they were carrying, he said no more.

  They got Irons back to the field hospital, where a busy surgeon came to look at him. The air was loud with the sound of muskets and artillery, but the cries of the wounded men could be heard over everything. “He’s hit bad, I’m afraid,” the doctor said. “If I go in for that bullet, it may kill him.”

  “What if you don’t?” Jake demanded.

  The doctor, a fat man with thick hands, gave them a hard look, then said, “He’ll die, would be my guess.”

  “Take it out!” Jake said at once. “Any chance is better than none.”

  In the end, the doctor finally did just that. He was a rough man, and Jake cringed at the operation, but when it was over, the doctor said, “He may make it. Keep him warm and give him plenty to drink when he can take it.” Then he turned back to the growing crowd of wounded men.

  “Let’s get him to bed,” Vince said, and the two of them soon had Irons in a bed, wrapped with blankets. When they had done all they could, Vince asked, “Think we ought to go back to the fight, Jake?”

  “No. We’re penned in now. No way out.” His face was grim in the dim light, and he added, “I hope the prison camp we wind up in isn’t as bad as I know they can be—because that’s where we’re going to spend the rest of the war!”

  Vince stared at him, then shook his head. He got up without a word and disappeared from the room.

  The three Confederate brigadiers gathered to compare notes. Buckner considered the army’s position desperate. “You should have marched out as we planned, General Pillow!” he said grimly.

  “We’ll still get out, as soon as it gets dark,” Pillow snapped. Pillow was a sharp-faced man who had earned a reputation for incompetence during the Mexican War. On one occasion, he had mistakenly ordered his men to build their breastworks on the wrong side of the trench, leaving them exposed to the enemy.

  General John Floyd had fear on his face, for he had been accused of having misappropriated $870,000 as President Buchanan’s secretary of war. He was certain that the Union would try him on those charges, and he had no thought except getting away.

  The three men argued until one o’clock, when Nathan Bedford Forrest came to report. Forrest was shocked to discover that the generals were discussing the surrender of the army. His eyes blazed, and he exclaimed, “The Federals haven’t occupied the extreme right. We can still march out. My scouts have found an old river road. It’s under water—no more than three feet—but only for one hundred yards.”

  But Floyd said, “My medical director says our troops can’t take any more punishment.”

  “Have you thought how much punishment they’ll take in a prison camp, General?” Forrest snapped. He argued for over an hour, but finally the generals took a vote. They all agreed to surrender the men, but General Floyd spoke out and said he would not surrender himself, and Pillow at once said the same.

  “I’ll share the fate of the army,” General Buckner said.

  “If I place you in command, General Buckner,” General Floyd said, “will you allow me to get out as many of my brigade as I can?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  Floyd turned to General Pillow and said, “I turn the command over, sir.”

  General Pillow replied just as promptly, “I pass it on.”

  General Buckner said, “I assume it.”

  At that, Forrest snorted angrily. “I didn’t come here for the purpose of surrendering my command!” he said with contempt dripping from his voice. He stomped out and in a short time had gathered his officers. He told them of the generals’ decision, then said, “I’m going out. Anyone who wants to go with me is welcome. I’ll get out—or die!”

  Vince had been wandering around the camp in despair. He’d seen one of Forrest’s lieutenants, a man named Sloan, whom he knew slightly. “Lieutenant, what’s General Forrest going to do?”

  “Get out of this rat trap!” Sloan spat out. “We’ve found a way. If you want to go, be ready in half an hour. We’re pulling out then.”

  Vince whirled and raced back to where Jake was sitting beside Irons. “Jake! We’ve got a way out of this place!” He quickly informed him of Forrest’s plan, adding, “It’s the only hope we’ve got. I’m going to get the rest of the troop.”

  “Wait a minute!” Jake indicated the motionless form of Irons. “I can’t leave him here to be captured.”

  Vince had always been a clever enough man. His brain was working fast now, and he said, “We’ll hitch our horses to a wagon. We can put him in the bed. We’ve got to cross some water, but I don’t think it’ll get as high as the bed. You get him ready while I go steal a wagon and get the horses hitched to it.”

