two works, placed the one on the right bank of the Tennessee and the other on the left bank of the Cumberland (forty miles from where these rivers empty into the Ohio), with the view of obstructing the Union advance by those highways of communication. It then took a forward leap to Bowling Green-a strongly intrenched camp, covering Nashville and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. Finally, the right flank was posted at Cumberland Gap, where the Confederates held the gateway to the mountain region of East Tennessee.

To act against this defensive cordon, and to open the Mississippi, two Union armies were assembled on two widely separated lines of operation. At the point where the Ohio joins the Mississippi, the wedge-shaped figure of Southern Illinois, thrust forward in a sharp salient between the States of Missouri and Kentucky, ends in a tongue of land upon which stands the town of Cairo. It is an unlovely, amphibious region, scarcely satirized in Dickens's famous description; but its commanding strategic importance had caused it to be made a point of rendezvous for a land and naval force destined to operate in the valley of the Mississippi. The naval force, consisting of a fleet of gun-boats and river iron-clads constructed in the workshops of St. Louis and Cincinnati, was placed under the charge of Commodore A. H. Foote, an officer distinguished alike for the unaffected piety of his character and his daring inspirations as a commander. The command of the land force had in August been assigned to a certain Brigadier-General U. S. Grant a quiet, unimposing, and unostentatious officer, whom, at the time, neither the public voice nor the whisperings of his own prophetic soul marked out for that astonishing career that was to link his name with the mightiest achievements of the war. When, in November, 1861, General Halleck took command of the "Department of Missouri," he enlarged the "District of Cairo" to include all the southern part of Illinois, all that part of Kentucky west of the Cumberland, and

the southern counties of Missouri south of Cape Girardeau, and Grant proceeded energetically with the task of organizing an army for the impending campaign in the Mississippi valley.

The other Union army had been gathered on the Ohio, at Louisville, and thrown forward into Central Kentucky along the line of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and into Eastern Kentucky towards Cumberland Gap. The region covered by the activities of this army constituted the Department of the Ohio. Its command was for a time entrusted to General Robert Anderson, but, in October, it was transferred to General W. T. Sherman. That officer's pregnant military views, however, so far outran the short-sighted enthusiasm and crude experimentalism of the time that he was prouounced "crazy," and he was displaced (November 12) by General Don Carlos Buella soldier whose convictions certainly could not have sensibly differed from those of Sherman, but who was by temper more reticent in their expression. Buell immediately began putting forth all his energies to prepare movable columns for an advance upon Nashville and East Tennessee. By the end of December he had collected troops enough to organize four divisions - about forty thousand men. Two of these divisions were on the

Louisville and Nashville Railroad — the one at Mumfordsville and the other at Bacon Creek; a third division was posted near Green River; the fourth division, forming Buell's left, was at Lebanon, under command of General G. II. Thomas.

If with this view of the relative situation of the opposing forces, we consider the problem to be solved by the Union armies, it will appear that, in its general, stragetic aspect, there were two forces operating upon two independent lines against two other bodies holding an interior position. Grant, at Cairo,threatened the Confederates at Columbus and the forts of the Cumberland and Tennessee; while Buell, on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, menaced Bowling Green and East

Tennessee.

But Johnston, with a direct line of railroad from Bowling Green to Columbus, was in position to concentrate at either point more rapidly than Grant and Buell could unite the one with the other. Besides, the duty devolving on each of the Union commanders seemed beset with difficulties. The position at Bowling Green, strengthened as it was by fortifications on both sides of Barren River, and covered by a formidable stream, might be supposed to be inassailable by direct attack, while it could hardly be turned. In addition, the Cumberland Mountains, running almost parallel with Buell's line of operations, gave the Confederates a great facility for incursions into North-Eastern Kentucky. These were of frequent occurrence, and difficult to prevent; and they were, in fact, only checked at last by the brilliant stroke of Mill Spring (January 18, 1862), where General Thomas first chained a victory to the Union standard, and began that splendid series of solid and substantial achievements with which his name is associated. Howbeit, this success, though very valuable morally in inspiring the Union troops, had no direct bearing on the problem before Buell, which was to dislodge Johnston from Bowling Green. The obstructions to an advance against that "Manassas of the West," as it was called, presented so formidable a front that it was difficult to see how they were to be overcome.

Nor, seemingly, was the situation of the army at Cairo much more promising. Columbus was known to be powerfully fortified, and in the high-flown language of the time, it had acquired the appellation of a "Gibraltar." It was connected, too, by unpleasant asssociation with Belmont, to which place General Grant had made an expedition in November, 1861. After he had burnt the insurgent camp, the Confederates, crossing from Columbus, which is directly opposite Belmont, drove the Union force with a considerable loss to the shelter of its transports, and compelled it to return to Cairo. One or two subsequent advances, or shows of

advance towards Columbus, by the Kentucky side, had cach been followed by a retrogade movement, the effect of which was unfavorable to the morale of new and high-spirited troops. If it had been possible to lay Columbus under siege, the operation would have been embarassed by the menace to the Union force offered by the presence of the garrisons of the forts on the Tennessee and Cumberland. Finally, its capture, without the capture of the force it contained, could have been of slight value, and would have decided nothing.

But while the Union commanders thus confronted each his special task, and counted with prudent calculation the stops and limitations that beset an advance, and planned with wise devisement how they might be overcome, a new solution of the whole problem presented itself. The conception of what afterwards proved to be the true method of initiative in the West, presented itself to so many minds almost simultaneously, that it is not easy to say to whom primarily belongs the credit. It is certain that General Buell, in a communication to General Halleck, suggested the plan as early as the very beginning of January, 1862; and it is equally certain that soon afterwards General Grant, without knowledge of what Buell had advised Halleck, but acting on the result of reconnoissances made by General C. F. Smith and Commodore Foote, requested permission to execute the identical operation proposed by Buell. Taking note of the remarkable course of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, and knowing that at the season of high water these streams are naviagble to large vessels to the very heart of the South, the officers named saw that if the obstruction to the navigation of the Cumberland and Tennessee could be removed, nearly the whole upper centre zone must become untenable to the enemy. Their plan, accordingly, was to employ the land and naval force that had been assembled at Cairo in reducing Forts Henry and Donelson, which held the gateway of these water lines; for it was plain that if these could be opened, both

Columbus and Bowling Green would be taken in reverse, that Johnston's line of communication would be severed, that the whole of the Confederate front of defence, as then drawn, must fall to the ground. This plan met the approval of Halleck, who on the 30th of January, 1862, gave to Grant and Foote the eagerly-awaited laissez aller.

On the morning of the 2d of February the fleet of gunboats and iron-clads, followed by a long line of transports, freighted with troops, left Cairo to test their metal against the river strongholds of the enemy. Steaming up the Ohio to Paducah, the vessels by night turned their prows into the Tennessee, and next morning they anchored a few miles below Fort Henry, against which it was resolved to make the coup d'essai.

The Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, after a great curve by the south and west, turn northward as they near the Ohio they approach very close to each other. At the boundary line between Kentucky and Tennessee these streams are separated by only twelve miles, and it was at points immediately south of this line that the Confederate commander had raised his bulwark of defence - Fort Henry being located on the right bank of the Tennessee, and Fort Donelson on the left bank of the Cumberland. Both were bastion earthworks, armed with heavy guns to defend the water faces, and enclosed in an extended line of infantry breastworks. A direct road connected the two forts. After two days spent in de

barking the troops and in reconnoissances, it was decided to make a combined land and naval attack against Fort Henry on the morning of the 6th. The fleet was to move up the stream and open fire at twelve o'clock; Grant, whose forces lay encamped three miles below the work, was to march at eleven; and he believed that he could readily get his troops up to the rear of the fort in time to intercept the retreat of the garrison, if the fire of the fleet should be