The History of the Civil War in Kentucky: Chapter 10 – Three Rivers in the Civil War

November 30, 2024

“The Civil War in Kentucky” is a 10-part series recently published in my Journey Log entitled “Surrounding Fort Knox, including Southern Indiana.” It deals primarily with the Central Kentucky Theater. I present it here as a series of individual blogs for my readers. Links to the previously published chapters will be provided at the end of each blog. Look for them on each Saturday morning! (A link to the book and its Table of Contents is found here.)

Why is it called “Civil?” It was anything but. Still isn’t. And to me, no buts when it comes to the carnage. Lives and bodies torn away from homes and families. And, in Kentucky, the opposing armies lined up along three rivers. The Cumberland, Green, and Tennessee Rivers.

When Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston took command of the South’s Western Department in 1861, Kentucky’s stated neutrality had already been breached. Both sides claimed support in that Commonwealth, though the state never did secede from the Union. But the southern part of Kentucky seemed to favor the South, and so the southern armies took up station down there.

It all started with Confederate General Leonidas Polk. He decided to strike the first blow by invading Western Kentucky. He took up a high position on the cliffs of Columbus, overlooking the Mississippi and the small flatland community of Belmont on the other side of the river. He stationed Rebel troops over there and ran a chain [yes, an iron link chain!] across the Mississippi River to block any northern navy seeking to invade the South by that route. Then he positioned 143 cannons on the high cliffs above.

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Well, I don’t know about the chain business. But those huge, high guns at Columbus could pour lead like molten molasses from those heights. Remember that. It should have been a lesson learned. One that might have helped the South, just to the south along the Tennessee River, just six months later!

Regardless, it worked here for a while. For Belmont, that flat little community across the river, caught the attention of Union General Ulysses S. Grant, then based in Cairo, Illinois. He attacked Belmont and suffered one of his few military defeats there. He was driven off by the Confederate big guns on the high opposite cliff. One cannon, the “Lady Polk,” was rifled and fired 128-pound shells!

So Grant retreated and, instead, fortified Paducah, across the Ohio River in Kentucky. Near the mouths of two of the rivers featured in this essay, rivers that now border what we call the “Land Between the Lakes.”

Landscapes lift and limit the lives that live on its surfaces. Niches described and studied by biologists. But in war, it is the wider draw of a landscape’s landforms that describe the possible avenues of attack or demarc lines of defense. Both were in play in 1862, in the critical beginning of our “Civil” War.

Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston set out a defense, anchored at its western end, by General Polk’s chain across the Mississippi River. To the east, he sent a Confederate army commanded by General Felix Zollicoffer into the headwaters of the Cumberland River at Cumberland Gap. Eastern and Western approaches sealed, Johnston only needed now to block the center of Kentucky. This he did by drawing a line south along the upper reaches of the Cumberland River, jumping to the headwaters of the Green River and patrolling the westward extent of that river from his headquarters just south, at Bowling Green. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad crossed the Green River near there, the only railroad penetrating into the south through Kentucky.

Pretty nifty. And Johnston was an experienced officer. Maybe the South’s best. But it turns out that he would not fight in Kentucky. Landscapes and rivers would determine that!

The Tennessee and the Cumberland Rivers ran right up from the South to empty in the Ohio River at Paducah. They punctured Johnston’s defensive line two times! And Paducah was now in possession of General U. S. Grant, with Union Commodore Andrew H. Foote commanding a gunboat flotilla at the mouths of both rivers. Sail up those two rivers and Grant could penetrate into the heart of the South.

So between General Polk’s big guns on the Mississippi and Johnston’s army in Central Kentucky, the Confederacy set about building forts on the Cumberland and Tennessee river arteries running out of its heartland.

On the Cumberland River, on high bluffs just inside Tennessee, the South built Fort Donelson. Big, long-range guns and lots of troops. Formidable. It protected the river from attack coming upstream, with the same river behind it serving as an interior line of communication. It was an easy route to bring in supplies and reinforcements from Nashville. Cool beans.

But that fort would be vulnerable, however, from a land attack at its back from troops brought over from the Tennessee River just to the west. So the Confederacy built a second fort over there. Fort Henry. But it was built down low at the water’s edge.

Bad idea. Grant saw it and knew it as such. He would send in Union Admiral Foote’s flotilla to bombard it, which Foote promptly did. Grant then marched in his troops.

Fort Donelson was now in a vice. Foote’s gunboats moved down the Cumberland River and began blasting Fort Donelson from the front. Grant’s troops then attacked its perimeter from the back.

It was a fierce battle for a while, then a humiliating defeat and surrender for the South. Union gunboats were now free to move on toward Nashville, which General Johnston, withdrawing from Kentucky, then abandoned.

Grant was then able to steam down the Tennessee River with his army and into history. Grant would meet, and ultimately defeat, Johnston’s troops at the bloody Battle of Pittsburg Landing. You know it as Shiloh. The beginning of the end of the war, many believe. But it didn’t have to be so.

Confederate Colonel Adolphus Heiman had recognized the vulnerability of Fort Henry lying on the floodplain along the rising waters of the Tennessee River. And he saw high bluffs opposite the low-lying fort on the southern bank of the Tennessee River. So up he went, to begin the construction of Fort Heiman, with cannon to bombard any Union gunboats attacking Fort Henry and troops behind earthworks to defend the cannon.

Too late, too rugged, not enough men, and not enough time. With the river rising, Foote’s gunboats attacked Fort Henry. Without the guns in place at Fort Heiman, the troops were recalled to the defense of Fort Henry. They were not enough. Foote was able to force the surrender of Fort Henry even before Grant’s troops got there, marching overland.

The fate of Fort Donelson was sealed, and the heart of the south cut open. From then on, it was a two-front war that the South couldn’t win. And all because those two rivers became military highways penetrating the South’s heartland!

Terrain tells the tale. Sets the toll.

And on these two rivers, the toll would be high. The price of passage would be taken in lives.

Previous Chapters

Chapter 1: The History of the Civil War in Kentucky

Chapter 2: Surrounding Sherman and Grant

Chapter 3: William Tecumseh Sherman in Kentucky

Chapter 4: Civil War Camp Nevin and Nolin Station

Chapter 5: West Point, Sherman, and Fort Duffield

Chapter 6: The Confederate Invasion of Kentucky

Chapter 7: Morgan’s Raiders During the Invasion of Kentucky and After the Battle of Perryville

Chapter 8: Surrounding Morgan’s Great Raid

Chapter 9: The Ones Left Behind, Lincoln’s “Little Sister”