10

The Tennessee River, 1864–1865

Following Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s triumph at Atlanta at the beginning of September 1864, the Union high command had next to decide in which direction to send the scrappy redhead. Sherman himself favored a “­­scorched-earth” ride east destroying Confederate logistics between the Georgia capital and the Carolina seacoast. It would be his intention to emulate his greatest communications foe, Maj. Gen. Nathan Beford Forrest, by encouraging his Army of the Tennessee, made lean, to live off the countryside. “I can make this march and make Georgia howl!,” he promised Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Maj. Gen. George Thomas and 60,000 men could be sent north to guard the Tennessee rear.¹

Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood, who had taken over the Army of Tennessee in July only to lose the Georgia capital, now contemplated a visit north in a move historian Bruce Catton called a “strategy of despair, verging on the wholly fantastic, based on the belief that the way to counter Sherman’s thrust into the deepest South was to march off in the opposite direction.” The Confederate field commander believed that, if lucky, he could move “smartly” enough in western and middle Tennessee to capture Nashville. Taking the state capital would not only destroy a major Northern supply depot, but might force Sherman to return to the Volunteer State.

During September and early October, Sherman and Hood took advantage of fine weather to reorganize their commands for what Benson J. Lossing later called the “vigorous work” ahead. As a precaution against any Southern gambit, Sherman sent Maj. Gen. Thomas to Nashville on October 3. Over the next two weeks, Hood marched to the west of the Chattahoochee, trying to lure his opponent out of Georgia while avoiding a decisive battle.

The Tennessee rivershed. The largest tributary of the Ohio River, the Tennessee begins at Knoxville and winds its way down past Chattanooga. It continues south and during the Civil War reached something of a navigational dividing point between the Upper and Lower at Muscle Shoals, located between Decatur and Eastport, Alabama. Thereafter, it flows on in Alabama, nipping the corner of Mississippi before returning to Tennessee and proceeding north into Kentucky, where it arrives at the Ohio River at Paducah (Karl Musser, Wikipedia).

Hood, on October 7, called upon his cavalry to aid in the grand endeavor of removing Sherman by smashing up the Union supply line from the north. In particular, he needed Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the man whom Sherman himself had named “the very devil.” President Jefferson Davis, Confederate Department of the West commander Lt. Gen. Pierre G. T. Beauregard, Gen. Hood, and everyone else on the Southern side hoped that the famous cavalry leader could divert the Yankees while the Confederate Army of Tennessee strode into the Volunteer State.

Sherman was contemptuous of Hood’s ­­wild-goose-chase northern goal and remained supremely confident in his own mission and men. Consequently, he determined to quit the Hood waltz, go the other way, and march toward the sea. Lt. Gen. Grant approved his subordinate’s Savannah strategy on October 13. Seven days later, Sherman gave Thomas full authority to deal with any northern Confederate incursion and started reinforcements to Nashville.

Gen. John Bell Hood, CSA. A veteran of both the battles of Gettysburg and Chickamauga, Hood, twice severely wounded, thereafter commanded the Southern Army of Tennessee, being forced to evacuate the city of Atlanta to troops under Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman. Determined to draw his enemy back out of Georgia, the war’s youngest army commander led his soldiers through Alabama into Tennessee, where he was defeated at Nashville in December 1864 (Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War, v. 3).

Unable to gain any advantage in northwest Georgia, Hood turned to cross the Upper Tennessee River, first at Guntersville and then at Decatur, Alabama, where a key railroad terminus could deliver supplies from northern Mississippi. So it was that the Army of Tennessee headed for Decatur.²

During these late summer and early fall months of Western theater military maneuvering, the Union’s Mississippi Squadron continued to protect Federal river shipping and fulfill its army support mission. Although certain ­­ship-shore fights with Confederate regular and irregular units occasionally garnered press attention, the fleet’s size, both afloat and ashore, grew and matured largely unnoticed by the public as a whole, then or since.

Nowhere was this more true than in the development of a tiny new squadron administrative district, the Eleventh, which officially came into being on October 1, 1864, though its boundaries were not published until November 18. Completely landlocked from its parent organization, it was born of an army plan to develop secure and more plentiful transportation for the Upper Tennessee River region on the ­­Tennessee-Alabama border. When readied, it had only four vessels—all leased from the military with navy crews and guns—and was commanded by a lieutenant. Like the original Western Gunboat Flotilla of 1861–62, it started as an unfulfilled army idea for a fleet of light draught gunboats advanced months earlier. This gestation and development is intriguing, leading us to briefly divert our story from Hood’s northward march to recount it here for the first time in any detail.

The idea for a group of light military gunboats originated with Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans in January 1863. Wanting to supplement the navy’s ­­hard-pressed Cumberland and Tennessee River escort flotillas, the Army of the Tennessee commander proposed the building of several light draught military gunboats or the armoring and arming of transport steamboats. The scheme was unceremoniously opposed by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, who both deferred ­­purpose-building of river escort vessels to the USN. The army did modify several civilian steamers, like the Silver Lake No. 2 and Newsboy, into gunboats, but Rosecrans’ idea of ­­gun-decked craft was shelved, or so it appeared at the time.

“Old Rosy” Rosecrans was gone from the Department of the Cumberland by ­­mid-October 1863 when Maj. Gen. Grant arrived to raise the siege of Chattanooga and to provide victuals and other stores to his soldiers both in that town and in Knoxville. Expanding somewhat on the groundwork laid by Rosecrans, the Union Army opened the “cracker line” into Chattanooga, employing a crudely built ­­flat-bottomed steamer named for the town. Constructed 35 miles downstream at Bridgeport, Alabama, by army assistant quartermaster and Detroit native Capt. Arthur Edwards, the Lake Erie shipbuilder and a number of carpenters, mechanics, and other army personnel, including Maj. Perrin V. Fox of the 1st Michigan Engineers and Mechanics, the Chattanooga inaugurated a hazardous Upper Tennessee River supply run on October 29 through the winding channel of the Narrows, with its swift currents, to Rankin’s Ferry, where her cargo was ­­off-loaded into wagons for the final trip to the besieged city. Her trip opened a new chapter in Upper Tennessee River military transport and launched the chain of nautical events which resulted in the birth of the Mississippi Squadron’s Eleventh District.³

As the Chattanooga engaged in her early logistical feat, Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana, a Rosecrans critic, remained in Chattanooga continuing to send, as he had for weeks, a series of updating telegrams to Secretary Stanton in Washington. Dana, together with U. S. Grant, was convinced of the value of the Upper Tennessee River in the logistical chain to Knoxville. Quartermaster General Meigs already had plans to increase the number of armed steamers on the stream and ordered Capt. Edwards’ Bridgeport boatyard to construct additional boats. As we saw in Chapter 5 above, the idea to logistically succor Knoxville via the Upper Tennessee during the siege of winter ’63–’64 could not be realized, forcing reliance on the Upper Cumberland River instead.

Although goods could be sent to Chattanooga and her environs down into Alabama by rail or a winding road network, the delivery of goods in bulk or quantity by all but the smallest steamers was made impossible by the geographical barrier known as the Muscle Shoals, named for the mussels abundantly found in the stream. These rapids, which divided the Tennessee River of that day into its upper and lower portions, originated about two hundred miles from its mouth and ran about 30 miles—falling about 100 feet in that distance—and divided the Alabama counties of Lauderdale and Lawrence. According to the 1860 edition of James’ River Guide, Muscle Shoals was “an impossible obstruction to navigation, except during the highest stages of water.”⁴

Capt. Edwards was charged with building transport steamers to ply the waters between Muscle Shoals and Knoxville and it was simultaneously recognized that, in operation, they would need to be protected. Although some rightly credited “Old Rosy” for his original gunboat notion, it was Dana who, in the absence of the controversial commander, was able to dust off the concept, localize and bring it back to life. Many times in Civil War reporting, it is difficult to find the exact document in which an idea was launched (or in this case, relaunched). This time, we have it—a November 4, 1863, report from Dana to Stanton. While reviewing the transportation situation for his chief, the onetime managing editor of the New York Tribune put the whole matter into one sentence: “I suggest that gunboats of very light draught should be provided for this part of the Tennessee.”

Montgomery C. Meigs. In overall charge of Union Army logistics, Maj. Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs was in Chattanooga in the fall of 1863 when it was cut off and organized the capture of Brown’s Ferry, ensuring a logistical supply route to Federal soldiers.

Charles A. Dana. Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana, a journalist by trade, was also in the town, reporting on military developments to the War Department.

Lewis B. Parsons. Far to the north, Col. Lewis B. Parsons oversaw Army of the Tennessee rail and water transportation, working diligently to provide goods to the besieged garrison. All three men played a role in making the arrangements leading to the 1864 provision of supply steamers and gunboats on the Upper Tennessee River (National Archives [Meigs] and Library of Congress [Dana and Parsons]).

By the beginning of 1864, two different plans were afoot to provide transport and gunboat services on the Upper Tennessee. The first was revealed to RAdm. Porter by Col. Lewis B. Parsons in a January 5 letter. The army would soon attempt, he wrote, to get two newly purchased small steamers, the Alone and Convoy #2, over Muscle Shoals. Other steamers then being constructed at Bridgeport might also be able to make such a passage.

On January 10, Porter, no fan of ­­stern-wheelers, advised Parsons to build ­­side-wheel vessels and not to employ tubular boilers. Indeed, it was recommended that the ­­purpose-built Bridgeport craft be equipped with very large boilers and large cylinders. Work on this fleet required that Capt. Edwards, who initially had neither mechanics nor local material with which to work, obtain all of his machinery and most of his other material from manufacturers on the Ohio or in St. Louis. The filled orders were then to be transported 600–800 miles overland by already overtaxed railroad trains.

The following week, Maj. Gen. Grant weighed in on the matter, strongly endorsing the Meigs plan for the construction of armed steamers. By this time, the Quartermaster General, with a thousand other logistical matters on his mind for armies fighting in both the East and West, had also consulted with Norman Wiard, a Canadian inventor working and consulting with both the military and naval ordnance departments. Beginning back in October, the latter was planning four ­­shallow-draft gunboats for use on the bays, rivers, and sounds on the East Coast. He had drawn plans for the vessels and made them available, along with a descriptive leaflet, to Meigs, whose department would oversee acquisition of any additional War Department gunboats.

On January 15, Meigs showed a copy of the Grant letter to Assistant Navy Secretary Gustavus V. Fox and the two talked over the army’s latest gunboat idea. Fox advised his colleague to send over a copy of the Grant memo, along with a note asking that it be forwarded to RAdm. Porter “with such instructions as may be proper.” The chief quartermaster was nothing if not a whirlwind and, going back to his office, immediately complied. To further push the gunboat concept, Meigs also sent a copy of the Wiard plans and leaflet to Bridgeport, where Capt. Edwards was already building steamers. While in Louisville about this time, Meigs contracted for engines for two ­­side-wheelers and four ­­stern-wheelers and also wrote to Lt. Col. Langdon C. Easton, Chief Quartermaster of the Army of the Cumberland and Edward’s superior, at Chattanooga on the whole matter.

The Easton letter spelled out Meigs’ thinking on the two plans then under consideration. It would not be possible, he believed, to float steamers over Muscle Shoals. Regarding Parsons’ plan, the Quartermaster General was not optimistic that the river would rise to the height necessary to let his small boats pass. Knowing that Grant was “very desirous of having some gunboats on the Upper Tennessee”—and by that he meant proper ­­gun-decked craft, not ­­Newsboy-type improvisations—Meigs was quite specific as to the layout he wanted. He knew from his talks with Fox that the USN would obligingly furnish armament and officers.

