them from an enfilading fire, in case the boats should pass their
front and attack them from above. At the time of the fight these
batteries were thirty-two feet above the level of the river.

General Grant arrived before the works at noon of February 12th. The
gunboat Carondelet, Commander Walke, came up about an hour earlier. At
10 A.M. on the 13th, the gunboat, at the general's request, opened
fire on the batteries at a distance of a mile and a quarter,
sheltering herself partly behind a jutting point of the river, and
continued a deliberate cannonade with her bow guns for six hours,
after which she withdrew. In this time she had thrown in one hundred
and eighty shell, and was twice struck by the enemy, half a dozen of
her people being slightly injured by splinters. On the side of the
enemy an engineer officer was killed by her fire.

The fleet arrived that evening, and attacked the following day at 3
P.M. There were, besides the Carondelet, the armored gunboats St.
Louis, Lieutenant Paulding; Louisville, Commander Dove; and Pittsburg,
Lieutenant E. Thompson; and the wooden vessels Conestoga and Tyler,
commanded as before. The order of steaming was the same as at Henry,
the wooden boats in the rear throwing their shell over the armored
vessels. The fleet reserved its fire till within a mile, when it
opened and advanced rapidly to within six hundred yards of the works,
closing up later to four hundred yards. The fight was obstinately
sustained on both sides, and, notwithstanding the commanding position
of the batteries, strong hopes were felt on board the fleet of
silencing the guns, which the enemy began to desert, when, at 4.30
P.M., the wheel of the flag-ship St. Louis and the tiller of the
Louisville were shot away. The two boats, thus rendered unmanageable,
drifted down the river; and their consorts, no longer able to maintain
the unequal contest, withdrew. The enemy returned at once to their
guns, and inflicted much injury on the retiring vessels.

Notwithstanding its failure, the tenacity and fighting qualities of
the fleet were more markedly proved in this action than in the victory
at Henry. The vessels were struck more frequently (the flag-ship
fifty-nine times, and none less than twenty), and though the power of
the enemy's guns was about the same in each case, the height and
character of the soil at Donelson placed the fleet at a great
disadvantage. The fire from above, reaching their sloping armor nea