While operations in Virginia, conducted by a vacillating and
vainglorious engineer officer, gave little encouragement, something was
being done to advance the cause of the Union in the West. In 1862, a
young man named Grant, who had returned to the army and who had been
trusted with the command of a few brigades, captured Fort Donelson and
thus opened the Tennessee River to the advance of the army southward.
The capture of Fort Donelson was rendered possible by the use of mortars
and was the first occasion in the war in which mortars had been brought
to bear. I chanced to come into touch with the record of the preparation
of the mortars that were supplied to Grant's army at Cairo. Sometime in
the nineties I was sojourning with the late Abram S. Hewitt at his home
in Ringwood, New Jersey. I noticed, in looking out from the piazza, a
mortar, properly mounted on a mortar-bed and encompassed by some yards
of a great chain, placed on the slope overlooking the little valley
below, as if to protect the house. I asked my host what was the history
of this piece of ordnance. "Well," he said, "the chain you might have
some personal interest in. It is a part of the chain your great-uncle
Israel placed across the river at West Point for the purpose of blocking
or at least of checking the passage of the British vessels. The chain
was forged here in the Ringwood foundry and I have secured a part of it
as a memento. The mortar was given to me by President Lincoln, as also
was the mortar-bed." This report naturally brought out the further
question as to the grounds for the gift. "I made this mortar-bed," said
Hewitt, "together with some others, and Lincoln was good enough to say
that I had in this work rendered a service to the State. It was in
December, 1861, when the expedition against Fort Donelson and Fort Henry
was being organised at Fort Cairo under the leadership of General Grant.
Grant reported that the field-pieces at his command would not be
effective against the earthworks that were to be shelled and made
requisition for mortars." The mortar I may explain to my unmilitary