Meigs ordered Easton to instruct Edwards to finish at least two of his steamers—one each ­­side-wheeler and ­­stern-wheeler—on the general plan outlined in the Wiard blueprints. The hulls would be built after the style of the already finished Lookout and a ­­side-wheeler currently on Edwards’ stocks, but their cabins, yawls, derricks, and other accessories plus armament would be prepared and arranged for a crew per Wiard’s plan.

On January 18, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles forwarded a copy of the Grant letter which Meigs had given Fox out to RAdm. Porter at Cairo. The commander of the Mississippi Squadron was authorized to extend whatever aid was within his power “toward arming and manning the boats to which Quartermaster Meigs refers.” Porter, who was making extensive preparations for his own expedition to the Red River area of Louisiana, ordered the ­­shipbuilding-wise Eighth District boss Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch to go to Alabama and review Capt. Edward’s ­­gunboat-building enterprise and to render whatever assistance was required. On February 5, the veteran gunboatman rushed to the Nashville telegraph office to wire his superior that, valise in hand, he was boarding the next Bridgeport train. The trip would be the first of several made beyond his district boundaries as squadron inspector or fireman.⁵

Fitch was one of the highest ranking, if not the senior, regular naval officer to visit Bridgeport thus far in the war. Who met the young sailor at the Alabama community, whether Col. Easton or Capt. Edwards, both or neither, is unknown. What he found was a very small enclave on the river that had, according to the Quartermaster history, begun operations as a tent community built around a sawmill. Here the boatyard was set up and houses for a growing number of military and civilian workers were raised up, along with an expanded machine shop.

It is clear that while the gunboatman consulted with his U.S. Army engineer and quartermaster colleagues, he was undoubtedly shown around as their efforts to construct a total of thirteen steamers, including four gunboats, were described. They had all the lumber required, it was surely pointed out, but, as the Quartermaster historian continued, “all the machinery, nails, paints, and every other material” had to be delivered “from the Ohio Valley over military roads already greatly overtaxed.” At Edwards’ growing Tennessee River facility, Fitch saw a pair of ­­stern-wheelers being finished for transport service. Both were 140 feet in length with ­­23-foot beams and depths of hold of 3.5 feet. One of the craft, the one furthest from being finished, was christened Missionary. The other had no name.

Bridgeport boat construction. To help meet its logistical requirements on the Upper Tennessee River, the U.S. Army, with consultation from a few USN officers, constructed a fleet of steamboats at Bridgeport, Alabama, between late fall 1863 and spring 1864. Four of them would be built as gundeck tinclads and leased to the Navy, which provided crews and ordnance, and established the Eleventh District, Mississippi Squadron, to operate them in support of military objectives. At war’s end, the quartet were returned to the Army, with proper receipts received (National Archives).

Another large boat, a ­­side-wheeler, was also ready to be launched as soon as river level rose. She was, with a ­­175-foot length and ­­27-foot beam, just right for use as a transport, but was too large for a gunboat. Engines from the notorious ­­ex-Confederate steamer Dunbar, sunk in Cypress Creek in spring 1862, would outfit the new craft, which could be ready for service within four to six weeks. This reborn Dunbar was one of five transport steamers assembled by Edwards from ­­Chattanooga-salvaged wrecks, also including the Holston, James Glover, Paint Rock, and Tennessee.

The army officers told their USN visitor of the dire need for transports on the Upper Tennessee, boats far more sophisticated than the little Chattanooga of the “cracker line.” They explained that the military would remain in southern Tennessee for some time and that goods would flow by river from that point, as well as Nashville and Carthage, into east Tennessee. Rail and road supply would, of course, continue as possible or appropriate.

Fitch reviewed the Wiard plans, which Capt. Edwards had received from Quartermaster General Meigs, with his hosts. It was readily apparent that the draft, for a ­­double-ender gunboat, would be totally inefficient on the Tennessee or Cumberland. Among other faults quickly ascertained, the guns were all unprotected and their crews totally exposed. As the sailor later wrote Porter, Yankee tars aboard such craft “could be picked off to a man by guerrillas from either side of the river.” The ordnance man’s concept was rejected in favor of the Western tinclad idea already in service.

Having dismissed the Wiard plans, Fitch offered several suggestions to the military builders. First, two boats, known as “Gunboat A” and “Gunboat B” and for which frames would soon be set up, should be finished as ­­side-wheel gundeck tinclads. It was expected that they would both have dimensions of ­­160-foot length, ­­250-foot beam, and ­­four-foot holds. The pair should carry as light an armament as possible, in order that they could also take on freight if necessary.

For security and moral effect, the squadron officer strongly suggested that one of the first two ­­stern-wheelers now finishing be completed as a hybrid ­­gunboat-transport. To accomplish that end, he suggested that she be outfitted with a pair of ­­12-pounder howitzers on boat carriages, which could be manned by gun crews that, in the navy, would equal 12 men and two boys, with a master’s mate as detail commander. This would not, he argued, detract from her qualities as a transport, but would demonstrate the precedence of a gunboat. When the two ­­purpose-built gunboats were completed, it was feasible that, if necessary, the hybrid’s guns could be removed and sent to one of them, being replaced or even augmented with another type. It was anticipated that the vessel could be ready for temporary service, with her guns in, within a fortnight or a little longer.

With a reputation as something of a howitzer aficionado, the naval officer had considerable experience in arming and manning tinclads. RAdm. Porter wanted his insights on both construction and ordnance placement as they impacted the Bridgeport gunboats and the army’s request that the navy handle matters of armament and crewing. Fitch was not bashful in supplying his superior with detailed recommendations, which, based on his discussions with Edwards, he may have worked out during his train ride back to Nashville, where he arrived on February 7.

First, he suggested that the ­­side-wheeler gunboats carry four guns each, two ­­24-pounder howitzers (one each in the bow and the stern) and a pair of rifled ­­12-pounders. The bow and stern guns could work abaft either beam, ahead and right astern. The two broadside guns could work from two points abaft the beam to within one point of right ahead. Additionally each boat should be crewed by 40 officers and ratings, led by an ensign. It would be simple to transport the men, guns, and ammunition, he opined. If they could be sent to Smithland, his flagboat, the Moose, could take them to Nashville for loading aboard a train to Bridgeport.

During the first week of March, Fitch visited Cincinnati to check on local USN recruiting as well as the latest material possibilities for the boats under construction in Alabama. In his absence, the Cumberland convoys and steamboat sailings continued unabated. Back at Nashville by the 14th, he returned to Bridgeport, where he immediately learned that much of the labor at the shipyard had been stopped for several days because requisitioned spikes and nails had not arrived. Still, work seemed to be “progressing as well as could be expected under the circumstances.”

RAdm. Porter’s designated consultant was at the Alabama boatyard for the launch of the hybrid steamer, “a beautiful model,” which Fitch believed would “compare favorably with any ­­side-wheel boat.” It was hoped that when the builders were ready to put up her casemates Acting Naval Constructor Charles F. Kendall might visit from Cairo for a day or two to provide direction in the minutiae of fitting chocks, etc. This boat may have been the reconfigured ­­transport-gunboat known as “Gunboat A,” the first of the four ­­navy-chartered gunboats completed.

Taking his leave of the army shipwrights, the naval officer returned to the Cumberland River, from which he reported to Porter on March 18 on his Bridgeport visit, even suggesting one of the new gunboats, which were all to honor army generals, be named for the admiral. Given that the Quartermaster Department was paying for the boats, which it would own and only charter to the navy, such a designation for any of them was unlikely.

By this time, news of the gunboat construction downstream at Bridgeport had circulated in bluecoat circles in Chattanooga. There, Capt. William A. Naylor, commander of the 10th Battery, Indiana Light Artillery Regiment, veterans of the fall battles then on garrison duty, looked for a return to action. Perhaps having heard rumors that army men, as was the case earlier in the war, could be transferred afloat, he made inquiry of Maj. Fox at Bridgeport on April 14 regarding personnel requirements for the new boats. He did not know that men from a number of military units were even then being considered for reassignment to different military units for the upcoming Georgia campaign. Within a week or so of his inquiry, Naylor’s inquiry had its desired impact. The engineer in charge of the growing Bridgeport depot and facility since late 1863, Col. Włodzimierz Bonawentura Krzyżanowski, CO of the Polish Brigade, VI Corps, Army of the Cumberland—and first cousin of composer Frederic Chopin—was looking for a crew for the first nearly finished ­­transport-gunboat. It was likely he who acted upon the Naylor inquiry and arranged for the Hoosier and 40 of his men to be seconded to Edwards’ “Gunboat A.” They would be joined aboard the craft, destined to become better known as the General Thomas, by men from several companies of Ohio Independent Sharpshooters (one of ten such units then with the Army of the Cumberland) and a hired civilian crew.⁶

The dual advance by Grant and Sherman against the Confederacy, east and west, was launched on May 5. Keeping in mind the logistical and convoy necessities of the latter’s Atlanta campaign, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch, then at Cincinnati, crossed over the Ohio to Louisville and took the train south to resume his support and supervision of the army’s gunboat project. Fleet Captain Alexander Pennock at Cairo had authorized accelerated boat assembly per his admiral’s instructions and promised any assistance required.

Upon his arrival at Bridgeport, Fitch found that, while he was away, the army engineers and mechanics had shoved three new gundeck boats into the water, one of which had been on ­­machinery-testing trial trips. A fourth vessel, also designed to accommodate cannon, would be launched about midmonth. All would soon have their working engines and would have completed their ­­joiner-work.

With “Gunboat A” nearly finished, it is probable that the three vessels were “Gunboat B” and two others slated for the navy. But what was the fourth we do not know for certain, though there is a possibility that it would become the Stone River.

Within these pages, we have written of several U.S. Army Western waters gunboats, but unfortunately, it has long been believed that photographs did not exist for any of them. There is, however, one picture at the Library of Congress which may, in fact, be of the Stone River. It is strongly suspected that the vessel’s identity was mislabeled as the General Grant when the photograph was employed in Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War.

U.S. Army gunboat Stone River or USS General Grant? One of the steamers constructed for the U.S. Quartermaster Department at Bridgeport, Alabama, became a hybrid army gunboat, the Stone River. A photograph (top) at the Library of Congress may, in fact, be that sternwheel vessel, mislabeled as the General Grant when employed in Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War. On the other hand, the U.S. Navy’s General Grant (bottom) was a sidewheeler. There were other differences between the craft as a review of these photographs demonstrates (Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War, v. 6 [Stone River] and National Archives [General Grant]).

The verso of this donated LC photo identifies this ­­stern-wheel vessel as the USS General Grant, which it clearly is not. If this is a warship, it is most likely the Upper Tennessee River U.S. Army hybrid ­­transport-gunboat Stone River. There is but circumstantial proof to make this claim, but it is compelling. First, the Grant was a ­­side-wheel gunboat which, like all USN tinclads of her period, wore an identification number (in her case, 62) on the side of her pilothouse. Second, together with her three sisters, the navy warship wore a similar paint scheme very different from this craft. Third, the boat depicted on the LC print is cut for six guns, the number typically employed by Union artillery companies, including the one which would serve as the vessel’s principal crew. The Stone River originally shipped field guns, probably two ­­12-lb. howitzers and several ­­10-pounder Parrott rifles, later exchanging the latter on November 16 for two ­­20-lb. Parrott rifles. The four Edwards ­­side-wheelers taken by the navy began with heavier armament (two each 20- or ­­30-lb. Parrotts and three ­­24-lb. howitzers). A review of photos which we fortunately have for the two vessels shows the various differences fairly ­­close-up.⁷

A significant difficulty arose, however, due to a difference in opinion over who should handle the conversion work. Capt. Edwards believed that his job was only to fit the boats up as transports and then turn them over to the USN for completion as gunboats. Rather than engage in a lengthy debate over which of them was responsible, Fitch, on his own hook, immediately took total charge of the four boats, subject to an agreement with the army officer that the cost of material and workmen to finish construction would be charged to USQM accounts. With that understanding in hand, he then contracted for the plating, outfits, and other essentials.

