Diary of Private Daniel L. Ambrose: Saturday, February 8, 1862

This morning we are still at the Fort. This place looks as though it had passed through a terrible storm. We will now take a stroll over the works. They have been furrowed by sweeping shell. Dark and wild must have been the storm around here, ere the flag was lowered. It seems as though nothing of human construction could have survived it. Thirty remained at the guns. We walk a little farther, and oh! what a spectral sight! What a mangled mass, what a dark picture! They are fallen rebel soldiers. The thirty who remained in the Fort and worked the guns in those hours of darkness, have been excavated from the rubbish. It is sad to think how they fell; how they died fighting against the old flag-against the country which fostered their fathers and them in the lap of human freedom. I will turn from this scene; it is too heart rending. I will wend my way to the bivouac fires. This evening the few captives of Fort Henry are forwarded to Cairo. Among the number are General Tighlman [sic] and his Assistant Adjutant General.

SOURCES: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 28-9