Give my love to all at home.  I must close.

BROTHER ULYS.

[After repeated requests Grant secured permission, February 1st, to undertake the campaign up the Tennessee.  Fort Henry was captured on the 6th; Fort Donelson, eleven miles away, fell on the 16th.  Fort Donelson was on high ground, one hundred feet above the Cumberland River.  It was an important position for the enemy.  Generals Floyd and Pillow, first and second in command at Port Donelson, escaped during the night of the 15th.  General Buckner, who was forced to surrender the fort, said to Grant that if he, Buckner, had been in command Grant would never have reached Donelson as easily as he did.  Grant answered, “In that case I should not have tried in the way I did; I relied upon Pillow to allow me to come up within gunshot of any entrenchments he was given to hold.”  Pillow had been in the Mexican War and he prided himself upon that service.  Grant speaks of his own service in the Mexican War as being invaluable to him as he there came to know all the men who, later on, held conspicuous positions in both the Northern and Southern armies; he learned to know their strong points and their weaknesses, and to infer how they would act under given conditions.

To his sister Mary.]

Fort Henry, Tenn.,
Feb. 9th, 1862.

DEAR SISTER: 

I take my pen in hand “away down in Dixie” to let you know that I am still alive and well.  What the next few days may bring forth, however, I can’t tell you.  I intend to keep the ball moving as lively as possible, and have only been detained here from the fact that the Tennessee is very high and has been rising ever since we have been here, overflowing the back land and making it necessary to bridge it before we could move.—­Before receiving this you will hear by telegraph of Fort Donelson being attacked.—­Yesterday I went up the Tennessee River twenty odd miles, and to-day crossed over near the Cumberland River at Fort Donelson.—­Our men had a little engagement with the enemy’s pickets, killing five of them, wounding a number, and, expressively speaking, “gobbling up” some twenty-four more.

If I had your last letter at hand I would answer it.  But I have not and therefore write you a very hasty and random letter, simply to let you know that I believe you still remember me.  Whilst writing I am carrying on a conversation with my Staff and others.

Julia will be with you in a few days and possibly I may accompany her.  This is barely possible, depending upon having full possession of the line from Fort Henry to Fort Donelson, and upon being able to quit for a few days without retarding any contemplated movement.  This would not leave me free more than one day however.