While Fitch ploughed ahead handling the administrative details of USN gunboat assembly, Army Capt. Naylor’s “Gunboat A,” at the behest of Col. Krzyżanowski, began to patrol the Upper Tennessee as far down as Larkin’s Landing, Guntersville, and Whitesburg, Alabama. Much of her mission was aimed at ascertaining Confederate irregular activities along the riverbank and halting unauthorized transriver crossing. During the vessel’s second cruise on May 14, a party of 1st Ohio Sharpshooters were landed to scout near Jackson’s Ferry (Hallowell’s Landing), where they were vigorously attacked by Confederate irregulars. Falling back under Naylor’s howitzer cover, the men reboarded and the gunboat temporarily withdrew. After wooding, the steamer returned and her men burned 17 buildings, but were again forced to withdraw under fire, returning to Bridgeport on May 24.

While Capt. Naylor introduced gunboat service to the Upper Tennessee, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch, having all but taken over full supervision of the navy gunboat project, was now riding the rails back and forth between Bridgeport and points in the north attempting to speed acquisition of labor and materials. Thin iron for plating, of the type employed to protect naval tinclads, was not furnished by the army, and acquiring it was stalled until RAdm. Porter’s consultant called upon Brig. Gen. Robert Allen in Louisville. Understanding the sailor’s difficulties, the supply boss immediately cut orders covering everything needed. Indeed, the Western theater’s chief quartermaster told the commander to go to Cincinnati, buy whatever he needed there or elsewhere, and send the bills to his Louisville office. The army had already placed a large order with a Chicago firm for specialized cuts of lumber.

Upon his arrival back at the Queen City, Fitch immediately repaired to the offices of Swift’s Iron & Steel Co., a leading navy contractor, and ordered the plate needed for the gunboat casemates. Deliveries were to begin before month’s end. Another major difficulty was a paucity of ironworkers in Bridgeport—there were none. Arrangements were made to take down to Alabama a number of these Swift men and their tools as soon as possible. Going with them would be USN Acting Chief Engineer William D. McFarland, who was detailed to review the condition of the boats and determine the number of engineers needed to help crew them. At the same time, a telegram was received from Maj. Gen. Sherman specifically authorizing transportation via Nashville Quartermaster James L. Donaldson. Despite the fact that the railroad was very extended, trains from Louisville and Tennessee’s capital would provide speedy transport. Once the outfits were shipped, Fitch could look to delivering the boats’ cannon from Nashville via his Kentucky base.

Several days later, with 53 1st Ohio Sharpshooters aboard, “Gunboat A” steamed down to Whitesburg and Decatur, from which latter she was dispatched on May 29 back to Gunter’s Landing to halt a body of Confederates reportedly crossing horses across the Tennessee. Upon her arrival, Capt. Naylor met a body of local Union home guard that had reportedly engaged enemy cavalry from Guntersville and captured several prisoners and horses. The latter were released on the opposite bank and the men taken to Whitesburg, where three companies from the 18th Wisconsin were boarded and taken to Gunter’s Landing to destroy a saltpeter works inland of the riverbank. After the bluecoats were retrieved, Naylor’s command returned to Bridgeport on June 1. During the following hot ­­low-water period, “Gunboat A” was taken in hand for conversion into one of the USN steamers and Capt. Naylor and his men returned to their Hoosier battery.⁸

RAdm. Porter took time at Mound City shortly after his May 26 arrival to reflect briefly upon the Bridgeport ­­boat-building enterprise. In a report to Secretary Welles, he noted that the four steamers were almost ready for service and that he was pushing forward their guns and detailing their officers. Porter recommended that the vessels constructed under his direction with Quartermaster General Meigs paying the bills be named for military leaders in compliment to “those gallant officers.” The Washington navy chief readily agreed. The two reconfigured ­­transport-gunboats, “Gunboat A” and “Gunboat B,” were christened General Thomas and General Burnside, while the two ­­purpose-built vessels became the General Grant and General Sherman.

Writing from Smithland the next day, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch informed his superior that the Cumberland was falling rapidly, with only three feet of water over Harpeth Shoals. It would not be safe to ship the guns up the river to Nashville, so the Tenth District commander determined to pick them up at Mound City and to run them up to Louisville, from where he would ship them by ­­non-stop rail express to Bridgeport. Arrangements were made for U.S. Army ordnance officers to accompany the howitzers from Louisville south.

On June 6, Acting Chief Engineer McFarland reported the completion of his inspections at Bridgeport and that he had returned to Cincinnati, where he shipped two of the six engineers the army boats required. Three days later, Fitch wired his superior from Evansville indicating that the “guerrilla” situation was worsening and that he was personally moving to the Henderson area to “look after them.” Lt. Henry Glassford, who had proved his worth as a resourceful leader on the Upper Cumberland, was deputized to take over the Bridgeport mission, serving as its interim flotilla commander.

With the navy gunboats at Bridgeport approaching completion, Col. Donaldson ordered Capt. Edwards on June 11 to turn them over to Glassford and then telegraphed Maj. Gen. Sherman: “Is this right?” Sherman wired back from Big Shanty, Georgia, in no uncertain terms that the transfer (actually, it was a charter) was approved and furthermore asked that all military officers grant every facility and encouragement to the boat captains. The same day he wrote up his arrangement with the USN in Special Field Order 23 and sent a copy to Porter. The document clearly indicated that the boats had been turned over to the navy “for better service and discipline,” but that they would be supplied by army quartermasters and commissaries of all posts and stations as if they still belonged to the army—which, technically, they did. Further, should any of the gunboat captains require any kind of aid whatsoever, it was to be provided if at all possible. On June 20, a copy of the field order was sent on to Fitch from the Black Hawk.⁹

RAdm. Porter received an update on the Bridgeport gunboats from Fitch on June 26. One of the boats had its plating on and was nearly finished, but the others were delayed because certain required lumber, ordered by the U.S. Army earlier, was temporarily delayed. When it was on hand, Fitch promised that he and Glassford would push the others on as rapidly as possible. In the intervening period, he was busily gathering up the different bills he had contracted so that Allen could invoice the boats in proper form. Receipts for the boats would be forwarded as soon as the quartermaster invoices were made out.

Meanwhile, in U.S. Army circles, Brig. Gen. Robert S. Granger had arrived at Decatur from Nashville on June 2 and assumed command of the District of North Alabama, Department of the Cumberland, which included authority over the almost finished Stone River. Within a short time of his arrival, the new local commander found himself engaged in a number of nearby contests with Confederate Brig. Gen. Phillip Roddey, capturing much of his camp near Courtland in July.

After a quick visit up to Evansville at the beginning of July, the USN Tenth District commander returned to Bridgeport to consult with his subordinate on the final outfitting of the ­­army-built gunboats. Although not commissioned, one of these, the General Thomas, the first completed and armed temporarily as “Gunboat A,” had already begun patrolling the Upper Tennessee as far back as May. Back in Cincinnati by July 14, Fitch wired Porter informing him that most of the boats were fully officered and that two, the General Grant and General Sherman, would be officially commissioned at the Alabama town the next day. All four of the boats would not only have USN officers, but petty officers as well; the remainder of the crews were provided by the U.S. Army. The pair would immediately relieve the Thomas, which would then receive its permanent guns and be regularly commissioned along with the converted “Gunboat B,” the General Burnside. The quartet would then function as a patrol and escort task group within Fitch’s district, not unlike the boats of Lt. Bache on the White River or Lt. Edward M. King at Johnsonville on the Lower Tennessee,

The four Eleventh District USN gunboats at Bridgeport, Alabama. From a small, leased administrative/supply base at Bridgeport, AL, the four chartered USN tinclads of the 11th District patrolled the Upper Tennessee River ranging as high as Chattanooga and as low as Muscle Shoals and conducting the same services as vessels of their type in the Mississippi Squadron’s ten other districts. The quartet was seldom simultaneously in port, but on one occasion in March 1865 when they were, they were photographed, left to right: General Sherman, General Thomas (with smoke rising from her chimneys), General Grant, and General Burnside (Naval History and Heritage Command).

When the bills were paid, the four ­­side-wheelers each cost the government $19,000. The dimensions of all four were approximately the same. The 201.­­5-ton General Burnside was 171 feet long, with a beam of 26 feet and a 4.­­9-foot depth of hold. The ­­204-ton General Grant possessed identical specifications. With the same beam, a length of 168 feet, and a depth of hold of 4.6 feet, the ­­187-ton General Sherman was slightly smaller, while the General Thomas, with the same hold depth and beam, was three feet shorter and three tons lighter than the Sherman.

The General Grant was commissioned on July 20 under the command of Acting Ensign Joseph Watson, transferred over from the Cumberland River tinclad Springfield. She was armed with two ­­30-pounder Parrott rifles and three ­­24-pounder howitzers. It would be a week before the General Sherman was commissioned. When she entered service under the command of Acting Master Joseph W. Morehead, her five cannon included three ­­24-pounder howitzers and two ­­20-pounder Parrott rifles. The General Burnside and General Thomas were armed identically to the General Sherman. Acting Master Gilbert Morton was put in charge of the Thomas while Lt. Glassford, temporarily detached from the Reindeer, was named captain of the Burnside, and continued as Fitch’s deputy commander of the Upper Tennessee flotilla.

On August 10, the 10th Battery, Indiana Light Artillery was officially relieved. Capt. Naylor, who had rejoined it when “Gunboat A” became a navy project, was ordered to turn in the battery and all of its equipment and then travel to Chattanooga with his gun crew. There they drew substance stores and joined the recently finished Stone River, which was crewed by contract civilians as the General Thomas (as “Gunboat A”) was earlier. The vessel’s shakedown cruise followed as she steamed down to Decatur and reported to Brig. Gen. Granger.

Fitch and Glassford, who may have known Naylor when he captained “Gunboat A,” enjoyed the pleasure of knowing that they had midwifed the birth of a fleet. They would also soon learn their responsibilities for it were over. Both the bluejacket officers would be officially relieved of responsibility for any part of the unit on September 29 when RAdm. Porter named regular USN Lt. Moreau Forrest commander of the General Burnside and of the new Eleventh District effective October 1. Glassford returned to his captaincy of the Reindeer the same day.

While the Hood advance—the story of which we have interrupted—continued, Lt. Forrest established his headquarters at Bridgeport. Arrangements were made with the army for the lease (for an unknown sum) and occupation of two riverfront buildings, principally “for use of the paymaster in storing provisions, clothing, etc.”¹⁰

As noted earlier, Hood, as he moved toward Tennessee, desired a major diversion. To that end, the “Wizard of the Saddle,” Nathan B. Forrest was sent ahead to interrupt Federal logistics. By October 6, he had completed a ­­sixteen-day circuit from Cherokee station in Alabama as high as Spring Hill outside Nashville assaulting Sherman’s supply lines. Hood’s hope that Forrest would, according to Maj. Gen. Jacob D. Cox, occupy Union forces “so as to create a diversion in his favor” were met. It was during this sojourn that, according to Jordan and Pryor, Forrest first became aware of the Yankee treasure trove at Johnsonville, on the Humphreys County, Tennessee, side of the Lower Tennessee River, and put it on his target list. The logistical hub, a key point on the long supply line running back to the Ohio River, “had become ‘essential for the Federal forces at Chattanooga and Atlanta’” and “would warrant him in undertaking” its destruction.

