Deflection

I spent most of the day at Fort Donaldson along the west side of the Cumberland River. Once again, the amount of work that the Confederates put in to protect the fort is awesome. The amount of soil move for tenches and gun parapets is incredible. Sure they had like 16,000 solders, and an unknown number of black, to move the soil, without knowing the direction that the Federals would be coming from during the invasion. They have cannons here pointing to where they expected the Federals to be coming from, but, when considering the terrain, there was not much for those cannons to cover. And, if the Federals wanted to protect themselves, they just had to not bunch up, since the cannon was useless sending a cannon ball to kill one soldier. And, then, as the Federals moved into the tenches, the battle was over within a matter of hours; therefore, regarding the hours of building tenches, really did not stop the Federal. This is like Hitler trying to stop the Allies with his defense measures that were constructed for the invasion into France on D Day.

Once again, like the battle at Belmont, Grant sent the ironclads down the river and stated blasting the Confederate canons. As I thought about this, everyone for miles could hear the hundreds of canon balls being blasted into the air. As for the Confederates, that alone had to be demoralizing. Grant attacked the fort from the west, and he was winning the war. With the ironclad boats being within 450 feet of the Confederates canons, there was real concern that they would survive there attach on the Confederates, so he traveled over to the gun boats to confer with General Foote. But, in Grants absences, the Confederates came through the trenches and was over running the Federals. When Grant got back over to his troops, he rallied his troops and they made a finial push to overrun the Confederates. Unlike he did at Fort Anderson, where he fled the scene. The next morning Grant accepted General Buckner’s, Grant’s classmate at West Point, unconditional surrender. As with the Battle of Belmont, he almost lost this battle by conferring with Foote, but he was about to pull a victory. From this battle, Ulysses Simpson Grant became Unconditional Surrender Grant.

Otherwise, it was the perfect day here, with the high temperature of 64 degrees, no winds, and clear blue skies. Do you know how the spoil a perfect sunset? With condensation trails from jet aircraft in the sky.

Roger