It was a battle which will always have a memorable place in the history
of this Rebellion, because having won a victory, the slaveholders
believed that they could conquer the North. They became more proud and
insolent. They manifested their terrible hate by their inhuman treatment
of the prisoners captured. They gave the dead indecent burial. The Rebel
soldiers dug up the bones of the dead Union men, and carved them into
ornaments, which they sent home to their wives and sweethearts. One girl
wrote to her lover to "be sure and bring her Old Lincoln's _skelp_"
(scalp), so that the women as well as the men became fierce in their
hatred. I have seen the letter, which was found upon a prisoner.

The North, although defeated, was not discouraged. There was no thought
of giving up the contest, but, as you remember, there was a great
uprising of the people, who determined that the war should go on till
the Rebellion was crushed.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CAPTURE OF FORT HENRY.

Tennessee joined the Southern Confederacy, but Kentucky resisted all the
coaxing, threatening, and planning of the leaders of the Rebellion. Some
Kentuckians talked of remaining neutral, of taking no part in the great
contest; but that was not possible. The Rebels invaded the State, by
sailing up the Mississippi and taking possession of Columbus,--a town
twenty miles below the mouth of the Ohio. They also advanced from
Nashville to Bowling Green. Then the State decided for the Union,--to
stand by the old flag till the Rebellion should be crushed.

The Rebels erected two forts on the northern line of Tennessee. Looking
at your map, you see that the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers are near
together where they enter the State of Kentucky. They are not more than
twelve miles apart. The fort on the Tennessee River was named Fort
Henry, the one on the Cumberland, Fort Donelson. A good road was cut
through the woods between them, so that troops and supplies could be
readily removed from one to the other. Fort Henry was on the eastern
bank of the Tennessee, and Fort Donelson on the western bank of the
Cumberland. They were very important places to the Rebels, for at high
water in the winter the rivers are navigable for the largest
steamboats,--the Cumberland to Nashville and the Tennessee to Florence,
in Northern Alabama,--and it would be very easy to transport an army
from the Ohio River to the very heart of the Southern Confederacy. The
forts were bu