During his Middle Tennessee raid, Forrest was pursued by numerous Federal units—most of which were drawn off by his subordinates—while he endeavored to return his command back to safety over the swollen Upper Tennessee River into northern Alabama. From our viewpoint, the most intriguing and prophetic of these interceptions was made against a 1,­­300-man Federal task force near Chickasaw Landing, on the west bank of the Tennessee a few miles from Florence, Alabama.

On October 10, Col. George B. Hoge’s unit (two Illinois and one U.S. Colored Infantry regiments, plus 30 Missouri cavalrymen and a company of Missouri artillery), aboard three transports guarded by two USN Ninth District tinclads, was en route up to Eastport, Mississippi, to link up with a larger Union force which would confront the wily Southern raider. Alerted to this scheme down to the exact disembarkation spot, Forrest dispatched his “Fighting Parson,” Lt. Col. David C. Kelley, with 300 men and four ­­10-pounder cannon, to attack. Arriving before the Yankees, Kelley’s greeting party hid a ­­two-gun masked battery at the base of a hill about 600 yards from the river and another of equal size at Chickasaw Landing. He would successfully employ this deployment, the same as that employed by Col. Colton Greene in Arkansas, on two more occasions.

Reaching the ­­jumping-off point without incident, the Union transports lay at the bank, opposite a pair of warehouses (between the gunboats and the shore) and began to disembark their passengers (and a ­­four-gun battery). Not having made a reconnaissance or posted pickets beforehand, Hoge did not suspect the presence of the enemy.

As the bluecoats moved down a road from the riverbank inland, Kelley’s gunners and riflemen opened up, causing the Federals to desert their cannon and make a mad scramble back to their boats. Kelley’s ambush was complete as shells fell all around his foe—and their vessels as well.

Although hit several times with a crewman killed, the steamer Kenton was able to get away. The Aurora was not as lucky. Confederate bolts killed her captain and 20 embarked soldiers. Many men fell into the stream and drowned as the boat cut her cable and fled. Unhurt, the City of Peking tried to pick up survivors.

While the civilian steamers struggled to exit what Col. Hoge called a “scene of confusion,” the light draughts Key West and Undine fired on what they thought were Rebel positions back of the landing. The correspondent “Old Kentuck” of the Chicago Daily Tribune later interviewed a number of expedition survivors for an October 21 report and concluded “the worst feature of the whole inglorious defeat” was that the gunboat pair “killed more of our own troops and did more damage to our men than to the enemy.”

Eventually, the little task force was reunited and all fires were extinguished. It then retreated downstream to its starting point at Clifton, Tennessee, assessing its losses while en route. Both the Undine and Key West would face Forrest’s cannoneers again and next time they would not escape as the Confederates had, as Forrest biographer Brian Steel Wells put it, “the confidence to engage them again.”

From the field near Centerville, Georgia, during the day, Maj. Gen. Sherman wrote to Lt. Henry Glassford, still believed to be in charge of the Eleventh District, regarding the threat posed from the Army of Tennessee, now west of Rome, headed toward the Volunteer State. Hood’s exact and immediate intentions were not quite certain, however, so Glassford was asked to keep his new boats “watching and patrolling the Tennessee.” Perhaps White was en route to the Tuscumbia vicinity. Whitesburg or Gunter’s Landing were also possibilities, but in any event, Hood had to be “prevented from crossing the Tennessee River anywhere above Mussel Shoals.”

Safely back in Southern territory, Forrest was “anxious to renew the effort” against Sherman’s logistical apparatus. After considerable study bolstered by decent intelligence, he elected to attack the Yankees’ newest and most vulnerable route, humming along with virtually no interference: the Lower Tennessee River stretch from Paducah, Kentucky, down to the ­­six-month-old transfer point at Johnsonville, Tennessee, in Humphreys County, from whence goods sped east along the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad to the state capital for transshipment “direct to Knoxville, Chattanooga, or Atlanta as desired.”

Not subject to the annual ­­low-water navigational difficulties of the Cumberland River, the port was located at a wide point on a cleared area of the east bank, across from high woods on the western shoreline. Named like the town for the Union’s Tennessee governor, Andrew Johnson, the overlooking hilltop Fort Johnson, an earthen redoubt and blockhouse, overlooked the railroad. From here the area was guarded by Col. Charles R. Thompson’s 700 untested troops, who also manned the nearby entrenchments plus 14 cannon. Commanded by Lt. Edward M. King in ­­two-boat task groups, four Ninth Division tinclads Undine, Key West, Elfin, and Tawah, made frequent stops at the levy when not on convoy escort or patrol.¹¹

“The movement of the Confederate army through northern Alabama to Decatur and Florence, and thence across the Tennessee River towards Franklin and Nashville was now in full swing,” wrote Maj. Gen. Forrest’s biographer, Dr. Wyeth, years later. Over the next several weeks and as the leaves turned, the “Wizard” assembled his strike force at Jackson, Tennessee, making ready for his mission against the Johnsonville supply depot, his last great raid of the war.

By October 21, Hood’s main force occupied Gadsden, Alabama. There, in conference with his nominal superior Lt. Gen. Pierre G. T. Beauregard, the veteran laid out his plans to cross the Tennessee River at Guntersville, Alabama, and then destroy the railroad bridges and depot at Bridgeport, before sweeping into central Tennessee. This approved trek began the next day, but learning that his proposed crossing site was well guarded, Hood switched to Decatur further downstream. There placement of heavy shore batteries, submarine mines in passable channels, and a portable pontoon train would allow him to cross unimpeded by Federal gunboats.

Just as scouts and other intelligence sources revealed Hood’s advance, Forrest’s move toward Tennessee was noticed by other Federal authorities, who began making their own preparations. The Southern cavalryman himself briefly wondered if Union troops would, as during his recent sojourn, respond against him from several directions. Yankee cavalry patrols in western Tennessee had, however, recently decreased as more riders were sent to North Alabama to watch for Hood along the Upper Tennessee. Still, as in the past, the sheer number of Forrest sighting reports coming into army posts and naval bases throughout the area actually helped mask the Confederate’s mission.

As early as October 12, Acting Master Gilbert Morton’s General Thomas, having been assigned by Lt. Moreau Forrest to the area between Whitesburg and Decatur, was requested to steam up and beyond Whitesburg, gaining intelligence. She was joined by Capt. Naylor’s army gunboat Stone River.

Three days later, Morton informed Brig. Gen. Granger at Decatur that Hood’s army was marching toward a projected crossing point at Caperton’s Ferry. Army riders confirmed the gunboat report. The volunteer officer promised to depart his anchorage at Larkinsville and proceed up toward the danger spot, hoping to arrive before midnight. Orders were left for the General Grant to follow as soon as she arrived.

Morton’s message was passed from Granger to Maj. Gen. Thomas at Nashville, who asked several of his subordinates to scout the mentioned areas with cavalry. He also asked that, while his horsemen rode toward Rogersville and Florence, that Ninth District gunboats patrol the river as far as Waterloo and Eastport.

Having ordered his own scout, Brig. Gen. Granger did not initially believe Morton, who sent additional reports that the Confederates were on the move. If Hood had as large a force as was being reported, in the general’s opinion, “the gunboats will do little toward stopping the crossing of the river.” The general was not impressed with the four craft leased to the USN. “They have no protection for their boilers,” he complained, “none indeed for any part of the boat.” He added that “any of them could be totally disabled by three batteries in 15 minutes.” Nevertheless, as he assured Thomas two days later, the gunboats were patrolling between Bridgeport and Decatur and the Eleventh District was cooperating with him “very cordially.”

Sighting reports continued to pour in and, on October 19, Granger made his own reconnaissance, going all the way up the Tennessee to Bridgeport aboard the Stone River. Meanwhile, Morton was forced to report to Lt. Forrest that low water was holding up his arrival at Claysville Landing.

As this fall Western campaign unfolded, the top leadership of the USN Mississippi Squadron changed, beginning with a move this day by Navy Secretary Gideon Welles. The unit was turned over to Acting RAdm. Samuel Phillips Lee, who had recently been relieved from command of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, which was given to Porter.

Hood’s main force departed Gadsden for Decatur on October 22. Granger, who by now appreciated that it was approaching, strengthened the town defenses as the General Thomas and Stone River stepped up their patrols. Two days later, the commander of the Whitesburg post reported 15,000 Rebels 20 miles inland and closing on the river.

Aboard the General Thomas Acting Master Morton found the waters of the Upper Tennessee so low on October 25 that he was unable to patrol beyond Beard’s Bluff and could not go with safety below Whitesburg. The Stone River was below that community, where it was hoped Brig. Gen. Granger would use her to scout the Tennessee as far as Decatur. The navy craft, after stopping to “rail,” or pick up fence rails for fuel, continued toward Hobson’s Island, three miles below Whitesburg.

During her reconnaissance Rebel cavalry were increasingly seen along the riverbank. Hood’s riders were disposed between Guntersville and Eastport along the river’s south bank. Water depth kept Lt. Forrest from sending other craft to the scene to participate in the reconnaissance.

Demonstrating the time lag of Civil War communication, Maj. Gen. Thomas sent two telegrams to Lt. Forrest at Bridgeport on October 26 strongly requesting that the gunboats under his command be moved to Claysville and Fort Deposit. Once there, they were to assist Brig. Gen. Granger in defending the river fords and crossings at those points.

In response to these wires, Forrest replied that both the General Grant and General Thomas were on the Tennessee at or near the points Thomas mentioned. The Grant was trying to sheer her way over the bars to rendezvous with the Thomas, but the river level was frustrating the effort. Attempts to get a third craft, probably the General Burnside, away from Bridgeport were stymied by the bar in the low river off that town.

Hood arrived near the outskirts of Decatur that Wednesday and elements of his force attacked toward the Alabama town, but were beaten back. Brig. Gen. Granger wired Maj. Gen. Thomas asking that he once more petition Lt. Forrest to send help from Bridgeport. Unwilling to concede that the river level was down, Decatur’s defender argued that “a gunboat at Bridgeport [with] 500 men could be sent to Claysville in a few hours.”

Although the navy could not help, Maj. Gen. Thomas did order two regiments down from Chattanooga. It “was a feeble reinforcement” wrote chaplain and Thomas biographer Thomas B. Van Horne in 1875. Later that night Granger’s defense was boosted to about 3,000 men when the Stone River tied up at the Decatur wharf and disgorged 200 more Ohio and Michigan reinforcements. The General Thomas slowly steaming up the Tennessee toward the scene of action was able to hear “heavy trains moving along the mountain roads all night.”¹²

Calling upon Maj. Gen. Thomas for additional reinforcements and concluding that Decatur was Hood’s target, Granger, himself short of men, nevertheless sent 250 soldiers to Whitesburg on the Stone River to conduct another, more precise reconnaissance. Fortification of Decatur intensified and 1,600 yards of rifle pits and defensive parapets were manned along with two forts, to say nothing of the gunboats.

Hood spent October 27 encircling Decatur. That morning, Acting Master Morton informed Lt. Forrest at Bridgeport that the General Thomas was finally up the river near Fort Deposit and Beard’s Bluff. Off Hobson’s Island, a pair of Granger’s scouts from Warrenton and Guntersville were taken aboard. The tired men confirmed that all of Hood’s main force was moving on Decatur.

