Battle of Fort Henry - Fort Henry

Fort Henry

Fort Henry was a five-sided, open-bastioned earthen structure covering 10 acres (0.04 km2) on the eastern bank of the Tennessee River, near Kirkman's Old Landing. The site was about one mile above Panther Creek and about six miles below the mouth of the Sandy River and Standing Rock Creek.

In May 1861, Isham G. Harris, the governor of Tennessee, appointed the state's attorney, Daniel S. Donelson, as a brigadier general and directed him to build fortifications on the rivers of Middle Tennessee. Donelson found suitable sites, but they were within the borders of Kentucky, then still neutral. Moving upriver to just inside the Tennessee border, he selected the site of the fort that would bear his name on the Cumberland River. Colonel Bushrod Johnson of the Tennessee Corps of Engineers approved of the site.

As construction of Fort Donelson began, Donelson moved 12 miles (19 km) west to the Tennessee River and selected the site of Fort Henry, naming it after Tennessee Senator Gustavus Adolphus Henry Sr.. Since Fort Donelson was on the west bank of the Cumberland, he selected the east bank of the Tennessee for the second fort so that one garrison could travel between them and be used to defend both positions, which he deemed unlikely to be attacked simultaneously. Unlike its counterpart on the Cumberland, Fort Henry was situated on low, swampy ground, dominated by hills across the river. On the plus side, it had an unobstructed field of fire two miles (3 km) downriver. Donelson's surveying team—Adna Anderson, a civil engineer, and Maj. William F. Foster from the 1st Tennessee Infantry—objected strongly to the site and appealed to Colonel Johnson, who inexplicably approved it.

The fort was designed to stop traffic on the river, not to withstand infantry assaults, certainly not at the scale that armies would achieve during the war. Construction began in mid-June, using men from the 10th Tennessee Infantry and slaves, and the first cannon was test fired on July 12, 1861. After this flurry of activity, however, the remainder of 1861 saw little more because forts on the Mississippi River had a higher priority for receiving men and artillery. In late December, additional men from the 27th Alabama Infantry arrived along with 500 slaves. They constructed a small fortification across the river on Stewart's Hill, within artillery range of Fort Henry, naming it Fort Heiman. At about the same time, Brig. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman assumed command of both Forts Henry and Donelson. At Fort Henry were approximately 3,000–3,400 men, two brigades commanded by Colonels Adolphus Heiman and Joseph Drake. They were armed primarily with antique flintlock rifles from the War of 1812.

Seventeen guns were mounted in Fort Henry by the time of the battle, eleven covering the river and the other six positioned to defend against a land attack. There were two heavy guns, a 10-inch (250 mm) Columbiad and a 24-pounder rifled cannon, with the remainder being 32-pounder smoothbores. There were two 42-pounders, but no ammunition of that caliber was available. When the river was at normal levels, the walls of the fort rose 20 feet (6.1 m) about it and were 20 feet (6.1 m) thick at the base, sloping upward to about 10 feet (3.0 m) thick at the parapet. But in February 1862, heavy rains caused the river to rise and most of the fort was underwater, including the powder magazine.

The Confederates deployed one additional defensive measure, which was then unique in the history of warfare: several torpedoes (in modern terminology, a naval minefield) were anchored below the surface in the main shipping channel, rigged to explode when touched by a passing ship. (This measure turned out to be ineffective, due to high water levels and the leaking metal containers of the torpedoes.)