t a farm, three miles
below the fort. A road was cut through the woods, and communication
opened with the army.

A division was organized under General Lewis Wallace. Colonel Cruft
commanded the first brigade, composed of the Thirty-first and
Forty-fourth Indiana, the Seventeenth and Twenty-fifth Kentucky
regiments.

The second brigade was composed of the Forty-sixth, Fifty-seventh, and
Fifty-eighth Illinois regiments. It had no brigade commander, and was
united to the third brigade, commanded by Colonel Thayer. The third
brigade was composed of the First Nebraska, the Sixteenth, Fifty-eighth,
and Sixty-eighth Ohio regiments. Several other regiments arrived while
the fight was going on, but they were held in reserve, and had but
little if any part in the action.

Wallace's division was placed between General Smith's and General
McClernand's, near General Grant's head-quarters, on the road leading
from Fort Henry to Dover. It took all day to get the troops into
position and distribute food and ammunition, and there was no fighting
except by the skirmishers and sharpshooters.

At three o'clock in the afternoon the gunboats steamed slowly up stream
to attack the water-batteries. Commodore Foote repeated the instructions
to the commanders and crews that he made before the attack at Fort
Henry,--to fire slow, take deliberate aim, and keep cool.

The Pittsburg, St. Louis, Louisville, and Carondelet, iron-plated boats,
had the advance, followed by the three wooden boats,--the Tyler,
Lexington, and Conestoga. A bend in the river exposed the sides of the
gunboats to a raking fire from the batteries, while Commodore Foote
could only use the bow guns in reply. The fort on the hill was so high
above the boats that the muzzles of the guns could not be elevated far
enough to hit it. Commodore Foote directed the boats to engage the
water-batteries, and pay no attention to the guns of the fort till the
batteries were silenced; then he would steam past them and pour
broadsides into the fort.

As soon as the gunboats rounded the point of land a mile and a half
below the fort, the Rebels opened fire, and the boats replied. There was
excellent gunnery. The shots from the fort and batteries fell upon the
bows of the boats, or raked their sides; while the shells from the boats
fell plump into the batteries, cutting the embankments, or sinking deep
in the side of the hill and bursting with tremendous explosions,
throwing the earth upo