- 17 Jan 2020 13:18
#15059787
January 17, Friday
Gunboats with troops under Brigadier General C.F. Smith demonstrate until the twenty-second against Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, as part of the two-prong major reconnaissance in Kentucky. Confederate gunners fire on the gunboats, but ineffectually. Upon his return Smith will write to Grant, “I think two ironclad gunboats would make short work of Fort Henry.” Smith had been commandant of cadets at West Point when Grant attended, and Grant has still been inordinately respectful of Smith and has had trouble giving him orders. Smith, a professional to the core, has been able to put Grant at ease, but his opinions carry weight. The other prong consists mainly of McClernand’s troops of Grant’s command from Cairo. Bad weather hampers the expeditions and a heavy ice gorge blocks the Mississippi twenty miles below St. Louis, halting shipping.
Gunboats with troops under Brigadier General C.F. Smith demonstrate until the twenty-second against Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, as part of the two-prong major reconnaissance in Kentucky. Confederate gunners fire on the gunboats, but ineffectually. Upon his return Smith will write to Grant, “I think two ironclad gunboats would make short work of Fort Henry.” Smith had been commandant of cadets at West Point when Grant attended, and Grant has still been inordinately respectful of Smith and has had trouble giving him orders. Smith, a professional to the core, has been able to put Grant at ease, but his opinions carry weight. The other prong consists mainly of McClernand’s troops of Grant’s command from Cairo. Bad weather hampers the expeditions and a heavy ice gorge blocks the Mississippi twenty miles below St. Louis, halting shipping.
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
—Edmund Burke
—Edmund Burke