Fort Anderson: Paducah Holds Against Forrest

Paducah, Kentucky, sits where the Tennessee River flows into the Ohio, a confluence that made it one of the most strategically important river towns in the western theater of the Civil War. The Union fortification that held this ground, a squat earthwork on the western edge of town, was named Fort Anderson after Robert Anderson, the Kentucky-born general who had commanded Fort Sumter at the war's opening.

The Union Army built the original earthen works in the fall of eighteen sixty-one under General Charles F. Smith. The fort was roughly four hundred feet by one hundred sixty feet, surrounded by a water-filled ditch fifty feet wide, and mounted with artillery trained on the Ohio River. Paducah functioned as a massive Union supply depot throughout the war, feeding Federal forces operating along the Ohio, Mississippi, and Tennessee river systems.

The fort's most dramatic test came on March twenty-fifth, eighteen sixty-four. Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest arrived with fewer than three thousand Confederate cavalry, intent on raiding the town, seizing horses and supplies, and disrupting Union operations. The Union garrison, six hundred fifty men under Colonel Stephen G. Hicks, retreated inside Fort Anderson rather than fight in the open streets. Hicks also had two Union gunboats on the Ohio providing artillery support from the river.

Forrest demanded surrender. Hicks refused. Confederate forces surged through the town, ransacking warehouses and corralling horses and mules. A segment of Forrest's command assaulted the fort directly and was repulsed with heavy casualties. Forrest withdrew without taking the fortification. Casualty figures vary by source, with Union losses reported near ninety and Confederate losses estimated between roughly twenty-five and fifty.

The episode illustrated the limits of Forrest's raid. He could terrorize a town, strip it of supplies, and intimidate its citizens, but a determined garrison behind earthworks with gunboat support was more than he could crack. Fort Anderson held, and Paducah remained a Union supply hub through the end of the war.