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Updated: May 13, 2025
She crept stealthily out into the sunshine through the vast abatis of the fallen trees and came to the edge of the hole. Looking down fearfully she realised at once that this was the dry, rocky stairs of some subterranean watercourse through which, in springtime, great fields of melting snow poured in torrents down the face of the precipice below.
It was clear to my mind that the enemy had started to march out with his entire force, except a few pickets, and if our attack could be made on the left before the enemy could redistribute his forces along the line, we would find but little opposition except from the intervening abatis.
All were to clear off the parapets and the abatis in their front so as to leave the space as open as possible, and be able to charge the moment the mine had been sprung and Burnside had taken possession. Burnside's corps was not to stop in the crater at all but push on to the top of the hill, supported on the right and left by Ord's and Warren's corps.
So that, besides the ditch and the abatis, there was a slight depression in his immediate front, open and clear, but so situated that on the gentle slope in front, down which the confederates must charge, the background of the slope brought them in bold relief gray targets for the guns. On that background the hare would loom up as big as the hound.
Artillery galloped up on our side, to answer that in the works, and the boys lost speech in amazement at seeing the horsemen tear through the wide abatis and jump the high breastworks, while the defenders streamed back in rout into Shelbyville, pursued every step with yell and blow by the furious cavalry. Then came the noise of terrible fighting in the streets of Shelbyville.
Here the river winds about between abrupt hillsides, and on the front of one of these hills stood Fort Donelson. The water-batteries were made up of heavy guns, so mounted as to command the river for miles. On the landward side were heavy earthworks, abatis, and sharp pointed chevaux-de-frise.
Bevern crossed his own marshy brook; courageously assaulted Konigseck's position, left wing of Konigseck; stormed the abatis, the batteries, plunged in upon Konigseck, man to man, horse to horse, and after some fierce enough but brief dispute, tumbled Konigseck out of the ground.
"The sons of Belial are too strong for me," jocosely wrote Winslow; and he set himself to intrenching his camp; then had the forest cut down for the space of a mile from the lake to the mountains, so that the trees, lying in what he calls a "promiscuous manner," formed an almost impenetrable abatis.
So far, not a word had been exchanged between the belligerents. The besieged had drawn together a pile of black logs and branches of trees, which they had formed into a chevaux-de- frise, making a little circular abatis in front of the entrance to the cave.
Long lines of earthworks were being constructed, gangs of negros were felling trees, building forts and batteries, making abatis, and toiling with numbers of huge guns which were being moved out and placed in position. As we had had no new prisoners nor any papers for some weeks the papers being doubtless designedly kept away from us we were at a loss to know what this meant.
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