1862 жылғы Теннесси штатындағы Азамат соғысы шайқасы

1862 battle of the American Civil War in Tennessee

Western Flotilla
| units2 = * Army of Central Kentucky
Fort Henry garrison
Fort Heiman garrison
| strength1 = 15,000 7 ships
| strength2 = 3,000–3,400 1 Ironclad Seriously Damaged
1 Ironclad moderately damaged
48 killed & wounded, including 19 army soldiers, aboard the ironclad Essex
| casualties2 = 79) Grant's plan was to advance upon the fort on February 6 while it was being simultaneously attacked by Union gunboats commanded by Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote. A combination of accurate and effective naval gunfire, heavy rain, and the poor siting of the fort, nearly inundated by rising river waters, caused its commander, Brig. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman, to surrender to Foote before the Union Army arrived. The surrender of Fort Henry opened the Tennessee River to Union traffic south of the Alabama border. In the days following the fort's surrender, from February 6 through February 12, Union raids used ironclad boats to destroy Confederate shipping and railroad bridges along the river. On February 12, Grant's army proceeded overland 12 mile (19 km) to engage with Confederate troops in the Battle of Fort Donelson.

On February 4 and 5, Grant landed his divisions in two different locations. McClernand's division was 3 mile (5 km) north of the fort, on the east bank of the Tennessee River, to prevent the garrison's escape. C. F. Smith's division would seize Fort Heiman on the Kentucky side of the river and turn its artillery on Fort Henry. When heavy rains the night of February 5 slowed the progress of Union troops toward the forts, the battle turned on naval actions, which concluded before the infantry saw action. Tilghman realized that it was only a matter of time before Fort Henry fell. Only nine guns remained above the water to mount a defense. While leaving artillery in the fort to hold off the Union gunboats, he ordered the majority of his force to march, under the command of Col. Adolphus Heiman, on the overland route to Fort Donelson, 12 miles (19 km) away. Fort Heiman was abandoned on February 4; gunfire from the gunboats on Fort Henry garrison caused 4 Confederate casualties [1 killed 3 wounded] on the afternoon of February 5. All but a part of Company B,1st Tennessee Artillery CSA [54 men] left Fort Henry on February 5. On the morning of February 6, Foote's seven Union gunboats arrived at Fort Henry and established their position around 12:30 p. m. They soon opened fire from a distance at 1,700 yards (around 1,554 meters), beginning an exchange of gunfire with Fort Henry that continued for over an hour. After Tilghman rejected an initial call to surrender, the fleet continued to bombard the fort. This was its first engagement using newly designed and hastily constructed ironclads. Foote deployed the four ironclad gunboats in a line abreast, followed by the three timberclads, under the command of Seth Ledyard Phelps, which were held back for long range, but less effective fire against the fort. The high water level of the river and the low elevation of Fort Henry's guns allowed Foote's fleet to escape serious destruction. The Confederate fire was able to hit the ironclads only where their armor was strongest. During the bombardment, all four of the Union ironclads were repeatedly hit by Confederate fire. The USS Essex was seriously damaged when a 32 pound shot from Fort Henry penetrated the ironclad, hitting the middle boiler and sending scalding steam through half the ship. Thirty two crewmen were killed or wounded, including commander William D. Porter. The ship was out of action for the remainder of the campaign.

After the bombardment had lasted 75 minutes, Tilghman surrendered to Foote's fleet, which had closed to within for a close range bombardment. Before the battle, Tilghman told his men that he would offer an hour of resistance to allow his men additional time to escape. With only one cannon still working, down to the last few rounds due to the powder magazine being underwater, and the rest of the guns destroyed or knocked out, Tilghman ordered the Confederate flag at Fort Henry lowered and a white sheet raised on the fort's flagpole. Upon seeing the white flag, the Union gunboats immediately ceased fire. The flooded state of the fort was as such that the surrendering party sailed out of the sally port of the fort in a small launch and picked up Tilghman for the surrender negotiation on Cincinnati. Twelve officers and 82 men of the garrison surrendered; other casualties from the fort's garrison were estimated to be 15 men killed and 20 wounded. The evacuating Confederate force left all of its artillery and equipment behind. Tilghman was imprisoned for many months, and exchanged in August 15. Tilghman wrote bitterly in his report that Fort Henry was in a "wretched military position. The history of military engineering records no parallel to this case." Grant sent a brief dispatch to Halleck: "Fort Henry is ours. I shall take and destroy Fort Donelson on the 8th and return to Fort Henry." Halleck wired Washington, D. C.: "Fort Henry is ours. The flag is reestablished on the soil of Tennessee. It will never be removed." Grant and his troops arrived at Fort Henry at around 3 p. m. on February 6 to see that the garrison had already surrendered. McClernand's division arrived at the fort about 30 minutes later. In the meantime, Smith's division had reached the deserted Fort Heiman. If Grant had been cautious and delayed his departure by two days, the battle would have never occurred. By February 8, Fort Henry was completely underwater. On February 7, the Union gunboats Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Essex returned to Cairo with whistles blowing and flying Fort Henry's captured Confederate flags upside down. The Chicago Tribune proclaimed the battle as "one of the most complete and signal victories in the annals of the world's warfare." Fort Henry's fall quickly opened the Tennessee River to Union gunboats and shipping south of the Alabama border. Immediately after the surrender, Foote sent Lieutenant Phelps with the three timberclads, Tyler, Conestoga, and Lexington, on a mission upriver to destroy installations and supplies of military value. (The flotilla's ironclads had sustained damage in the bombardment of Fort Henry and were slower and less maneuverable for the mission at hand, which included pursuit of Confederate ships.) The raid reached as far as Muscle Shoals, just past Florence, Alabama, the river's navigable limit. The Union timberclads and their raiding parties destroyed supplies and an important bridge of the Memphis and Ohio Railroad, 25 mile (40 km) upriver. They also captured a variety of southern ships, including Sallie Wood, Muscle, and Eastport, an ironclad under construction. The citizens of Florence asked Phelps to spare their town and its railroad bridge. Phelps agreed, seeing no military importance to the bridge. One 19th century source described Phelps’ raid as “a perfect success. It discovered the real weakness of the Confederacy in that direction, the feasibility of marching an army into the heart of the Confederacy, and, better than all, it developed the most gratifying evidences of genuine Union feeling in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama.” According to the same account, Phelps recruited several pro Union Southerners to assist him during the raid.

Although closely associated with Fort Donelson, the Fort Henry site is not managed by the U. S. National Park Service as part of the Fort Donelson National Battlefield. It is currently part of the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. When the Tennessee River was dammed in the 1930s, creating Kentucky Lake, the remains of Fort Henry were permanently submerged. A small navigation beacon, far from the Kentucky shoreline, marks the location of the northwest corner of the former fort. Fort Heiman was on privately owned land until October 2006, when the Calloway County, Kentucky, executive office transferred associated with that fort to the National Park Service for management as part of the Fort Donelson National Battlefield. Some of the entrenchments are still visible.