On this date in 1862

[Bull Snipe]

General Buckner surrenders Fort Donelson and its Confederate defenders to General Grant.

[StoneWall Brigade]

Dixie Ping

To be on or off the Dixie Ping list FReep mail me

[JT Hatter]

I always wondered how we could have possibly lost Fort Donelson.

[Psalm 73]

"...how we could have possibly lost Fort Donelson."

Poor leadership.
I spent an afternoon at Fort Donelson "battlefield" - Confederates had a strong defensive position.
They were "outcoached".

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

They were "outcoached".

There were those that got away.

http://www.johnpaulstrain.com/art/escape-from-fort-donelson.htm

[redfreedom]

The Confederacy, a great part of our history the left is trying to erase.

I can’t wait until the left is erased.

[iowamark]

"Sir: Yours of this date proposing Armistice, and appointment of Commissioners, to settle terms of Capitulation is just received. No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.

I propose to move immediately upon your works.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant.
U.S. Grant
Brigadier General, Commanding""

[Verginius Rufus]

General Buckner was later Governor of Kentucky and lived until 1914. His son, Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., was a US Army general in WWII and was killed in the closing days of the battle of Okinawa in June 1945.

I have found online a photo of Buckner, Jr., with Lemuel Shepherd, Jr., taken during the battle of Okinawa. I have a photo of Lemuel Shepherd in 1954, when he was Commandant of the US Marine Corps, with my father. So there are four degrees of separation between myself and General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Sr.

[Georgia Girl 2]

On the bright side Sherman is still burning in Hell. :-)

[Verginius Rufus]

Well, he preferred that to living in Texas.

He is supposed to have said that if he owned hell and Texas, he'd live in hell and rent out Texas.

[BroJoeK]

Somewhere over the years, but now can't find where, I read that an important but forgotten result of Grant's victories at Forts Henry & Donelson was they put an end to Jefferson Davis' plans to invade Illinois.

Has anybody else seen that, and can you cite a reference?

[Bull Snipe]

First time I have read of a plan to invade Illinois. Bragg invaded Kentucky in June of 1862. The campaign ended in failure. Had Bragg been successful in Kentucky, then Southern Ohio and Southern Indiana might have been considered for further operations. With the Union holding a big portion of West and North Tennessee, Illinois would appear to be out of the question. JMO

[BroJoeK]

Found a reference to it, though not exactly what I wanted:

"Davis offered his advice to Albert Sidney [Johnston] on repairing the Confederate situation in the West.
His ideas were aggressive and optimistic despite the fact that he knew that the South's forces there were outnumbered and inadequately armed, the Confederates being forced to rely upon private weapons to make up the shortfall.
'With sufficient force," Davis wrote, 'the audacity which the enemy exhibits would no doubt give you the opportunity to cut some of his lines of communication, to break up his plan of campaign, and, defeating some of his columns, to drive him from the soil as well of Tennessee as of Kentucky.'

Davis believed the Union would aim at the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers in its next campaign and hoped Johnston could concentrate enough force to counter such a campaign.
Additionally, Davis hoped a move by forces under Edmund Kirby Smith into eastern Tennessee would create a diversion.

**So here it comes**

A Confederate fleet was also gathering on the Mississippi River.
If the Union moved its gunboats up the Tennessee, it would give Johnston a chance to strike at Cairo, Illinois.
Davis correctly deduced the Union river campaigns, which were in some respects dictated by geography and logistics, but he was overly optimistic, indeed unrealistic, about the potential for a Confederate naval strike against Cairo."
Stoker, "Strategy and the US Civil War" (2010), p 116

So, it was not an invasion of Illinois Davis planned, so much as a naval raid on Cairo, which could mean Davis' plans were foiled less by Grant at Fort Donelson than by Union General John Pope's canal dig and assault on Mississippi Island No. 10 (Kentucky Bend) in April 1862.

[Bull Snipe]

Thanks, good info to know

[wardaddy]

And Bedford escaped

[wardaddy]

They are out to erase more than my peeps trust me

[Bull Snipe]

About 5,000 men also escaped.

[wardaddy]

Good deal

Where are they today

We need em

I think a lot were Missouri and Kentucky

Soon to be known as orphan brigades

I live close to mcgavock cemetery where 100s are buried

They lost more than most in that war

There was no more South to go home to

My kin went home to a decimated southern homeland but it was still there

[rockrr]

On an equally bright note jeff davis is right there with him shining Sherman’s boots. ;’}