Who Really Planned the Tennessee Campaign of 1862?

It is one of the many fascinating historical debates to emerge from the Western Theater of the American Civil War: Who was actually responsible for the strategic masterstroke that broke the Confederate line across Kentucky? The capture of Forts Henry and Donelson in early 1862 catapulted Ulysses S. Grant to national fame, but the mastermind behind the campaign's grand strategy has been hotly contested. Was it a seasoned military general, or was it, as some passionately claim, a civilian woman from Maryland named Anna Ella Carroll?

Some time ago, while doing some online research related to the Fort Donelson Campaign, I came across a pdf entitled "Who Really Planned the Tennessee Campaign of 1862? Or Anna Ella Carroll vs. Ulysses S. Grant: A Few Generally Unknown Facts in Regard to Our Civil War." A wordy title for certain. The tract was written by Matilda Joslyn Gage in 1880, and provides quotes from various officials supporting the claim that Miss Carroll was the originator of the two rivers strategy. I decided to do a bit of a deeper dive to see if this remarkable claim had any veracity and if this young woman was the genius behind Grant's victory.

Let's dive into the documents, the Official Records, and the memories of the men who fought there to separate historical fact from post-war myth.

The Case for Anna Ella Carroll

According to the tract written by Gage, the Union's salvation came from a brilliant civilian. The document claims that in the autumn of 1861, Anna Ella Carroll traveled to St. Louis, studied the military situation, and realized the Union's focus on the heavily fortified Mississippi River was a fatal mistake.

The tract specifically claims that on November 12, 1861, while still in St. Louis, Miss Carroll wrote to Attorney General Edward Bates to warn him that the Mississippi expedition would fail. She urged him to redirect the expedition up the Tennessee River instead.

Shortly after, on November 30, 1861, she submitted a detailed plan to the War Department. In her memorandum, she boldly stated:

"The civil and military authorities seem to me to be laboring under a great mistake in regard to the true key of the war in the Southwest. It is not the Mississippi, but the Tennessee River."

Her memo astutely pointed out that an advance up the Tennessee River would bypass impregnable Confederate batteries, noting that "if our boats were crippled, they would drop back with the current and escape capture". Furthermore, she noted the massive strategic benefit: "a still greater advantage would be its tendency to cut the enemy's lines in two, by reaching the Memphis and Charleston railroad...".[1]

Gage's tract argues that prior to this submission, the strategy "was unthought of and unknown" to the military. She claims the War Department secretly adopted it, but because she was "a civilian and above all, a woman," she refrained from signing her name to the plan to avoid military prejudice.

The Reality: Geography, Missing Paper Trails, and the Military Mind

While Carroll was undeniably a staunch Unionist who independently deduced a highly effective strategy, the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion (O.R.) - and the United States legal system - tell a very different story regarding the campaign's origins.

The Missing November 12 Letter: Carroll maintained for the rest of her life that she wrote to Edward Bates in mid-November 1861 after interviewing a Union riverboat pilot in St. Louis. However, the officially stamped 1861 War Department copies of these letters have never been found in the National Archives. When her case was taken up by the United States Court of Claims in 1885, the presiding justice noted that the documents she submitted to back up her story were largely post-war reconstructions or written from memory years later, rendering them legally insufficient to prove she authored the military's strategy.

The Geographic Reality: Furthermore, the geography of the western theater made the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers the obvious logistical highways into the Confederacy. Any competent military engineer studying a topographical map could see they were the most viable routes to bypass the heavy Confederate fortresses anchoring the Mississippi. The military was already actively looking at them.

Enter Don C. Buell

If any single high-ranking officer deserves credit for formally proposing the grand strategy before Carroll submitted her memo, it is Major General Don C. Buell, commander of the Department of the Ohio.

President Lincoln desperately wanted an overland advance into East Tennessee. Buell recognized that moving a massive army overland through mountainous terrain in the winter was a logistical nightmare. Three days before Miss Carroll submitted her plan, Buell wrote a detailed dispatch to General-in-Chief George B. McClellan on November 27, 1861. In it, Buell explicitly argued for a joint operation utilizing waterborne movements to flank the Confederate center:

"I consider it the most important strategical point in the whole field of operations... The establishment of a force at Gallatin... [and] a flotilla up the Cumberland and Tennessee..."[2]

Thus the historical record proves the Union high command was actively developing this exact strategy before Carroll's memo ever reached the War Department.

The Execution: Grant, Foote, and Smith

Grand strategy drawn up in Washington or Louisville doesn't win battles on its own; it requires aggressive tactical execution. The actual push to capture Forts Henry and Donelson was a collaborative effort driven by the commanders on the ground.

• The Reconnaissance: In January 1862, Brigadier General Charles F. Smith conducted a reconnaissance up the Tennessee River. He discovered that Fort Henry was poorly sited and highly vulnerable. Grant later recalled in his memoirs: "General Smith... reported that he thought it could be easily taken."[3]

• The Initiative: Armed with Smith's intelligence, Ulysses S. Grant and Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote relentlessly lobbied their cautious superior, Major General Henry W. Halleck, for permission to attack. On January 28, 1862, Foote wrote to Halleck:

"Commanding General Grant and myself are of opinion that Fort Henry, on the Tennessee River, can be carried with four iron-clad gunboats and troops to permanently occupy."[4]

• The Telegram: On that exact same day, Grant wired Halleck with a blunt, confident request:

"With permission, I will take Fort Henry, on the Tennessee, and establish and hold a large camp there."[5]

Halleck finally authorized the expedition, setting the great campaign into motion.

The Verdict of History

No single person "invented" the Tennessee River campaign out of thin air. The campaign was a natural military evolution born from Buell's strategic proposals, Smith's tactical reconnaissance, Grant and Foote's aggressive initiative, and Halleck's ultimate authorization. While Anna Ella Carroll deserves immense respect for her political writings and her sharp strategic foresight, the historical record shows she was proposing an idea that the Union military was already putting into motion.

Footnotes:

[1]: Gage, Matilda Joslyn, Who Really Planned the Tennessee Campaign of 1862? Or Anna Ella Carroll vs. Ulysses S. Grant: A Few Generally Unknown Facts in Regard to Our Civil War. (The National Citizen, 1880), p. 6-7.

[2]: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (O.R.), Series I, Vol. 7, pp. 450-451. (Letter from Don Carlos Buell to George B. McClellan, Nov. 27, 1861).

[3]: Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Vol. 1 (New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1885), p. 287.

[4]: O.R., Series I, Vol. 7, p. 120. (Flag Officer A.H. Foote to Maj. Gen. H.W. Halleck, Jan. 28, 1862).

[5]: O.R., Series I, Vol. 7, p. 121. (Brig. Gen. U.S. Grant to Maj. Gen. H.W. Halleck, Jan. 28, 1862).

[6]: O.R., Series I, Vol. 7, p. 122. (Reports of Flag Officer A.H. Foote detailing the naval bombardment and surrender of Fort Henry prior to the infantry's arrival).