Ллойд Тилгман: Конфедеративті генерал және Азамат соғысының тарихы

Confederate States Army general

Lloyd Tilghman (January 18, 1816 – May 16, 1863) was a Confederate general in the American Civil War. A railroad construction engineer by background, he was selected by the Confederate government to build two forts to defend the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. The location of Fort Henry on the Tennessee was vulnerable to flooding, but Tilghman was slow to spot this, and his surrender of the fort to U. S. Grant in February 1862 was regarded as a disgrace. Taken prisoner and exchanged, he commanded a brigade in the Vicksburg campaign, and was killed by a shell at the Battle of Champion Hill, where he was widely praised for gallantry. Tilghman owned five slaves.

Tilghman was born in "Rich Neck Manor", Claiborne, Maryland to James Tilghman who was the great grandson of Matthew Tilghman, and Ann C. Shoemaker Tilghman. He attended the United States Military Academy and graduated near the bottom of his class in 1836. He was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 1st U. S. Dragoons, but resigned his commission after three months. He worked as a construction engineer on a number of railroads in the South and in Panama, except for a period in which he returned to the Army as a captain in the Maryland and Washington, D. C. Volunteer Artillery (August 1847 to July 1848). In 1852, he took up residence in Paducah, Kentucky.

Tilghman was commissioned colonel of the 3rd Kentucky Infantry on July 5, 1861, shortly after the start of the American Civil War. He was promoted to brigadier general in the Confederate States Army on October 18. When General Albert Sidney Johnston was looking for an officer to create defensive positions on the vulnerable Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, he was unaware of Tilghman's presence in his department and another officer was selected. However, the Richmond government pointed out Tilghman's engineering background and he was finally chosen for the task. The original sites for Forts Henry and Donelson were selected by another general, Daniel S. Donelson, but Tilghman was then placed in command and ordered to construct them. The geographic placement of Fort Henry was extremely poor, sited on a floodplain of the Tennessee River, but Tilghman did not object to its location until it was too late. (Afterward, he 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.") He also was desultory in managing its needed construction and that of the small Fort Heiman, located on the Kentucky bank of the Tennessee, and quarreled with the engineers assigned to the task. He did manage to do a more creditable job on the construction of Fort Donelson, which was sited on dry ground, commanding the river. On February 6, 1862, an army under Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and gunboats under Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote attacked Fort Henry and Tilghman was forced to surrender. (This was not his first encounter with Grant. Tilghman was in Paducah when Grant captured that city the previous September.) Prior to doing so, he led the vast majority of his garrison troops on the 12 mile road to Fort Donelson, and then returned to surrender with a handful of artillerymen who were left defending the fort. The biggest factor in the defeat of Fort Henry was not the naval artillery or Grant's infantry; it was the rising flood waters of the Tennessee, which flooded the powder magazines and forced a number of the guns out of action. (If Grant's attack had been delayed by two days, the battle would have never occurred because the fort was by then entirely underwater.) Tilghman was imprisoned as a prisoner of war at Fort Warren in Boston and was not released until August 15, when he was exchanged for Union general John F. Reynolds. He was replaced by Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd at Donelson, whose army surrendered to Grant on February 16. Returning to the field in the fall of 1862, Tilghman became a brigade commander in Mansfield Lovell's division of Earl Van Dorn's Army of the West, following the Second Battle of Corinth. In the Vicksburg Campaign of 1863, he was hit in the chest by a shell and killed in the Battle of Champion Hill. Tilghman was initially interred in the Soldiers Rest section of Vicksburg's Cedar Hill Cemetery. His body was moved in 1902 to Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, where he was buried beside his wife who had moved to the city.

The Lloyd Tilghman House and Civil War Museum is located at the Tilghman homestead in Paducah. On May 19, 1926, a statue of Tilghman was dedicated at the Vicksburg National Historical Park.

A Presentation Confederate Flag and an inscribed sword and sword belt, worn by Tilghman when he was killed were sold by Heritage Auction Galleries on June 26, 2010. The items were passed down through his direct lineal descendants for almost 150 years until sold at auction.