On the 3d of February a journalistic friend telegraphed me from Cairo:
"You can't come too soon: take the first train."
Immediately obeying the summons, I found that Commodore Foote had gone up the Tennessee River with the new gunboats. The accompanying land forces were under the command of an Illinois general named Grant, of whom the country knew only the following:
Making a reconnoissance to Belmont, Missouri, opposite Columbus, Kentucky, he had ventured too far, when the enemy opened on him. Yielding to the fighting temptation, he made a lively resistance, until compelled to retreat, leaving behind his dead and wounded. Jefferson Davis officially proclaimed it a great Confederate success, and Rebel newspapers grew merry over Grant's bad generalship, expressing the wish that he might long lead the Yankee armies!
----"We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often for our own harms; so find we profit By losing of our prayers."
As the gunboats had never been tested, intense interest was felt in their success. Approaching Fort Henry, three went forward to reconnoiter. At the distance of two miles and a half, a twenty-four pounder rifled ball penetrated the state-room of Captain Porter, commanding the Essex, passing under his table, and cutting off the feet of a pair of stockings which hung against the ceiling as neatly as shears would have cut them.
"Pretty good shot!" said Porter. "Now we will show them ours." And he dropped a nine-inch Dahlgren shell right into the fort.
The next day, a large number of torpedoes, each containing seventy-five pounds of powder, were fished up from the bottom of the river. The imprudent tongue of an angry Rebel woman revealed their whereabouts. Prophesying that the whole fleet would be blown to atoms, she was compelled to divulge what she knew, or be confined in the guard-house. In mortal terror she gave the desired information. The torpedoes were found wet and harmless. Commodore Foote predicted
"I can take that fort in about an hour and a half."
The night was excessively rainy and severe upon our boys in blue in their forest bivouacs; but in the well-furnished cabin of General Grant's steamer, we found "going to war" an agreeable novelty.
[Sidenote: ITS CAPTURE BY COMMODORE FOOTE.]