The Battle of Fort Donelson: No Terms but Unconditional Surrender (Civil War Series)

In February 1862, after defeats at Bull Run and at Wilson's Creek in Missouri, the Union army was desperate for victory on the eve of its first offensive of the Civil War. The strategy was to penetrate the Southern heartland with support from a new "Brown Water" navy. In a two-week campaign plagued by rising floodwaters and brutal winter weather, two armies collided in rural Tennessee to fight over two forts that controlled the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. Those intense days set the course of the war in the Western Theater for eighteen months and determined the fates of Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew H. Foote and Albert Sidney Johnston. Historian James R. Knight paints a picture of this crucial but often neglected and misunderstood turning point.

Other books in the Civil War Sesquicentennial Series include:The Battle of Antietam♦ The Battle of Franklin♦ The Chancellorsville Campaign♦ The Battle of South Mountain♦ Stonewall Jackson's 1862 Valley Campaign♦ Charleston Under Siege♦ Andersonville Civil War Prison♦ The Civil War at Perryville♦ The Battle of Okolona♦ Fort Davidson and the Battle of Pilot Knobb♦ The Two Civil War Battles of Newtonia♦ The Battle of Port Royal♦ The Confederacy's Secret Weapon♦ Lee in the Lowcountry♦ Defending South Carolina's Coast♦ Facing Sherman in South Carolina♦ The Battle of Brandy Station♦ The Battle of Cedar Creek♦ The Battle of Fredericksburg♦ The Battle of Piedmont♦ The Battle of New Market Heights♦ Big Bethel♦ The Battle of Mine Creek♦ West Virginia in the Civil War♦ Civil War Atlanta♦ The Battle of Westport♦ The Union is Dissolved