Fort Donelson

Battle of Belmont: Ulysses S. Grant’s First Battle

By Donald J. Roberts II

When the Civil War started in 1861, there were only two officers in the Union Army who had commanded a force in battle larger than a brigade. Read more

Fort Donelson

Civil War Artillery

By John D. Gresham

For much of its history, artillery has been a weapon of mass destruction and attrition, a force designed to cause casualties, destroy fortifications, and wear an enemy down with its noise, explosions, and shrapnel. Read more

Fort Donelson

Union General John Pope: Cracking Island No. 10

By Robert Collins-Suhr

With its whistle blaring, the Confederate gunboat Grampus steamed into Madrid Bend, where Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas come together on the Mississippi River. Read more

Fort Donelson

Union Disaster: The Battle of Thompson’s Station

By Robert L. Durham

The winter of 1863 was a time of general inactivity for the exhausted armies in middle Tennessee. Read more

Fort Donelson

Disaster at Fort Donelson

By Mike Phifer

A signal rocket set off by Confederate pickets streaked skyward in the damp early morning of February 4, 1862. Read more

Fort Donelson

Battle of Mechanicsville: McClellan’s Unexploited Victory

By John Walker

After an almost uninterrupted, four-month-long string of Union successes beginning in early 1862, followed by the advance of a 100,000-man enemy army to the eastern outskirts of its capital at Richmond, Virginia, the Confederacy suddenly found itself in a life-or-death struggle for its very survival. Read more

Fort Donelson

Prisons of the Civil War: An Enduring Controversy

By Michael E. Haskew

The June 19, 1861, editorial in the Charleston Mercury newspaper warned: “War is bloody reality, not butterfly sporting. Read more

Fort Donelson

Grant’s Ordeal at the Battle of Shiloh

By Eric Niderost

It was raining heavily, a deluge of almost Biblical proportions that hammered down on the exhausted men of the Union’s Army of the Tennessee. Read more

Fort Donelson

Ulysses S. Grant: Union War Hero

by Mike Haskew

Born in Ohio in 1822, Ulysses S. Grant graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1843. Read more

Fort Donelson

At Shiloh, the Civil War Took a Turn

By Roy Morris, Jr.

No one expected this—not the fiercest “fire-eater” in South Carolina or the flintiest abolitionist in New England. Read more

Fort Donelson

Bushrod Johnson: Yankee Quaker, Confederate General

By Roy Morris Jr.

Of all the unlikely heroes of the Civil War, none was more unlikely than Bushrod Johnson, Ohio-born Quaker turned Confederate general. Read more

Fort Donelson

Legendary Cavalry Commander Nathan Bedford Forrest

By Mike Haskew

Prior to the American Civil War, Nathan Bedford Forrest amassed a fortune in real estate, agriculture, and the slave trade. Read more

Fort Donelson

The Worst American Civil War Generals and Commanders

By William Welsh The Worst Civil War Generals on the Confederacy

Confederate Maj. Gen. Gideon Pillow. After gaining ground trying to cut an escape path for the Confederates during the February 1862 siege of Fort Donelson by Union forces led Brig. Read more

Fort Donelson

The South’s Famous Orphan Brigade

By Michael E. Haskew

On April 15, 1861, three days after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteer troops. Read more

Fort Donelson

Taking Forts Henry and Donelson: Turning Point in the Rebel West

By Pedro Garcia

One evening around Christmas of 1861 Union Maj. Gen. Henry “Old Brains” Halleck, commanding the Department of Missouri, dined with his chief of staff, Brig. Read more

Fort Donelson

What to See at Fort Donelson National Battlefield

by William E. Welsh

The soldiers of the two armies at Fort Donelson awoke on the morning of February 15, 1862, to another frigid morning. Read more

Fort Donelson

Visiting the Battle of Shiloh National Military Park

by William E. Welsh

To say the Confederates had the perfect chance at the Battle of Shiloh to evict Maj. Gen. Read more

Fort Donelson

American Civil War Timeline – 1862: Chipping Away at the South

By William E. Welsh

In 1862, Confederate forces in Virginia were enjoying a number of campaign successes, but the decisive advantage in naval power enjoyed by the Union enabled it to advance down the Mississippi, capture river forts, and conduct many coastal attacks. Read more