Floyd, being under special indictment at Washington for misconduct as Secretary of War, was so anxious to escape that he turned over the command to Pillow, who declined it in favor of Buckner. That night Floyd and Pillow made off with all the river steamers; Forrest's cavalry floundered past McClernand's exposed flank, which rested on a shallow backwater; and Buckner was left with over twelve thousand men to make what terms he could. Next morning, the sixteenth, he wrote to Grant proposing the appointment of commissioners to agree upon terms of surrender.
But Grant had made up his mind that compromise was out of place in civil war and that absolute defeat or victory were the only alternatives. So he instantly wrote back the famous letter which quickly earned him the appropriate nickname--suggested by his own initials--of Unconditional Surrender Grant.
Hd Qrs., Army in the Field Camp near Donelson Feb'y 18th 1882Gen. S.B. Buckner, Confed. Army.
Sir: Yours of this date proposing armistice, and appointment of Commissioners to settle terms of capitulation is just received.
No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works I am, Sir, very respectfully, Your obt. sert., U.S. GRANTBrig. Gen.
Grant and Buckner were old army friends; so their personal talk was very pleasant at the little tavern where Buckner and his staff had just breakfasted off corn bread and coffee, which was all the Confederate stores afforded.
Donelson at once became, like Grant, a name to conjure with. The fact that the Union had at last won a fight in which the numbers neared, and the losses much exceeded, those at Bull Run itself, the further fact that this victory made a fatal breach in the defiant Southern line beyond the Alleghanies, and the delight of discovering another, and this time a genuine, hero in "Unconditional Surrender Grant," all combined to set the loyal North aflame with satisfaction, pride, and joyful expectation.
Great things were expected in Virginia, where the invasion had not yet begun. Great things were expected in the Gulf, where Farragut had not yet tried the Mississippi. And great things were expected to result from Donelson itself, whence the Union forces were to press on south till they met other Union forces pressing north. The river campaign was then to end in a blaze of glory.
Donelson did have important results. Johnston, who had already abandoned Bowling Green for Nashville, had now to abandon Nashville, with most of its great and very sorely needed stores, as well as the rest of Tennessee, and take up a new position along the rails that ran from Memphis to Chattanooga, whence they forked northeast to Richmond and Washington and southeast to Charleston and Savannah. Columbus was also abandoned, and the only points left to the Confederates anywhere near the old line were Island Number Ten in the Mississippi and the Boston Mountains in Arkansas.
But the triumphant Union advance from the north did not take place in '62. Grant was for pushing south as fast as possible to attack the Confederates before they had time to defend their great railway junction at Corinth. But Halleck was too cautious;and misunderstandings, coupled with division of command, did the rest. Halleck was the senior general in the West. But the three, and afterwards four, departments into which the West was divided were never properly brought under a single command. Then telegrams went wrong at the wire-end advancing southwardly from Cairo, the end Grant had to use. A wire from McClellan on the sixteenth of February was not delivered till the third of March.
Next day Grant was thunderstruck at receiving this from Halleck:
"Place C.F. Smith in command of expedition and remain yourself at Fort Henry. Why do you not obey my orders to report strength and positions of your command?" And so it went on till McClellan authorized Halleck to place Grant under arrest for insubordination. Then the operator at the wire-end suddenly deserted, taking a sheaf of dispatches with him. He was a clever Confederate.
Explanations followed; and on the seventeenth of March Grant rejoined his army, which was assembling round Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee, near the future battlefield of Shiloh, and some twenty miles northeast of Corinth.
Meanwhile Van Dorn and Sterling Price, thinking it was now or never for Missouri, decided to attack Curtis. They had fifteen against ten thousand men, and hoped to crush Curtis utterly by catching him between two fires. But on the seventh of March the Federal left beat off the flanking attack of McCulloch and McIntosh, both of whom were killed. The right, furiously assailed by the Confederate Missourians under Van Dorn and Price, fared badly and was pressed back. Yet on the eighth Curtis emerged victorious on the hard-fought field that bears the double name of Elkhorn Tavern and Pea Ridge. This battle in the northwest corner of Arkansas settled the fate of Missouri.
A month later the final attack was made on Island Number Ten.
Foote's flotilla had been at work there as early as the middle of March, when the strong Confederate batteries on the island and east shore bluffs were bombarded by ironclads and mortarboats.
Then the Union General John Pope took post at New Madrid, eight miles below the island, on the west shore, which the Confederates had to evacuate when he cut their line of communications farther south. They now held only the island and the east shore opposite, with no line of retreat except the Mississippi, because the land line on the east shore was blocked by swamps and flanked by the Union armies in western Tennessee.