The floods of water and the miry condition of the roads prevented the army from reaching the rear of the fort in season to be of any service. The cavalry was sent in pursuit of the fleeing rebels, but they had gone too far to be overtaken. General Tilghman, it appeared, did not share the confidence of his superiors in the invulnerableness of his works, and early in the morning he had posted his entire garrison, with the exception of a force sufficient to work his guns, at some outworks two miles distant, and out of the reach of the shot and shell from the gunboats, where they could be hastened to a place of safety. Before the result of the battle with the gunboats was known, these forces were sent away, and no different action on the part of the Union general could have captured them. The victory was a decided one, though the army was prevented from sharing in the glory of capturing the fort. The result filled the government of the Confederacy with dismay. One of its strong gates had been battered down, and the Tennessee was open to the navigation of those pestilent gunboats, which had already become the terror of Rebeldom. Prompt to assure the leaders of the Confederacy of the disaster which had overtaken them, Flag-officer Foote sent three of his "pets" up the river, which proceeded as far as Florence, Alabama, destroying the railroad bridge twenty-five miles above Fort Henry, capturing large quantities of stores, and burning many steamers and other boats. The effect of this success was promptly realized in the sudden evacuation of Bowling Green; and thus two of the rebel strongholds were struck down by the same blow. But the full advantage of this capture was not to be realized until the Union army was ready to move in force towards the south. The victory was an easy one, very much to the astonishment of the naval and the military officers in command. Certainly the position was of importance enough for the Confederacy to have staked more upon it than it did. Grant's idea was triumphant, and he received the reward of his persistent application to capture the fort, and ample compensation for his harsh rebuff, in the consciousness that he had initiated one of the grandest movements of the war--grand in its ultimate results, which his far-seeing eye had already discovered, rather than in the present glory of its accomplishment. CHAPTER XIII. _Wherein Captain Galligasken states the Results of the Victory at Fort Henry, and attends the illustrious Soldier in the Investment of Fort Donelson_.