Western Bravery and the Western Dead

(From the N. Y. Times, 28^th ult.)

As time reveals the nature and proportion of the struggle at Fort Donelson, we find – contrary to our usual experiences of reports of battles – that, in regard to this first great collision of the hostile armies of the West, it is necessary to add to all our earliest reports.  Time and fuller information reveal the battle of Fort Donelson as the greatest battle fought thus far on the American Continent; a three days’ desperate struggle between an assailing force of (probably) 30,000 men, and a well-intrenched defending army from twenty to thirty thousand – the line of battle reaching for several miles – the struggle veering to and fro as positions were taken or lost – the woods and ravines echoing with the crack of thousands of rifles and the boom of at least seventy pieces of artillery on each side.  Desperate sorties are made – batteries are taken, retaken and lost again – fresh regiment succeeds regiment in the fierce struggle, and in one case a sally is made with the most determined purpose by some 10,000 men of the besieged force to cut their way through – an attack which is finally repulsed with great loss.  They are three gloomy and deplorable days in the natural world – though forever glorious in our history.  The tough soldiers of the West fight amid rain, and sleet, and snow; they lie down on the frozen ground, or in the snow at night, and it is believed that many of the wounded were frozen to death.

They have little food or rest during those fearful days; even their blankets, as usually the case in battles, have been abandoned, and they are exposed to all the inclemency of the season.  Their naval allies are beaten back, and the attack must depend alone on them, while the enemy has a most strong and difficult position.  But they never think for a moment of withdrawing, or giving up the assault.  They have set themselves down before Fort Donelson to take it and like, the true sons of the Pilgrims, as most of them are, they will not give up till they have done it.  Each common soldier knows that the whole course of American History – perhaps the life of the Union – depends on the result of those hard-fought days.  The dead fall in heaps under the desperate onset of the besieged.

Fort Donelson determines the fate of the Mississippi valley, and probably the fate of this gigantic rebellion.  Plain men, fathers, brothers, lovers, sons – went out from the prairie farms, and Western workshops, and counting-rooms; and there in the snow clad ravines by the Cumberland, each by himself, offered up a life as dear to him as ours to us, for his country.  They sleep in their cold shrouds there, that we may enjoy comforts and privileges here.  They have borne cold, and frost, and storm; they have met the fury of the cannon blast; they have charged on the deadly breach, that we might have a free and honored Government.  Their dust shall be the seed of Liberty.  On those silent graves by the banks of the Cumberland will be built up all that our posterity shall enjoy of Order, and Government, and Union; and future historians will ascribe to those wintry days of battle the success and permanency of a great and glorious Republic.  Honor, then, to the Western dead!

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, March 11, 1862, p. 2