Preparations for Departure

Throughout their time at Fort Henry, the docks had been busy handling the steam boats that were ferrying the ill and injured to St. Louis hospitals and arriving with fresh supplies and reinforcements. The veterans of Fort Donelson began receiving newspapers from all over the USA proclaiming their great victory and predicting an early end to the war.  Most of the men began to believe their press clippings and their morale improved, while others became wary of the growing stores of munitions and other materiel.  It seemed to them that preparations were being made for a long push into the heart of Dixie.

                
                       Steamboats along a western river during the Civil War, 1862

By the first week in March, the number of arriving ships far exceeded departures.  Some boats did not bother to unload but merely anchored in the Tennessee River while the stores of camp supplies and munitions began to be loaded on others.