150 years ago today one of the first major successful Union drives into the Confederacy was initiated. On January 30th, 1862 Major General Henry Halleck gave the go-ahead to Brigadier General Ulysses Grant to move his force of 15,000 men up the Tennessee River to the Confederate stronghold of fort Henry. While the campaign would be the start of Grant’s career which would propel him to the presidency after the war, there was another half of the operation who gets much less recognition: Read Admiral Andrew H. Foote. Foote had started his military career forty years earlier and the campaign he was about to embark on would indeed make his a hero just like Grant, however his memory was never as prominent.
Foote was a native of Connecticut, where he was born in 1806. His father was Samuel Augustus Foote, a well-educated and influential citizen who would go on to become governor of Connecticut. Samuel Foote secured an appointment for his son at West Point but Andrew’s tenure there would not last long. Switching gears, he instead accepted an appointment as a midshipman in the U.S. Navy beginning in 1822. Over the next two decades he sailed around the world to places including the Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean. In the 1850’s his duties took him to the African Coast to combat the illegal slave trade there and also to China aboard the USS Portsmouth where he engaged in a small conflict known as the Battle of the Pearl River Forts. The battle was a result of Foote’s ship getting inadvertently caught up in the Second Opium War, then raging between England, France, and the Chinese.
Above: Rear Admiral Andrew H. Foote.
When the Civil War broke out Foote was back in the United States commanding the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York. His first assignment in the war was not on the open ocean as he had experienced, but as commander of the brown water fleet known as the Mississippi River Squadron. The squadron was a hastily built force of ironclad and timberclad gunboats meant to break Confederate forces on the Mississippi River and its tributaries. 150 years ago today Foote would be ordered to take his force into action for the first time to transport and support U.S. Grant’s land forces by Army general Henry Halleck:
With the above order, given somewhat reluctantly by Halleck, Foote and Grant moved down the Tennessee River towards their objective. Foote had seven ships in his flotilla and along with Grant’s 15,000 troops the Confederates had steep odds to overcome in order to hold central Tennessee.
Above: The USS Essex, one of Foote’s ironclads.
Waiting at Fort Henry was Confederate General Lloyd Tilghman and about 3,000 troops. We will go into the particulars of what exactly happened during the battle which unfolded next week, but in short it was a lopsided Union victory that would be quickly followed up by another success 12 miles east of Fort Henry at Fort Donelson. At the latter batter Foote would be slightly wounded when a Confederate shell impacted his flagship, the USS St. Louis. He would quickly recover and successfully commanded his squadron again at the Battle of Island No. 10 in April of 1862. For his actions during this time he was given the Thanks of Congress.
In mid-1863 Foote was promoted to the rather high profile command of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, however en route to take command he died unexpectedly in New York City on June 26, 1863 at age 56. His body was returned to Connecticut where he was buried in Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven.