Granbury's Texas Brigade: Diehard Western Confederates

2 Fort Donelson

29 chapter 2 FORT DONELSON As other Texas regiments organized themselves, the 7th Texas prepared to see combat for the first time in the Fort Donelson campaign. The experiences of the 7th Texas Infantry in the campaign demonstrated the strength of Confederate nationalism among these Texan infantrymen. It also began their transformation into western Confederate soldiers. In the Donelson campaign, the 7th Texas enjoyed leadership by regimental leaders such as John Gregg, Jeremiah Clough, Hiram Granbury, and K. M. Van Zandt, who all demonstrated strong patriotism toward the Confederacy. Despite this stellar leadership at the regimental level, the men of the 7th Texas suffered a defeat in the surrender of Fort Donelson. But from their localized perspective , they fought well and won a victory, only to have it frittered away by the men in the high command. This poor high-level leadership and these events all fall perfectly into developing the paradigm set out by Larry Daniels in Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee regarding western Confederates, in which localized perspective mattered more than the strategic situation.1 It is also noteworthy that despite their time in prison camps following the surrender, the men of the 7th Texas remained more willing than ever to lay down their lives for the Confederacy, a fact that belies the argument that Confederate soldiers lost faith in their cause in the face of adversity. In fact, if anything, the time in prison strengthened the resolve of the 7th Granbury’s Texas Brigade 30 Texas and their officers to sustain the Confederate cause, a strength that allowed them to later become the heart and soul of Granbury’s Brigade. The struggle over Fort Donelson marked the first real campaign for any of the regiments that would one day become Granbury’s Brigade. Only one of them, the 7th Texas Infantry, hastily thrown together and rushed to the front, took part in this first great campaign of the western theater. The fall of Donelson and her sister stronghold, Fort Henry, in February 1862 marked a significant turning point in the war in the West. In fact, some historians regard the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson as the Confederacy ’s most disastrous turning point.2 As constructed, Fort Donelson was a low, earthen embankment on the Cumberland River in Tennessee south of the Kentucky state line; Confederate engineers built Fort Henry as a similar structure scarcely a day’s march to the west on the Tennessee River. In early 1862 Forts Henry and Donelson remained ill-prepared for a Federal campaign against them. Unfortunately for the Confederacy, they also occupied the most crucial points necessary to a defense of Tennessee up the main waterways from Kentucky. Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk, initially placed in charge of constructing Tennessee’s defenses, largely ignored these important fortifications in lieu of building strong defenses along the Mississippi River. Polk served only as temporary commander of the forces in Tennessee pending the arrival of General Albert Sidney Johnston, but he did more than enough damage in the interim.3 When Johnston finally arrived in late 1861 he immediately set about constructing a line of defense across southern Kentucky and northwestern Tennessee. Henry and Donelson anchored this line, even though they remained inadequate. Such was the situation when the 7th Texas arrived in November. Johnston initially assigned Gregg’s regiment to General John B. Floyd’s brigade. As soon as the regiment completed its organization it began drilling at Camp Alcorn near Hopkinsville. Floyd assigned the Texans a drill instructor named David Hirsch, a recent immigrant from Prussia. Gregg chose Captain Khleber Van Zandt as the second drill instructor. Hirsch, though trained as a soldier of the old school, succeeded in embarrassing himself several times in front of the Texans. Sinkholes pockmarked the ground in Kentucky over which the new infantrymen drilled. One day as Hirsch galloped back and forth, Captain Van Zandt lost sight of him. “The boys, 31 fort donelson with a look of astonishment on their faces, were pointing in one direction,” recalled Van Zandt. “In a moment a horse came scrambling out of a large sinkhole. Close behind the horse came the rider, unhurt but much crestfallen . When the boys realized that Mr. Hirsch was not hurt, they all started laughing. He turned to me and said, ‘You are all dismissed for the day.’”4 Despite this accident, Hirsch and Van Zandt succeeded in beginning to...