Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume II.

[47] at discretion.¹ Our loss in this conflict, in addition to that on the Essex, was 1 killed and 9 wounded on the Cincinnati; none on our other vessels. Gen. Tilghman says our total casualties were reported to him at 73, while his own were 21. Com. Foote reports his captures at 60 or 70 men, besides the General and his staff, and a hospital-ship containing 60 invalids, with barracks, tents, &c., sufficient for 15,000 men.²

Fort Donelson--two miles below Dover, where the Cumberland makes a short bend westward from its northerly course — was a much larger and stronger work than Fort Henry, covering a level plateau of nearly a hundred acres, which surmounts the steep bluff, 100 feet high, with two strong water batteries on the bank at its base, of 9 and 3 guns respectively, one of them a 10-inch columbiad, three 64-pounders, and the rest 32-pounders; all protected by very heavy earthworks, and all bearing on the approach up the river. The fort itself had but 8 heavy guns mounted in addition to the field batteries of its garrison. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow³ had been in command there⁴ until the arrival⁵ of Gen. John B. Floyd,⁶ when the number of its defenders had been swelled by successive reenforcements to about 15,000⁷ men. Most of them were Tennesseans, with about 2,000 Mississippians, 1,200 Virginians, 1,000 Kentuckians, and a thin regiment each from Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas. The fort was commanded by two or three points farther inland, within cannon-shot; the country rolling to the bluffs of the Tennessee: some of the hills midway having an elevation of about 300 feet. Deep ravines, with steep, rocky sides, especially near the bluffs of the Cumberland, separated these hills, and, with the tall, dense, primitive forests generally prevailing, afforded admirable positions for defensive warfare. A heavy and difficult abatis in good part surrounded the fortress landward, rendering assault at many points all but impracticable.

Gen. Grant, bringing Smith's division across the Tennessee, and sending an officer down that river to turn back all vessels ascending it with troops or supplies, crossed from Fort Henry⁸ to the neighborhood of Donelson, gradually extending his lines⁹ so as to invest the Rebel stronghold nearly from river to river. by a line some three miles long, and 100 to 300 rods distant from the Rebel rifle-pits and batteries, which formed an irregular crescent, encircling their fort at a distance of one