[20]
On the 1st of February permission to make the movement arrived from Halleck, and on the 2d Grant began the campaign with seventeen thousand men, less than one-third the force Halleck had in mind for the operations he thought might be carried on along this general line. On the 6th of February Fort Henry was taken, and on the 8th Grant telegraphed Halleck that he should immediately take Fort Donelson and return to Fort Henry.
On the 16th he had accomplished the work, and the campaign for which Halleck wanted ‘not less than sixty thousand effective men,’ thirty thousand of which he hoped to have ‘by the middle or last of February,’ had been made a success by Grant with a force of seventeen thousand men and four gun-boats.
General Sherman closes the chapter in which he treats of the movements on Forts Henry and Donelson as follows:
‘From the time I had left Kentucky General Buell had really made no substantial progress; though strongly reenforced, beyond even what I had asked for, General Albert Sidney Johnston had remained at Bowling Green until his line was broken at Henry and Donelson, when he let go Bowling Green and fell back hastily to Nashville, and on Buell's approach he did not even tarry there, but continued his retreat southward.’
Three chapters previous to the one containing this unkind allusion to General Buell, General Sherman, writing of his selection as Superintendent of the Louisiana Military College, says: ‘For this honorable position I was indebted to Major D. C. Buell and General G. Mason Graham, to whom I have made full and due acknowledgment.’
While the General of the army should have felt himself, by virtue of his position and opportunities for obtaining exact