It rained heavily all during the preceding night. The downpour had some effect on the river level, allowing the Upper Tennessee to rise almost an inch. Taking advantage of this welcome development, Morton handed a courier his message to Lt. Forrest and cast off, expecting to make it to Whitesburg by nightfall.

During the night of October 27, Army of Tennessee units moved to the south edge of the river to the right of Decatur and began to encircle the town while others established two batteries at different locations on the riverbank about 1,500 yards from the principal Federal defenses. The Rebel emplacements, of four and six guns, were linked to each other and their main line by a chain of rifle pits. Although fog made the darkness more ghostly, Brig. Gen. Granger, having learned of the enemy cannon, ordered a small earthwork set up on the north side of the river opposite the Confederates where he emplaced a section of his own.

When the fog lifted, the battle was joined as Granger boldly attacked Southern rifle pits near the river. Combat swayed back and forth on the right of Decatur all morning. Over on the left, the Union battery set up in the dark, joined by the Stone River, engaged the Confederate guns, soon catching defending Rebel riflemen in a crossfire.

About noon, the Stone River was ordered to run by the enemy’s battery, in much the same fashion Rear Adm. Porter’s fleet had passed Vicksburg in April 1863. The converted transport made it by without damage and took a position above to fire against the rear of the enemy emplacements.

The General Thomas arrived in midafternoon and rendezvoused with the Stone River. Brig. Gen. Granger now directed both boats to bombard the Southern battery, in conjunction with the ­­shore-based field pieces. The crossfire chased many Rebel gunners from their cannon, two of which were dismantled. During that shoot, the two gunboats dropped down the river until they were immediately opposite the Confederate emplacements, no more than 500 yards away. Both then opened with their broadside guns.

“Their guns were most admirably served,” Granger later reported, so that it was “impossible for men to withstand this attack.” One shell from the Stone River reportedly exploded a caisson, killing 17 graycoats.

Over the next half hour, the two Federal vessels poured shot, shell, and canister onto the Confederate position. The range was gradually decreased to 300 yards. Abreast the battery, the General Thomas was hit four times, with one bolt passing through the hull, one through the wheelhouse, and two entering the cabin.

As the naval fire intensified, Rebel cannoneers and crews deserted their pieces, with many fleeing to the riverbank to seek the protection of large trees at the water’s edge. “Many bodies,” the District of Northern Alabama commander later wrote, “were afterward found in the river.”

Though hit a number of times, the two gunboats suffered few casualties, losing two killed (one each) and 11 wounded. Capt. Morton and Naylor were praised in official dispatches for the skillful manner in which they handled their craft and even for “continuing to shell the crowd of fugitives as they fled back from the river.”

The fighting at Decatur died down in late afternoon on October 28, by which time the Confederate commander decided to call the fight a demonstration and turn the Army of Tennessee west toward Tuscumbia, on the south side of the Tennessee, where a safe crossing could be made below the Muscle Shoals beyond the reach of naval craft.

Passing the location of the recently engaged but quiet Rebel battery, the General Thomas and the Stone River landed at Decatur. The former, however, was quickly dispatched to shadow the movement of enemy cavalry along the riverbank. As Acting Master Morton noted in a message to Maj. Gen. Thomas, he “fired canister [6 shots] at them, and could see them running through the cornfield.”

In the dense fog present at 3 a.m. on October 29, long after the gunboat had tied up for the night, the Army of Tennessee removed the offending battery from the riverbank near Decatur. As it became increasingly evident that the Rebels were gone, the General Thomas and Stone River returned to their patrols as the sun rose. The mission was only five minutes old when Southern cavalry attacked the General Thomas as she slowly cruised upstream. Howitzer fire was returned with unknown effect and, by 7:30 a.m., the tinclad reached Whitesburg, where she ran aground on the bar.

Halloween on the Upper Tennessee started auspiciously for the General Thomas when the Stone River arrived off the Whitestown bar. Making fast to the stern of the tinclad, the U.S. Army gunboat hauled her naval colleague off into deeper water. Rounding to, the Thomas started back to Decatur and, while passing above Triana, fired eight rounds of canister at a number of Confederate cavalry seen along the shore.

The Eleventh District gunboats, joined by the Stone River, remained alert, continuing to monitor the Upper Tennessee during November as the storm clouds drifted north toward Nashville. During this time, several of the ­­purpose-built Bridgeport transports maintained Upper Tennessee communications with Chattanooga and further upstream to Knoxville.

Light draught steamers Missionary, Resaca, and Kingston. When USN Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch first visited Bridgeport, Alabama, in February 1864 to consult with army quartermaster engineers building river transports, he found two vessels under construction, one of which (here depicted) had already been named Missionary. This pair would be joined by eight others, including the Atlanta, Bridgeport, Lookout, Wauhatchee, Gunboat A and Gunboat B (which were reconfigured into the chartered USN craft General Thomas and General Burnside), and Resaca and Kingston, also shown here, as captured by the Hartford, Connecticut–based, photographers Taylor & Huntington in early 1865 (Library of Congress).

The question of reinforcements for Hood crossing the river remained constant while the possibility of local insurgents providing him aid and comfort remained. One of the most notorious Confederate sympathizers on Hood’s invasion path was Cauis G. Fennel, who lived with his sons on the south side of the Tennessee near Guntersville, Alabama. On the night of November 14, a landing party from the General Sherman was sent ashore, surrounded Fennel’s house, and moved in, capturing two Southern soldiers given shelter plus 33 bales of cotton. Also confiscated were all the cattle and hogs on the property.

A few days later at dusk, a lookout aboard one of the tinclads spied what appeared to be suspicious activity again taking place at the Fennel homestead. A telescope revealed what appeared to be a Confederate officer; perhaps, he was leading a raiding party. The young man was, in fact, a wounded soldier attempting to reach his local residence, and being aided across the yard by the owner.

As Fennel later reported, the “gunboat sneaked up without attracting our attention.” Given the noises made by approaching steamboats such seems rather ­­far-fetched, but, in any event, as Fennel continued, the boat “immediately opened fire with two ­­32-pounders.” The first shot was long, but the second landed between the men, making “a ditch that would hold a wagon and team.” Neither was, fortunately for them, killed.

Hood continued to press into Tennessee. On November 25, Brig. Gen. Granger ordered the pontoon bridge at Decatur taken up. Protection for the engineers from Confederate sharpshooters while taking up the 15 pontoon boats was provided by army shore batteries and the tinclad General Grant. Shortly thereafter, the river crossing equipment was among the items found when Confederate Brig. Gen. Philip D. Roddy occupied the town. While the Southerners, like other soldiers in the region, sought to protect themselves against an intense cold spell, the General Grant frequently watched them from offshore. On December 12, she hurled 52 shells against Dixie positions around the town.¹³

While General Hood’s “demonstration” on Decatur was unfolding, Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and his command had returned to Tennessee to assault Union logistics. Ignorant of “The Devil’s” movements, the gunboats of the Ninth and Tenth Districts, U.S. Mississippi Squadron, continued to patrol and convoy steamers on the Lower Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers.

Forrest began his river interdiction by establishing an artillery trap reminiscent of that employed against Col. Hoge near Eastport in early October. Guns were unlimbered on the Lower Tennessee at Fort Heiman, near Fort Henry about 40 miles north of Johnsonville, and also a short distance away at Paris Landing. By October 30, they had compelled the surrender of the transports Mazeppa, Anna, and Venus and their biggest prize, the tinclad Undine, one of the gunboats involved in the Hoge episode. Reacting to reports of the captures even as Forrest had the Undine and Venus repaired, the USN halted river shipping from Paducah south and Acting RearAdm. Lee called up Lt. Cmdr. Fitch to lead a relief force toward Johnsonville.¹⁴

With his “Tennessee Navy” now operational, “The Devil” and his men began their trek up toward Johnsonville on November 1. Initially, the water route proved easier as heavy rains slowed ground progress. The next afternoon, Forrest’s flotilla ran into trouble. The Venus, faster than her consort, had, contrary to orders, pulled ahead of the Undine and moved out of range of the supporting horse artillery. Moving into a sharp bend in the stream off Green Bottom Bar, some six miles below Johnsonville, her luck ran out. Almost like a train running ­­head-on toward a broken trestle, the steamer came into gun range of the Key West and Tawah.

The Yankee tinclads had started a river reconnaissance from Johnsonville a half hour before this encounter, and it is quite probable that the tars on the opposing craft, professional and amateur, were equally surprised to see one another. Recovering quickly from any astonishment, Lt. Edward King’s two boats “made short work of Forrest’s sailors,” wrote Dr. Wyeth years later. In a ­­20-minute engagement, the Venus was badly damaged and, in an effort to avoid her capture or destruction, she was run ashore. There her officers and crew abandoned her, “without setting it on fire.” The Undine rounded to “and sought safety in flight,” moving, “with shot through her,” according to Lt. King, under the protection of the Rebel mobile field batteries. Heavy fog and mist and the unknown placement of the Southern guns prevented her pursuit. King, whose Key West had worked in tandem with the Undine earlier, sarcastically noted that “she went down river faster than ever before!”

The prize Venus was significant and helped to raise Union morale. Not only was the transport taken intact, she had aboard Forrest’s two largest cannon (­­20-pounder Parrots), plus 200 rounds of ammunition and the freight from the Mazeppa. After running a gauntlet of musket fire at the head of Reynoldsburg Island, King’s two boats returned to Johnsonville with the Venus about 6:30 p.m.

Running to the telegraph office, the task group boss wired Ninth District commander Lt. Cmdr. James Shirk to report the capture of the steamer and the escape of the gunboat. With the Confederates known to be just over five miles away, a more ominous note was also sounded: “All anxious about this place. Please send up more gunboats at once…. We won’t allow this place to fall into enemy’s hands, if our forces can prevent, but please send up more gunboats.”

By noon on November 3, as the Federal relief force made its way to the scene, Forrest’s cavalry and the Undine reached the vicinity of Reynoldsburg Island, three miles below Johnsonville. This atoll split the stream, forcing ­­upward-bound steamer traffic into a narrow chute. Taking advantage of this navigational challenge, the Confederate general ordered artillery placed at the head and foot of the island, setting a new trap.¹⁵

In an effort to draw Lt. King’s tinclads from Johnsonville into an ambush, Undine, still loaded with grayclad troops, twice boldly sortied toward the Yankee depot. On each occasion, the Union officer was tempted to go after her, moving the Key West down a mile to a point where she came under intense volleys of musketry from the head of Reynoldsburg Island. Sensing great peril, the gunboat retired to the Johnsonville levee. In the end, it was the Tawah that was anchored as guardship, with her head downstream so as to command the channel with her ­­30-pounder Parrotts.

Believing the outpost surrounded and that his boats might be subjected to a “commando” raid after dark, Lt. King once again wired his Paducah superior: “Send large fleet of gunboats at once, if possible.” He also advised the local assistant quartermaster in charge of the port’s logistical machinery of his fear and advised him what action should be taken with regards to the ­­tied-up steamers in such an event. It was particularly recommended that the military officer make plans to fire all of the transports to keep them out of Forrest’s hands should the Rebels attempt to their seizure. The message was passed to all of the steamboat masters at the levee along with a warning not to destroy any of the boats until their takeover was imminent.

While King was cautioning the supply masters, Gen. Forrest and his artillery chiefs reconnoitered the Benton County area 800 yards across the Tennessee from Johnsonville and started the preparations for placement of their cannon. The western shore was found to be quite boggy, with only a few bad roads, much underbrush, and a surprisingly wide variety of wildlife. Mountains of materiel could be seen on the docks and barges, and the Federals, who had no pickets across the river, did not know they were under close surveillance.