  “Watch out for Crow,” Jake called out as Vince left at a dead run. “It might hurt his feelings some to pull a wagon.” But Vince was gone, and Jake began his own preparations. Irons was unconscious and could be left, so he took care of provisions. He made a raid on the commissary, taking as much as he could carry in two large burlap bags. By the time he got back, Vince was there with the wagon hitched up and most of the men of the troop who’d come from Virginia with him. He was telling them, “We’re getting out of here. I didn’t enlist to die in a prison camp! Little, you and Poteet go bring the chaplain out. He’s taken a bullet, and we’re taking him out with us!”

  Jake was surprised to see the two men jump at Vince’s command, and as they loaded the injured man onto the bed of the wagon, he said so quietly that only Vince could hear, “You make a pretty good officer, Vince. Any orders for me?”

  Vince grinned at him, saying only, “Shut up, will you!” The two of them got into the wagon, and Jake took the lines. “Let’s get out of this place, Jake,” Vince said, and they moved out, followed by the mounted men.

  They met Forrest with his command outside the fort, and by daylight the horses were belly-deep in freezing water. Many of the infantrymen had gotten word of the breakout and were wading waist-deep, but there was no complaining. At the head of the column rode General Forrest, ever alert for Federals.

  “Pretty hard on a wounded man,” Vince said, looking back at Irons. He got out of the seat, going back to put more blankets over the still-unconscious man. When he came back to sit beside Jake, he shook his head, saying, “He’s in poor shape, Jake. I don’t see how he can make it.”

  Jake didn’t answer, but his own spirit was gloomy. Finally he shook his head, saying, “Times like this I wish I was a praying man. But all I can count on is what I can do. And I’m thinking that won’t be enough.”

  CHAPTER 23

  RETURN TO VIRGINIA

  Grant’s victory over Fort Donelson touched off celebrations all across the North. At the Union Merchants’ Exchange in St. Louis, speculators stopped work to sing patriotic songs; in Cincinnati, everybody was shaking hands with everybody else, and bewhiskered men embraced each other as if they were long-lost brothers.

  In the South, many believed that they had lost the war at Donelson, for the fall of the fort opened the way south and led to the fatal splitting of the Confederacy, which had been the Union plan all along.

  The editor of the Richmond Examiner did not underrate the importance of the North’s victories over Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. He saw in them the beginning of future disasters.

  Rachel came into her mother’s room with a copy of that paper, saying, “Mother, listen to what the Examiner says about Donelson:

  “The fall of Fort Donelson was the heaviest blow that has yet fallen on the Confederacy. It opened up the whole of West Tennessee to Federal occupation, and it developed the crisis which had long existed in the west. General Johnston had previously ordered the evacuation of Bowling Green, and it was execute
d while the battle was fought at Donelson. Nashville was utterly indefensible; by the sixth of April surrender of Island No. 10 had become a military necessity. The Confederates had been compelled to abandon what had been entitled ‘The Little Gibraltar of the Mississippi,’ and experienced a loss in heavy artillery, which was nigh irreparable.

  “The Confederate loss was 12,000 to 15,000 prisoners, 20,000 stands of arms, 48 pieces of artillery, 17 heavy guns, from 2,000 to 4,000 horses, and large quantities of commissary stores. The Confederates lost more than 450 killed and 1,500 wounded, while the Union loss was 500 men killed and 2,100 wounded. “

  Rachel threw the paper on the floor with an impetuous anger, saying, “These newspapers! Can’t they ever say anything good about our side?”

  Amy picked up the paper, read through it, then said, “Well, it was a terrible loss for the Confederacy. Your father says it’ll take a miracle for us to recover.”

  Rachel shook her head, anger glinting in her eyes. “Fifteen thousand of our men prisoners!” She walked around the room, unable to curb the impatience that welled up in her. Since news had come of the fall of Donelson, she had been on the rack, unable to sleep for worrying about her brother. Every night she prayed that he was a prisoner and not in an unmarked grave outside the fort. Regret worked on her, cutting like a keen knife at the memory of how she’d sent him away so coldly.

  And she couldn’t even bear to think of Jake and the last words she’d spoken to him.

  Her mother had been anxious over Vince, of course, but she had noted Rachel’s almost frantic activity since the news arrived. Now she said, “Rachel, you mustn’t go on like this. I’m believing and praying that Vince is a prisoner. You’ve got to do the same.”