After repeated charges from the cavalry, which were resisted by the Thirty-second--in one of which Colonel Terry was killed--Colonel Willich re-enforced Von Trebra with four additional companies.After maintaining their position under fire for an hour and a half, the Indiana troops repulsed the enemy in every charge, and Hindman's force then withdrew.Colonel Willich had in the engagement only the eight companies of his command, with Cotter's battery.The enemy attacked with a force of 1,100 infantry, 250 cavalry, and 4pieces of artillery.The Thirty-second Indiana lost 8 men killed and ten wounded.After the fall of Bowling Green, the Second Division reached Nashville on March 3d.
The Third Division in February was ordered to make a demonstration, moving by forced marches against the enemy's position at Bowling Green, to prevent troops being sent from there to reinforce Fort Donelson.The rebels had commenced their retreat from this place to Nashville prior to the arrival of Mitchel's command, but the shells thrown by his artillery on the 14th into the city hastened the movements of the rear guard of Johnston's army.Before their retreat, the enemy burned both bridges over Barren River, and set fire to a large quantity of military stores, railroad cars, and other property.Turchin's brigade, capturing a small ferryboat, crossed over the river, swollen above the high-water mark by the heavy rains, entered the city at five o'clock the next morning, and succeeded in extinguishing the fire and saving a portion of the railroad cars.During the succeeding week Mitchel crossed the greater part of his command over the river, and without his wagons, reached Edgefield opposite Nashville on the evening of the 14th, at the same time that General Buell arrived by rail, the latter using some of the cars captured at Bowling Green.At Edgefield Mitchel found both of the bridges into Nashville destroyed, and his crossing was effected on the steamers that brought Nelson's division to that place.
The Fourth Division was ordered in February to reinforce the Federal troops at Fort Donelson.Nelson, with two brigades, moved from Camp Wickliffe to the Ohio River on February 13th, and there took steamer for the Cumberland River.On his arrival at Fort Donelson, he found it in possession of the Federal troops, and he then proceeded by the boats with his command to Nashville, arriving there on the 25th.Nelson's Third Brigade reported a few days later, having marched direct from Bowling Green.
General Thomas L.Crittenden's command, organizing at Owensboro, had a skirmish with a force of 500 rebels at Woodland.Colonel Burbridge was sent with some three hundred troops of his own command and a small force from Colonel McHenry's regiment.Attacking the enemy, they routed him, inflicting a loss of some fifty killed, wounded, and prisoners.On the 24th, the rebel General Breckenridge made a demonstration with 4,000 men at Rochester, occupying Greenville with his cavalry, Crittenden made such disposition of his troops that the enemy, without risking an attack, returned to Bowling Green.Early in February General Buell ordered Crittenden to send Colonel Cruft with his brigade to report to General Grant.Cruft, however, reached Fort Henry after the surrender, but his brigade was incorporated into Grant's army, and rendered effective service in the reduction of Fort Donelson.Later, the brigade was transferred to General Halleck.Crittenden, soon after this, proceeded by boat with the balance of his division, and reported at Nashville, arriving there at the same time as Nelson's division.
The Sixth division, after aiding in the repair of the railroad, arrived at Nashville March 6, 1862.
General A.S.Johnston, at no time prior to his retreat had sufficient force to meet or to resist the advance of the Federal forces.His long line, extending from Columbus to Knoxville, invited attack, and wherever the attack was made his troops were not able to successfully resist it.Concentrating his command at Bowling Green, after Mill Springs and the fall of Fort Henry, he found that, to save Nashville, it was necessary to make a determined stand at Fort Donelson, and this he re-enforced with all his available troops.
The fall of Donelson compelled the evacuation of Nashville.To the Southern people these reverses were a bitter blow to their high hopes and boasting threats that the war was to be carried into the North, and peace was to follow the first victories to their arms.
Duke, in his "History of Morgan's Cavalry," says: "No subsequent reverse, although fraught with far more real calamity, ever created the shame, sorrow, and wild consternation that swept over the South with the news of the surrender of Fort Donelson.To some in the South these reverses were harbingers of the final defeat and overthrow of the Confederacy."With the fall of Donelson, after detaching the troops at Columbus, Johnston's force was reduced to a little over one-half of his total effective strength as reported by him at Bowling Green.In a report to Richmond, he gave the total of his command as barely forty-three thousand men.
General Buell's army amounted to over seventy-five thousand men, not all of these available for field duty, as a very large proportion of the command was needed to maintain his line of supplies, and the farther his advance the greater the drain on his command for railroad guards.