Railroad station and warehouse area at Johnsonville, Tennessee. Having sought a logistical center not subject to the annual low-water navigational difficulties of the Cumberland River, the Federals placed a port named for the Tennessee governor on the east bank of the Lower Tennessee River in Humphreys County below Paducah in early 1864. From there goods unloaded from steamers could speed east along the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad to Nashville for transshipment “direct to Knoxville, Chattanooga, or Atlanta as desired” (Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War, v. 4).

When Capt. John Morton arrived on the scene early on the morning of November 4, he found attack preparations well advanced. While making a final check, he found the scene that unfolded below him animated with an “air of complete security.” Two gunboats with steam up were moored at the landing, while another plied directly beneath the bluff on which the Confederate Chief of Artillery stood. He could, he remembered, “almost have dropped a stone upon it.” Two freight trains were being made up, and a number of barges were being loaded by African Americans.

Once the bombardment force was ready, Forrest had twelve cannon in five locations, interspersed by riflemen, within close proximity to the huge base and no enemy the wiser. None of the gunboats or transports at Johnsonville or downriver from them would be able to pass Reynoldsburg Island either to escape or to help.¹⁶

During the morning as Forrest finished preparations, the Federal gunboats attempting relief engaged in fiery but unproductive artillery battles with the Confederate batteries on the ends of Reynoldsburg Island.

The Reynoldsville trap. When Maj. Gen. Forrest prepared to attack Johnsonville in November 1864, he took the precaution of placing defensive batteries at either end of Reynoldsville Island, in the Tennessee River, above the town. Six gunboats sent down from Paducah to aid the Northern defenders were forced to battle these guns and were unable to intercede while Confederate cannon destroyed the base. This map was detailed by the relief task group leader, Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch, USN, after the engagement (ORN Series I, Vol. 26).

Perhaps as cover for batteries being finished across from Johnsonville, the former steamboat captains “Tennessee Navy” Commodore Col. William A. Dawson and the Undine’s captain, Julius F. Gracey, elected to run their tinclad up toward Reynoldsburg Island in another attempt to lure Lt. King’s gunboats under the shore batteries of their ­­land-based comrades. Located as she was on the river below Pilot Knob, the highest point on the west bank of the Tennessee, the former Union gunboat, after shooting a few shells toward Johnsonville, succeeded in provoking the Key West, Tawah, and Elfin to cast off after her.

As the three Union craft chugged toward him, Gracey ordered his vessel backed downstream under the protection of the Southern land cannon. As the ­­soldier-captain later recalled in a statement quoted in John Latham’s book, his attention was drawn astern by wild gestures to the noise made by Ohio River pilot William Weaver in the pilothouse.

Walking to the other side of the pilothouse, Gracey “saw a sight to make him gesticulate. There were seven of the latest Ohio River gunboats within easy gunshot range.” The Undine was caught between the guns of Fitch’s command and King’s task group, with the former blocking her escape downriver. Gracey and his crew now fully realized that they were expendable, but, just maybe before her loss, a price might first be extracted from the enemy.

The Key West and Tawah came up with their former consort and, in a brief engagement, the amateur Confederate sailors were easily outmaneuvered. Still, Undine gave as good as she got—for a little while.

Then, out of coal, Dawson and Gracey decided the game was over. As they ran the tinclad ashore under the Rebel batteries two and a half miles below Johnsonville, they knew they had accomplished something—the three Yankee boats were drawn within range of Southern gunners.

USS Key West at Mound City with other Mississippi Squadron vessels. An excellent photograph of the fleet anchorage at Mound City taken in late 1863 gives us our only view of the Johnsonville light draught USS Key West (far left), seen with her fleet number “32” clearly painted on the side of her pilothouse. A “City Series” ironclad rests behind her, followed by the timberclad Tyler. Upwards of ten other tinclads are also in the shot (Naval History and Heritage Command).

When the Key West approached in pursuit of the Undine, she was taken under fire by the ­­shore-based artillerists who pumped ­­30-odd shots at her in a space of 20 minutes, ­­two-thirds for effect. The gunboat suffered ten hits through her upper works, seven through her berth deck, and two through the hull, with several guns disabled. Additionally, the Tawah’s hull began to open along her stem as the result of the concussion of her bow guns.

Elfin was also damaged and the Tawah was largely ineffectual because her newly received ammunition, obtained from Nashville a day earlier, proved too large. The shelling forced King to back up and return above, with the Key West assisted by the Tawah.

During that fight, Capt. Gracey and several men aboard the Undine spread ­­torn-up straw mattresses around the deck and engineering spaces, and sprinkled oil over them. The boat was headed hard for shore and struck a sandbar in three feet of water, about 75 yards from the head of the island. Gracey and several others applied the torches and jumped into the water. The gunboat burned down to the waterline, her magazine exploded spectacularly, and what was left of her lodged in the false bend above Reynoldsburg Island. The saga of the Tennessee River Navy was over. All of its surviving volunteer sailors were now soldiers once more.

Aware of the gunfire clash between King and the Undine, the tinclads above Reynoldsburg Island pondered whether to attempt a rescue by pushing single file through the chute 50 yards away from Confederate guns. Aware of the danger, the decision was made to provide ­­long-range gunfire support. Hoping to save ammunition and suspecting that he could not “do much execution” due to the intervening heavy timber, Fitch, nevertheless, ordered his vessels to open a deliberate fire on the offending gunners. This heavy shoot continued without result “until about 11 o’clock, when it ceased.”¹⁷

Following the Undine engagement, Lt. King’s three gunboats retired to Johnsonville to protect the transports and supplies. Shortly before 2 p.m., the damaged Key West and Tawah, lashed together, moved to investigate a report that the enemy was “planting batteries directly opposite, also above and below, our warehouses and levee.” As they did so, ten hidden Confederate cannon, all carefully trained on them, “were discharged with such harmony that it could not be discerned there was more than one report—one heavy gun.”

The cannonade that followed against the river craft and depot facilities was the “most terrific” the port quartermaster, Capt. Henry Howland, had ever witnessed and was accompanied by volleys of rifle fire. The Louisville Daily Journal later reported that the “great fury” with which the Rebels shelled the town “created a panic among the citizens and government employees.” Maj. Gen. Forrest observed that King’s gunboats (28 guns) and Fort Johnson (14 guns) returned fire and that about 50 guns were “thus engaged at the same time.” Like Howland, the “Wizard” found that “the firing was terrific.”

When it was nearly dark, observers reported Johnsonville ablaze and that all of the boats along the levee were on fire. Via a dispatch boat to Paducah, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch reported to RAdm. Lee that Forrest’s shells “or our forces have undoubtedly destroyed everything.”¹⁸

When Forrest opened fire, the Key West and Tawah were headed toward a Tennessee River bend above Johnsonville. The peaceful scene changed, as Capt. Morton later put it, “as if a magician’s wand had been suddenly waved over it.” The cannonade “continued with one unceasing roar” and, according to Forrest, quickly disabled King’s two boats. “In fifteen minutes after the engagement commenced,” he remembered, they “were set on fire and made rapidly for the shore, where they were consumed.”

While she was tied to several flatboats and attempted to return fire, the Elfin’s paddle wheel was disabled, making her a stationary target. Hit repeatedly, the “abandon ship” order was voiced and her crew sought safety. Then, a young man from Chicago, Spencer A. Wright, to quote the correspondent from his hometown newspaper, “walked on board with the greatest coolness, set it afire, threw a shovelful of coal into the magazine, and then left.” Abandoned and ablaze, the tinclad burned to the water’s edge.

Forrest’s batteries, having disposed of the USN guard, “next opened upon the eight transports, and in a short time, they were in flames.” Among those thus destroyed were the Anna and the prize Venus. The Confederates did not know in real time that most of the transports and barges were purposefully put to the torch under the earlier contingency plan designed to prevent their capture. The ­­10-foot-high stacks of provisions stored in the open and on the levee, warehouses, and other facilities were shot up and, by nightfall, “the wharf for nearly one mile up and down the river presented one solid sheet of flame.”¹⁹

Less than 10 men all together on both sides were killed in action at Johnsonville. The Federal loss in material was estimated at $2.2 million, though one modern historian has estimated that, in terms of the ­­early-21st-century value of the dollar, the goods destroyed could not be duplicated for less than $20 million.

Not counting the value of the Mazeppa, Forrest was proud of the fact that, during the course of this unique raid, he had destroyed four gunboats, numerous steamers and barges, the 33 artillery pieces on the navy warships, and quartermaster’s stores estimated at between 75,000 and 120,000 tons while capturing 9,000 pairs of shoes, a thousand blankets, and 150 prisoners.

Because most of the depot’s goods plus the gunboats and transports were destroyed, “the work designed by the expedition” was substantially completed. Consequently, Maj. Gen. Forrest did not cross the river in force and capture Johnsonville. Pleased with their success, the Confederates marched away during the night “by the light of the enemy’s burning property,” continuing off to the southwest to join Gen. John Bell Hood, who had halted his invasion of Tennessee until a linkup could be effected.

At Mound City before lunch, Acting RAdm. Lee sent the first of many wires to Maj. Gen. Thomas, announcing his assumption of squadron command and recapping what was known of the ­­Johnsonville-area activities.

Most histories of Forrest’s bombardment suggest that the Union boats and supplies were destroyed too quickly. Admiral Mahan observed later that the gunboats were well handled, but could not stand up to the heavy guns firing upon them in the uncertain channel. Admiral Porter agreed on the bravery exhibited, but admitted the port would have been better defended had the boats been ironclads. Forrest, a master of placing the “skeert” into his enemy, outfoxed his opponents. “It was fear,” Thomas Van Horne, biographer of Maj. Gen. George Thomas, later admitted, “rather than necessity that caused this waste.”

The attacking Southern troops hoped to sever Sherman’s supply lines, forcing him to abandon the forthcoming march across Georgia. The Yankee commander had, however, already assembled all of the supplies required for his sortie from Atlanta to Savannah. Indeed, in less than a week, he would cut himself off entirely from the north and “live off the land” of the Georgia countryside. He was not overly distressed when, in a message to Lt. Gen. Grant, he noted “that devil Forrest was down about Johnsonville making havoc among the gunboats and transports.”

The real story of the Johnsonville operation was, for the South, one of an opportunity seized too late and, for the North, the loss of a facility that, in the end, didn’t matter all that much. Forrest’s audacity did not change the Northern logistical situation one iota, though it did further enhance the cavalryman’s legend.

Johnsonville depot was not rebuilt; in fact, it would be abandoned on November 30, though its wreckage would not be cleaned up for months. As Hood approached, Maj. Gen. Thomas at Nashville could depend upon both the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and the Cumberland River.

The episode was, however, a learning experience for Mississippi Squadron leadership, marking as it did the largest loss of light draughts in any single campaign of the Western war. In his response to Lee, Maj. Gen. Thomas requested that his watery defenses be bolstered with heavier units. Even after almost four years of war, the word “ironclad” still had magic. The next time the navy was placed into the arena with Forrest’s gunners, it would deploy several.²⁰

1. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs (Penguin Classics; New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 519; U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), Series I, Vol. 39, Pt. 3, 162 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); Lloyd Lewis, Sherman: Fighting Prophet (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1960), 430.

