Battle of Fort Henry - Aftermath and The Timberclad Raid

Aftermath and The Timberclad Raid

After the battle had lasted 75 minutes, Tilghman surrendered to the fleet, which had engaged the fort and closed within 400 yards (370 m). A small boat from the fleet was able to sail directly through the sally port of the fort and pick up Tilghman for the surrender ceremony on Cincinnati, demonstrating the extent of flooding. Twelve officers and 82 men surrendered; other casualties are estimated to be 15 men killed and 20 wounded. The evacuating force left all of its artillery and equipment behind. Tilghman was imprisoned, but exchanged on 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 to Washington: "Fort Henry is ours. The flag is reestablished on the soil of Tennessee. It will never be removed."

If Grant had been as cautious as other generals in the Union Army and had delayed his departure by two days, the battle would have never occurred, since by February 8, Fort Henry was completely underwater. The North treated Fort Henry as a glorious victory. On February 7, the gunboats Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Essex returned to Cairo with whistles blowing, flying Confederate flags upside down. The Chicago Tribune wrote that the battle was "one of the most complete and signal victories in the annals of the world's warfare."

Fort Henry's fall opened the Tennessee River to Union gunboats and shipping past the Alabama border. This was quickly demonstrated. Immediately after the surrender, Foote sent Lieutenant Phelps with the three timberclads, the Tyler, Conestoga, and Lexington, on a mission up river to destroy installations and supplies of military value. (The ironclads of the flotilla had sustained damage in the bombardment and were slower and less maneuverable for the mission at hand, which would include pursuit of Confederate ships.) The raid reached as far as Muscle Shoals, just past Florence, Alabama, the limit of navigability. The Union ships and their raiding parties destroyed numerous supplies and the important bridge of the Memphis & Ohio Railroad, 25 miles (40 km) upriver. They also captured a variety of Southern ships, including the Sallie Wood, the Muscle, and an ironclad under construction, the Eastport. The Union ships returned safely to Fort Henry on February 12. However, Phelps made a major blunder during his otherwise successful raid. The citizens of the town of Florence asked him to spare their town and its railroad bridge, of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. Phelps told them that he would, seeing no military importance to the bridge. Yet the loss of the bridge would have essentially split the Confederate theater in half. It was this bridge that Johnston's army would ride across on their journey to Corinth, Mississippi, in preparation for the Battle of Shiloh.

After the fall of Fort Donelson to Grant's army on February 16, the two major water transportation routes in the Confederate west became Union highways for movement of troops and material. And as Grant suspected, this action flanked the Confederate forces at Columbus, causing them to withdraw from that city and Western Kentucky soon thereafter.