150 years ago along the Tennessee River the Union gained control of the one Confederate strongpoint intended to protect West Tennessee and the Deep South at Fort Henry.  Fort Henry, along with its sister fortification Fort Heiman, was meant to secure the Tennessee River so that the Union river fleets could not use it as an avenue for invasion into Mississippi and Alabama.  It was a poor location to achieve the desired effect as it was constructed on low swampy ground which ended up flooding after strong rainstorms.  In charge of managing the developing Confederate disaster was Lloyd Tilghman, a West point graduate originally from Maryland.  Today we will profile Tilghman and discuss the immense challenge he faced in February of 1862 as he and his men were confronted with a vastly superior Union force.

Lloyd Tilghman was born along the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland in 1816.  He was the grandson of Tench Tilghman, who served as George Washington’s aid-de-camp during the Revolutionary War.  In 1832 he entered the United States military Academy at West Point and graduated in 1836.  He did not stay in the army long after graduating and instead went to work engineering and surveying for railroad companies.  Tilghman did reenter the military during the Mexican War as aid-de-camp to General David E. Twiggs where he saw combat at Palo Alto and Resaca-de-la-Palma.  Ending the war as a captain in the artillery, Tilghman quickly resumed his civilian pursuit as an engineer.  He found work in western railroad in the 1850’s and ended up settling in Paducah, Kentucky by the time of the Civil War.

Tilghman entered the Confederate Army as colonel of the 3^rd Kentucky Infantry.  He was promoted to brigadier general in the fall of 1861 and found himself responsible for protecting the gateway to the Deep South along the Tennessee River at Fort Henry.  Fort Henry had already been constructed by the time Tilghman arrived, so all he could do was try and make the best of his poor position. 

On the morning of February 6^th, 1862 Tilghman would finally face what he feared, a force superior in men and firepower bearing down on Fort Henry.  He had 11 guns available to counter the Union fleet steaming up the river.  When the gunboats came within range his men opened fire.  Having had a position there for months, the Confederate gunners knew well the range at which to fire at any given point, which soon began to show.  With only 70 men left in the fort after pulling out the thousands of men originally station there Tilghman still meant to put up a stubborn resistance.

Early on in the battle the Confederate shells found their targets.  During the 1 – 2 hour battle the USS Cincinnati was struck 28 times and a well-placed shot on the USS Essex pierced its armor, impacted one of the ship’s boilers and horribly scalded almost 30 men on board.  The Union did not have the advantage of gunnery practice before the battle and fine tuning their aim took time.  The tide turned, however, when the Union gunners began to get their range.  In just a few minutes most of Tilghman’s guns were either disabled by Union fire or burst from firing.  With little hope Tilghman lowered the fort’s colors at about 2:00 in the afternoon.  He surrendered aboard one of the Union ships are a boat rowed in to pick him up in the interior of the flooded fort.

In his official report after the battle Tilghman vented to prevent his reputation from being harmed by the loss:

Above: Fort Henry after its occupation by federal forces.  From Frank Leslie’s Illustrated.

Tilghman became a prisoner of war and would be held on custody until August of 1862.  He was exchanged for John Fulton Reynolds(the same Reynolds killed at Gettysburg on July 1^st) who had been captured during the Seven Days Battles.  After his release he served as a field commander in the western Confederate armies and fought at the Second Battle of Corinth.  He remained active and served in the Vicksburg Campaign, where at the Battle of Champion Hill he was struck by a bursting artillery shell and killed.  His body was moved to New York, where he is buried in the Bronx’s Woodlawn Cemetery.