2. Bruce Catton, Never Call Retreat (New York: Pocket Books, 1973), 388; John Bell Hood, Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate States Armies (New Orleans, LA: Pub. For the Hood Orphan Memorial Fund, 1880), 263–269; Hood, "The Invasion of Tennessee," in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, edited by Robert V. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (4 vols.; New York: The Century Company, 1884–1887; reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), IV, 425; Steven E. Woodward, “To Atlanta and Beyond,” in his Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990), 284–301; OR, I, 39, 2: 121; Lonnie E. Maness, An Untutored Genius: The Military Career of General Nathan Bedford Forrest (Oxford, MS: The Guild Bindery Press, 1990), 317–322; Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War: Journeys Through the Battlefields in the Wake of Conflict (3 vols.; Hartford, CT: T. Belknap, 1874; reprint, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), III, 398–399; “Decatur and the Civil War,” Nostalgiaville, http://travel.nostalgiaville.com/Alabama/Decatur/decatur%20civil%20war.htm (accessed December 1, 2008).

3. U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series I, Vol. 26, 732 (cited hereafter as ORN, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); OR, I, 20, 2: 332, 338–339; the ­­Meigs-Rosecrans exchange on armed transports is reviewed in David W. Miller's Second Only to Grant: Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Books, 2000), 182–183; the story of "The Little Steamboat That Opened the Cracker Line" was well told by eyewitness Brig. Gen. William G. Le Duc in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, edited by Robert V. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (4 vols.; New York: The Century Company, 1884–1887; reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), III, 676–678; Donald Davidson, The Tennessee, Vol. 2: The New River, Civil War to TVA (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1948), 64–67. Your attention is also called to Donald H. Steenburn’s “Gunboats of the Upper Tennessee,” Civil War Times Illustrated, XXXII (February 1993), 38–43.

4. Uriah James, James’ River Guide (Cincinnati, OH: U. James, 1860), 228.

5. OR, I, 31, 2: 56; OR, I, 32, 2: 104–105; OR, I, 52, 1: 713; ORN, I, 25: 681, 698–700, 733, 741; Ulysses S. Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Vol. 10: January 1–May 31, 1864, edited by John Y. Simon (31 vols.; Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967), 104; Charles Dana Gibson, with E. Kay Gibson, Assault and Logistics, Vol. 2: Union Army Coastal and River Operations, 1861–1866 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 411; The Alone and Convoy #2 would never steam over Muscle Shoals and the attempt, which all concerned hoped might occur in early March, was abandoned by April 4, when General Sherman wrote to Fleet Captain Pennock: "I think we can build gunboats above the shoals and I agree with you that it is too late to pass the shoals now." OR, I, 32, 3, 14–18, 30; ORN, I, 26: 211; Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Vol. 10, 194.

6. OR, I, 32, 1: 607; OR, III, 4: 881; ORN, I, 25: 733, 741–746, 752–753, 756. ORN, I, 26: 183, 195–196, 203–204, 206–207; Erna Risch, Quartermaster Support of the Army: A History of the Corps, 1775–1939 (Washington, D.C.: Quartermaster Historian’s Office, Office of the Quartermaster General, 1962), p.414; Ida Brown, Michigan Men in the Civil War (Ann Arbor: Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, 1977), 45; “The Sharpshooters,” Cuyahoga County Ohio History, https://sites.google.com/site/cuyahogacountyohio/history/­­sharpshooters-the (accessed April 23, 2020); Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964), 274; Frederick H. Dyler, “10th Battery, Indiana Light Artillery,” in Regimental Histories, Vol. 3 of A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion (New York: Thomas Y. Yosloff, 1959), 1114; Gibson, The Army’s Navy Series, Vol. 2, 376, 386.

7. Paul Silverstone, Warships of the Civil War Navies (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1999), 166–167; Frank Miller, The Photographic History of the Civil War (10 vols.; New York: The Review of Reviews Company, 1911), VI, 233; Charles Dana Gibson and E. Kay Gibson, comps., The Army’s Navy Series, Vol. 1: Dictionary of Transports and Combat Vessels, Steam and Sail, Employed by the Union Army, 1861–1868 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 305; Gibson, The Army’s Navy Series, Vol. 2, 380, 386. According to the Gibsons, the Stone River was one of the ten ­­purpose-built steamers constructed by Edwards at Bridgeport. The other nine included the Atlanta, Bridgeport, Kingston, Lookout, Missionary, Resaca, Wauhatchee, Gunboat A and Gunboat B, which latter two were reconfigured into the chartered USN craft General Thomas and General Burnside. Gibson, comp., The Army’s Navy Series, Vol. 2, 401n–402n.

8. ORN, I, 26: 279, 286, 295, 366; OR, I, 32, 1: 21; OR I 38, 4: 384–385; OR, I, 39, 1: 15–16. On April 15, the battered main body of the Mississippi Squadron returned to the mouth of the Red River from its unsuccessful sojourn into Louisiana. On April 19, the squadron was reorganized with Fitch's Eighth District becoming the Tenth. ORN, I, 26: 311–312, 317–318, 445.

9. ORN, I, 26: 326, 328, 338–339; 358, 366–367; 375, 381–383, 401, 405; OR, I, 38, 4: 460; OR, I, 52, 1:620, 706; Gibson, comp., The Army’s Navy Series, Vol. 2, ­­401n-402n.

10. ORN, I, 26: 384–385, 387, 408, 412, 439–441, 476, 488, 566, 573, 577; ORN, I, 27: 283; ORN, II, 92–93; OR, I, 52,1: 572; Nashville Daily Dispatch, June 22, 1864; George W. Cullum, “Robert S. Granger,” in his Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1891), 729; "General Burnside," "General Grant," "General Sherman," and "General Thomas," in Vol. 3 of Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1968), 38, 43, 58, 61; Previously commander of the tinclad Hastings, Acting Master Morehead was honorably discharged on September 12, 1865. Acting Master Morton, who had begun as an acting gunner in 1862, rising to become the pro tempore captain of the timberclad Conestoga, would would remain in the navy until he retired in 1874. Lt. Forrest would be promoted to the rank of lieutenant commander on July 25, 1866, but died that Christmas eve. Edward W. Callahan, List of Officers of the Navy of the United States and of the Marine Corps, from 1775 to 1900, Comprising a Complete Register of All Present and Former Commissioned, Warranted, and Appointed Officers of the United States Navy, and of the Marine Corps, Regular and Volunteer. Compiled from the Official Records of the Navy Department (New York: L. R. Hamersly & Co., 1901; reprint, New York: Haskell House, 1969), 390, 394, 200.

11. OR, I, 39,1, 539–541, 546–549; OR, I, 39, 3: 238–239, 815–817; Frederick Way, Jr., Way’s Packet Directory, 1848–1994: Passenger Steamboats of the Mississippi River System Since the Advent of Photography in ­­Mid-Continent America (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983; rev. ed., 1994), 33, 269; ORN, I, 26: 582–583, 587; Chicago Daily Tribune, October 15, 21, 1864; Charleston Mercury, November 1, 1864; Macon Weekly Telegraph, November 11, 1864; Brian Steel Wills, A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 260–261; “Battle of Eastport,” Confederate Veteran, V (January 1897), 13; Maness, Untutored Genius, 304; Jacob D. Cox, March to the Sea: Franklin and Nashville (Campaigns of the Civil War, no. 10; New York: Scribner's, 1882), 12; Thomas Jordan and J. Pryor. The Campaigns of Lieut. Gen. N. B. Forrest and of Forrest’s Cavalry (New Orleans: Blelock & Co., 1868; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 575, 584–586; Donald H. Steenburn, "The United States Ship Undine," Civil War Times Illustrated, XXXV (August 1996), 27; John Allan Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: Harper & Bros., 1904), 47, 50; Robert Selph Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest (Indianapolis, IN: ­­Bobbs-Merrill, 1944), 364–365, 368–369; Benjamin F. Cooling, To the Battles of Franklin and Nashville and Beyond (Knoxville: University to Tennessee Press, 2011), 188–189; Ben Earl Kitchens, Gunboats and Cavalry: A History of Eastport, Mississippi (Florence, AL: Thornwood Book Publishers, 1985), 119–124; Herschel K. Smith, Jr., Some Encounters with General Forrest (McKenzie, TN: Priv. Print., [1959?]), 3; John Watson Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry (Nashville, TN: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1909), 252; Edward F. Williams, 3rd, and H. K. Humphreys, eds., Gunboats and Cavalry: The Story of Forrest’s 1864 Johnsonville Campaign, as Told to J. Pryor and Thomas Jordan, by Nathan Bedford Forrest (Memphis, TN: Nathan Bedford Forrest Trail Committee, 1965), 6; Edward F. Williams, 3rd, "The Johnsonville Raid and Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park," Tennessee Historical Quarterly, XXVIII (Fall 1969), 227; Campbell H. Brown, "Forrest's Johnsonville Raid," Civil War Times Illustrated, IV (June 1965), 53; John E. Fisher, They Rode with Forrest and Wheeler: A Chronicle of Five Tennessee Brothers’ Service in the Confederate Western Cavalry (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1995), 244–245, 250; Myron J. Smith, Jr., “Le Roy Fitch Meets the Devil’s Parson: The Battle of Bell’s Mills, December 4–6, 1864,” North & South, X (January 2008), 43; Norman R. Denny, "The Devil's Navy," Civil War Times Illustrated, XXXV (August 1996), 28; Mark Zimmerman, Guide to Civil War Nashville (Nashville: Battle of Nashville Preservation Society, 2004), 14; Zimmerman, Iron Maidens and the Devil’s Daughters: U.S. Navy Gunboats versus Confederate Gunners and Cavalry on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, 1861–65 (Nashville, TN: Zimco Publications, 2019), 129–132. The literature on Forrest vs. the gunboats in October–November 1864 is huge, largely because the ­­cavalry-naval aspect of the adventure is so unique. Donald H. Steenburn’s work is very helpful (Silent Echoes of Johnsonville: Rebel Cavalry and Yankee Gunboats [Rogersville, AL: Elk River Press, 1994]), as is Michael R. Bradley’s paperback Forrest’s Fighting Preacher: David Campbell of Tennessee (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2011).

12. OR, I, 39, 1: 694–695; OR, I, 39, 3: 810, 815–816, 841; OR, I, 45, 1: 647; ORN, I, 26: 589–592, 693, 699–700; Hood, Advance and Retreat, 269; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 453, 456, 516; Maness, An Untutored Genius, 305, 322; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns, 589–590; Campbell H. Brown, "Forrest's Johnsonville Raid," Civil War Times Illustrated, IV (June 1965), 49; Robert Selph Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest (Indianapolis, IN: ­­Bobbs-Merrill, 1944), 371; Wills, A Battle from the Start, 263; Thomas B. Van Horne, Army of the Cumberland (Cincinnati, OH: R. Clarke & Co., 1875; reprint, New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1996), 455–456; "Nashville," Major General George Thomas (blog), http://home.earthline.net/~oneplez/majorgeneral georgehthomasblogsite/id20.html (accessed February 28, 2006); “Decatur and the Civil War,” Nostalgiaville, http://travel.nostalgiaville.com/Alabama/Decatur/decatur%20civil%20war.htm (accessed December 1, 2008); Cooling, To the Battles of Franklin and Nashville and Beyond, 272; Wiley Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind—The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah: Spring Hill, Franklin and Nashville (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 56–58, 63–65; Eric A. Jacobson and Richard A. Rupp, For Cause and for Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin (Franklin, TN: O'More Publishing, 2007), 38–44; Dudley Taylor Cornish and Virginia Jeans Laas, Lincoln’s Lee: The Life of Samuel Phillips Lee, United States Navy, 1812–1897 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986), 140; Johnny H. Whisenant, "Samuel Phillips Lee, U.S.N.: Commander, Mississippi Squadron (October 19, 1864–August 14, 1865)" (unpublished MS thesis, Kansas State College of Pittsburg, 1968), 12–20; "Samuel Phillips Lee," in William B. Cogar, Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy (2 vols.; Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989), I, 96–97. On October 26, Gen. Thomas received a warning from Memphis: "It is reported that Forrest has sent to Mobile for a battery of heavy guns to plant on the Tennessee River." OR, I, 39, 3: 459.

