On 6 February 1862 Flag Officer Andrew Foote's Union gunboats bombarded Fort Henry, a flooded Confederate earthwork on the Tennessee River, and forced Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman to surrender before Ulysses S. Grant's infantry, slowed by mud, could arrive. Most of the garrison had already marched off to Fort Donelson.
Twin forts on two rivers
In early 1862 the Confederate commander in the West, General Albert Sidney Johnston, held a long defensive line across Kentucky and Tennessee. Two forts guarded the rivers that cut through it: Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. The Park Service puts the distance between them at 12 miles, Grant at 11. Taking Fort Henry would open the Tennessee River to Union boats and break Johnston's line.1
Major General Henry Halleck approved the expedition on 30 January 1862. On 2 February it set out: about 15,000 men on transports, escorted by Foote's seven gunboats, four ironclads and three wooden timberclads. On 4 and 5 February the troops landed a few miles below the fort, out of range of its guns.2
A fort in the wrong place
Fort Henry had been built on low ground beside the river, and across the water the unfinished Fort Heiman stood on high ground that commanded it. Winter rain had raised the Tennessee so far that the fort was flooding: part of it stood two feet deep in water. Tilghman concluded the fort could not be held. He gave up Fort Heiman and sent most of his roughly 3,000 men overland to Fort Donelson, keeping only the gun crews, about a hundred men by Grant's count, to hold off the gunboats.3
The site was later lost completely: when the Tennessee was dammed, the remains of Fort Henry disappeared beneath Kentucky Lake.4
The bombardment of 6 February
Foote's ironclads came up the river around midday and closed in to a few hundred yards. The fort answered hard. A shot from Fort Henry pierced the ironclad USS Essex and burst its middle boiler, and the scalding steam put her out of the fight. The American Battlefield Trust counts 32 casualties from that one hit; Grant, who included the soldiers serving on board, wrote of 48 killed and wounded. Inside the fort, meanwhile, one gun after another burst or was knocked out. With only a few guns still firing, Tilghman lowered his flag.5
Tilghman surrendered to Foote aboard a gunboat and was taken prisoner with fewer than a hundred of his men. Grant's infantry, delayed by flooded streams and mud, arrived only after the fort had fallen. Grant wired Halleck that Fort Henry was his and announced that he would take Fort Donelson on 8 February. Read how that promise turned out in our article on the Battle of Fort Donelson and on our 11 February page.6
Losses and consequences
The figures differ by source. The American Battlefield Trust estimates 42 Union and 21 Confederate casualties. The National Park Service's historic resource study counts 15 killed and 34 wounded in the Union fleet, and 99 Confederate casualties: 5 killed, 11 wounded, 5 missing and 78 prisoners.7
The battle was small, but its effect was large. The Tennessee River was now open to Union boats as far as Muscle Shoals in Alabama: Foote's timberclads raided upriver at once and captured the unfinished Confederate ironclad Eastport. The Tennessee Encyclopedia calls Fort Henry the first major Union victory in the western theater, and ten days later Grant went on to take Fort Donelson, the next step in the rise of Ulysses S. Grant.8
