Ulysses S. Grant: The Myth of ‘Unconditional Surrender Begins at Fort Donelson

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In January 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met in secret near Casablanca, Morocco, for their second wartime summit meeting. At the final press conference on January 24, Roosevelt announced to the world that the Allies would not stop until they had the “unconditional surrender” of Germany, Italy and Japan. It was an impulsive statement by the American president, who later explained that the idea for it had “simply popped into my mind” while contemplating Ulysses S. Grant’s ultimatum to Confederates during the Civil War. At the time the pronouncement stirred a flurry of debate among British allies and his own generals, with the consensus of opinion being that it was a disastrous policy that would goad the Axis powers into a fight to the death. Who knew Grant’s shadow was so long?

Conventional wisdom has always pigeonholed Grant as a great military captain but a dreadful president. Both are true as far as they go, but there was another side to Grant that was just as important: He was a master of the art of surrender. As the byproduct of a string of battlefield victories, he forced the unconditional surrender of three enemy armies, something no other general officer in American history ever accomplished — not Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, George Washington or Winfield Scott.

The learning curve for Grant began at the Battle of Belmont, Mo., on November 7, 1861. The fight was little more than a raid, but it gave Brig. Gen. Grant his first experience with negotiating military terms. After that action he and several Confederate officers, including Benjamin Cheatham, met to settle a variety of issues, specifically prisoner exchange. The discussions were light and friendly, starting with reminiscences and other trifling matters such as horse racing before proceeding on to serious matters.

But it was at Fort Donelson in Tennessee, during his first negotiated surrender, that Grant initially revealed the character traits and behavior patterns of the victorious captain. Operations against Donelson were part of an amphibious campaign launched in early 1862 to push the Confederates out of middle and western Tennessee, thereby opening a path into the Southern heartland. In cooperation with Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote, Grant put together a joint task force of some 15,000 foot soldiers and seven gunboats to seize Forts Henry and Donelson, respectively guarding the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.

Foote won the first laurels by capturing Fort Henry while Grant’s forces were bogged down in the mud miles away. When the Confederate garrison commander, Brig. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman, sent out a flag of truce asking the terms of surrender, Foote sent back a blunt reply, “No sir, your surrender will be unconditional!” In one sentence Foote, the Navy man, had shattered all the old-fashioned and gentlemanly protocols of surrender.

When Grant and Foote turned their attention to Fort Donelson, they found an objective considerably more formidable than Fort Henry had been. Donelson sat on bluffs overlooking the Cumberland River, 12 miles east of Fort Henry. Fortunately for the Federals, the Confederates had made the fatal flaw of dividing their command among four mediocre leaders: Brig. Gens. John B. Floyd, Simon Bolivar Buckner, Gideon Pillow and Bushrod Johnson, with Floyd the senior officer and Buckner the only West Pointer. Although it did not seem significant at the time, Buckner had a history with Grant. The two of them had forged a very close friendship during their West Point years and also served together in Mexico.

Despite Confederate command problems, Donelson would be a tough nut for the Northerners to crack. Albert Sidney Johnston, the department commander, had proclaimed his determination to “fight for Nashville at Donelson, and [to use] the best part of my army to do it,” while a resolute Pillow announced that surrender was not in his vocabulary. The garrison that would have to back up those words was made up of 17,000-18,000 men strongly fortified behind earth-and-log bastions, supported by 17 heavy guns, situated on a high bluff that made them impervious to assault from the river side. The fort’s 2l¼2 miles of meandering landward defenses were its weak point, but even those were well sited.

The Confederates had their headquarters in Dover Tavern, in the village of Dover, while Grant set up his command post on the river steamer New Uncle Sam — oblivious to the irony. On February 15, he would place himself closer to the action by moving his headquarters to the log cabin of a Mrs. Crisp, some two miles behind Union lines. Foote’s flagship headquarters was the ironclad St. Louis.

Grant was still getting acquainted with his lieutenants, none of whom could rightly be mistaken for Napoleon Bonaparte’s field marshals. Two were politicians turned generals: John A. McClernand, a former Illinois congressman angling for Grant’s job, and Lew Wallace, an Indiana state senator, lawyer and part-time author before the war. The only professional soldier in the group was Brig. Gen. Charles F. Smith, who had come up through the old Regular Army and helped teach Grant the art of war when he was a cadet at West Point. Now the student was the commander and the teacher was the lieutenant. Grant’s immediate superior was Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck, commanding the Department of the Missouri.

Grant opened the battle on February 13, hurling his newly bolstered force of 21,000 infantrymen against the Rebel earthworks in a series of uncoordinated attacks while the gunboats traded shots ineffectively with Confederate riverfront batteries. At the end of the day, neither the Federal army nor the navy had made much progress. A winter storm descended on the area that night, adding to everyone’s misery. The next day the infantry shivered in their siege lines while Foote, at Grant’s prodding, resumed his ineffective duel with Confederate batteries. After Foote was wounded and his boats were badly mauled, the navy withdrew, leaving it all up to Grant.

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Tags: 19th Century, American Civil War, Civil War Times, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures

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