13. OR, I, 34, 2: 729. OR, I, 39, 1: 695–701, 870; OR, I, 39, 3: 282, 302–303, 343, 345, 357, 524; OR, I, 41, 4: 427–428, 431, 452, 469; OR, I, 45, 1: 648, 673; ORN, I, 26: 590–598; Nashville Daily Dispatch, November 26, 1864; “Decatur and the Civil War,” Nostalgiaville, http://travel.nostalgiaville.com/Alabama/Decatur/decatur%20civil%20war.htm (accessed December 1, 2008); Hood, Advance and Retreat, 259, 270–271; Van Horne, Army of the Cumberland, 456; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind—The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 30, 64–65; Jacobson, For Cause and for Country, 43; Cooling, To the Battles of Franklin and Nashville and Beyond, 276; Stephen M. Hood, John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2013), 92–94; Anne J. Bailey, The Chessboard of War: Sherman and Hood in the Autumn Campaigns of 1864 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 21–22; Steenburn, “Gunboats of the Upper Tennessee,” 42. The most helpful overview of the Decatur encounter is Noel Carpenter’s ­­197-page study A Slight Demonstration: Decatur, October 1864, Clumsy Beginning of Gen. John B. Hood’s Tennessee Campaign (Austin, TX: Legacy Books & Letters, 2007); indeed, the author included an appendix detailing the Upper Tennessee fords and ferries between Florence, AL, and Chattanooga that alone is worth the price of the book.

14. OR, I, 39, 1: 860, 863, 867–869; OR, I, 39, 3: 548,590, 602, 611; OR, I, 52, I: 120–122; ORN, I, 26: 594–595, 598–607, 611–612, 706–707; ORN, II, 220; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 3, 6, 10, 1864; Paducah Federal Union, November 3, 1864; St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican, November 6, 1864; Baltimore Sun, November 7, 1864; Louisville Democrat, November 8, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, November 11, 1864; National Intelligencer, November 11, 1864; Stanley F. Horn, The Decisive Battle of Nashville (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956), 30; Williams, "The Johnsonville Raid and Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park," 237; Campbell H. Brown, "Forrest's Johnsonville Raid," Civil War Times Illustrated, IV (June 1965), 51–54; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 522–526; James Dinkins, 1861 to 1865, by an Old Johnnie: Personal Recollections and Experiences in the Confederate Army (Cincinnati, OH: The Robert Clarke, Co., 1897), 205; R. R Hancock, Hancock’s Diary; or, a History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry (Dayton, OH: Press of Morningstar Bookshop, 1981), 495; John W. Morton, "Raid of Forrest's Cavalry on the Tennessee River in 1864," Southern Historical Society Papers, X (1882), 261–268; Maness, An Untutored Genius, 309–310; Wills, A Battle from the Start, 263–267; John Watson Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry (Nashville, TN: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1909), 245–249; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns, 592–593, 597–598; Julius F. Gracey, “Capture of the Mazappa,” Confederate Veteran, XIII (December 1905), 566–570; J. F. Orr, “Capture of the Undine and Mazappa,” Confederate Veteran, XVIII (July 1910), 323–324; Steenburn, "The United States Ship Undine," 27; John A. Eisterhold, "Fort Heiman, Forgotten Fortress," West Tennessee Historical Society Papers, XXXVIII (1974), 53; Byrd Douglas, Steamboatin’ on the Cumberland (Nashville: The Tennessee Book Company, 1961), 158. Certain aspects of the Undine and the 1968 Pueblo captures are eerily similar as testimony at the respective inquiries demonstrates. I looked at the literature of the Pueblo incident in my The United States Navy and Coast Guard, 1946–1983 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1984), 294–296. The literature on Forrest’s Johnsonville operation has grown steadily over the past three decades, with numerous small books (less than 200 pages) coming from minor publishers. Among the best of these is Donald H. Steenburn’s Silent Echoes of Johnsonville: Rebel Cavalry and Yankee Gunboats (Rogersville, AL: Elk River Press, 1994). The most recent study is Jerry T. Wooten, Johnsonville: Union Supply Operations on the Tennessee River and the Battle of Johnsonville, November 4–5, 1864 (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2019), which was essentially abstracted in his “Supply Trains and Naval Charades: Tennessee’s 1864 Johnsonville Campaign,” North & South, NS II, no. 5 (May 2020), 32–40, 84.

15. ORN, I, 26: 611, 615, 630; OR, I, 52, 1: 122; OR, I, 39, 1: 861, 869, 874; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 7, 1864; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 525; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns, 598; Maness, An Untutored Genius, 312–313; Jeffrey L. Patrick, "A Fighting Sailor on the Western Rivers: The Civil War Letters of 'Gunboat,'" The Journal of Mississippi History, LVIII (Fall 1996), 279; Robert W. Kaeuper, "The Forgotten Triumph of the Paw Paw." American Heritage, XLVI (October 1995), 88; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 527; Willis, A Battle from the Start, 267–269; Stephen E. Ambrose, Halleck: Lincoln’s Chief of Staff (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1962), 190–191; Williams, “The Johnsonville Raid and Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park,” 239; Wooten, ““Supply Trains and Naval Charades,” 35–37; Zimmerman, Iron Maidens and the Devil’s Daughters, 132–140; J. B. Irion and D. V. Beard, Underwater Archaeological Assessment of Civil War Shipwrecks in Kentucky Lake, Benton and Humphreys Counties, Tennessee (New Orleans, LA: R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates, Inc., for the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, Department of Environment and Conservation, State of Tennessee, 1993), 3. The island, Johnsonville, Reynoldsburg, and the surrounding area were covered by the TVA's Kentucky Lake in 1944. "The Archaeological Investigations of the Battle of Johnsonville." http://www.panamconsultants.com/PAGE (accessed June 8, 2004).

16. OR, I, 39, 1: 861,869, 871, 874–875; ORN, I, 26: 612–616; OR, I, 39, 1: 122, 124, 869; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 7, 11, 1864; The New York Times, November 7, 1864; Wills, A Battle from the Start, 268–269; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 249–253; Wooten, ““Supply Trains and Naval Charades,” 37–38. The Johnsonville bombardment, and specifically the location of the Confederate cannon, was the topic of much debate in Tennessee newspapers 30 years later; see the Dyer County Herald (March 19, 1896) and Memphis Commercial Appeal (March 23 and April 12, 1896).

17. ORN, I, 26: 612–613; OR, I, 39, 1: 861, 869; OR, I, 52, 1: 123; The New York Times, November 7–8, 1864; Louisville Democrat, November 8, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, November 11, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 10–11, 1864; Henry, op cit., 376–377; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns, 600–601; Wills, A Battle from the Start, 269–273; Williams, “The Johnsonville Raid and Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park,” 239–240; John M. Latham, Raising the Civil War Gunboats and Building the Magic Valley History Tower (Camden, TN: J. M. Latham/Press Pro, 1997), 161–162; Brown, "Forrest's Johnsonville Raid," 55–56; Wooten, ““Supply Trains and Naval Charades,” 38; Denny, "The Devil's Navy," 29; Patrick, "A Fighting Sailor on the Western Rivers, “280–281; Kaeuper, "The Forgotten Triumph of the Paw Paw," 92. Maness, An Untutored Genius, 313–314; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 251; Zimmerman, Iron Maidens and the Devil’s Daughters, 144. The loss of the Undine was reported in The New York Times on November 7. As things turned out, given the masterful manner in which Forrest planned and executed his attack and the Federal need for gunboats during the upcoming Nashville campaign, the choice not to run the gauntlet proved correct in hindsight.

18. OR, I, 39, 1: 861–862, 866–867, 871; OR, I, 52, 1: 123; ORN, I, 26: 614; The New York Times, November 7–8, 13, 1864; Charleston Mercury, November 8, 1864; Louisville Daily Journal, November 8–9, 1864; Louisville Democrat, November 8, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, November 11, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 11, 13, 1864; Wills, A Battle from the Start, 270–272; Maness, An Untutored Genius, 314–315; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns, 602; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 253–254; Zimmerman, Iron Maidens and the Devil’s Daughters, 145–146.

19. OR, I, 39, 1: 871; OR, I, 52, 1: 123–124; ORN, I, 26: 610–611, 620; The New York Times, November 7–8, 13, 1864; Louisville Democrat, November 8, 1864; Louisville Daily Journal, November 8–9, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, November 11, 1864; Charleston Mercury, November 8, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 10–11, 1864; Wills, A Battle from the Start, 270–272; Maness, An Untutored Genius, 314–315; Wooten, ““Supply Trains and Naval Charades,” 39–40; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 255; Brown, "Forrest's Johnsonville Raid," 57; E. G. Cowen, “Battle of Johnsonville,” Confederate Veteran, XXII (April 1914), 174–175; "The Archaeological Investigations of the Battle of Johnsonville," http://www.panamconsultants.com/PAGE (accessed June 8, 2004). The hulls of the sunken gunboats were, according to John W. Morton, still visible at the beginning of the 20th Century when, “on a subsequent visit,” he inspected them and “discovered a shell from one of his guns” in one of the hulls. Morton withdrew “this shell which had failed to explode” and turned it into a curio “together with a fragment of the hull of the vessel where it was found.” Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 266.

20. OR, I, 39, 1: 853, 856, 858,862; 870–872; OR, I, 45, 1, 751–752; OR, I, 52, 1: 682–683, 777; OR, I, 52, 2: 774; ORN, I, 26: 614, 616, 622–626, 629, 717–718; Nashville Daily Press, November 7–8, 1864; Nashville Daily Dispatch, November 8–10, 1864; Charleston Mercury, November 8, 1864; Louisville Democrat, November 8, 1864; The New York Times, November 10, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, November 11, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 12, 1864; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 528; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 377–378; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns, 604–606; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind—The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 67–68; Denny, "The Devil's Navy," 30; Wooten, ““Supply Trains and Naval Charades,” 84; Brown, "Forrest's Johnsonville Raid," 57; Maness, An Untutored Genius, 315–316; Williams, “The Johnsonville Raid and Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park,” 243–244; Alfred T. Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, Vol. 3 of The Navy in the Civil War (New York: Scribner's, 1883), 214–215; Cox, March to the Sea, 18; Cornish and Laas, Lincoln’s Lee, 142–145; Cooling, To the Battles of Franklin and Nashville and Beyond, 194–197; Williams and Humphreys, Gunboats and Cavalry, 24; “A Fighting Sailor on the Western Rivers,” 280–281; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedord Forrest’s Cavalry, 255–265; Willis, A Battle from the Start, 272–273; Van Horne, Army of the Cumberland, 458; Porter, Naval History of the Civil War, 563. Lt. King was ­­court-martialed on May 8, 1865 for ordering the burning of the Johnsonville gunboats, but was found not guilty. Witness after witness pointed out that, had the naval craft been scuttled rather than destroyed, the water, only five feet deep, would not have covered their gun decks, and had Forrest occupied the depot, as many feared possible, veterans of his Tennessee River Navy could have raised them in six hours’ time. Latham, Raising the Civil War Gunboats, 166–167. The King ­­court-martial proceedings are one of the great but largely untapped sources on the entire campaign. U.S. Navy Department, Records of General ­­Courts-Martial and Courts of Inquiry of the Navy Department, "Case of Acting Vol. Lieut E. M. King, Lately of the U.S.S. Key West," RG 11–86, Microfilm Publications, M273, National Archives, Washington, DC.