Download or read book Grant Invades Tennessee written by Timothy B. Smith and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2021-10-29 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When General Ulysses S. Grant targeted Forts Henry and Donelson, he penetrated the Confederacy at one of its most vulnerable points, setting in motion events that would elevate his own status, demoralize the Confederate leadership and citizenry, and, significantly, tear the western Confederacy asunder. More to the point, the two battles of early 1862 opened the Tennessee River campaign that would prove critical to the ultimate Union victory in the Mississippi Valley. In Grant Invades Tennessee, award-winning Civil War historian Timothy B. Smith gives readers a battlefield view of the fight for Forts Henry and Donelson, as well as a critical wide-angle perspective on their broader meaning in the conduct and outcome of the war. The first comprehensive tactical treatment of these decisive battles, this book completes the trilogy of the Tennessee River campaign that Smith began in Shiloh and Corinth 1862, marking a milestone in Civil War history. Whether detailing command-level decisions or using eye-witness anecdotes to describe events on the ground, walking readers through maps or pulling back for an assessment of strategy, this finely written work is equally sure on matters of combat and context. Beginning with Grant's decision to bypass the Confederates' better-defended sites on the Mississippi, Smith takes readers step-by-step through the battles: the employment of a flotilla of riverine war ships along with infantry and land-based artillery in subduing Fort Henry; the lesser effectiveness of this strategy against Donelson's much stronger defense, weaponry, and fighting forces; the surprise counteroffensive by the Confederates and the role of their commanders' incompetence and cowardice in foiling its success. Though casualties at the two forts fell far short of bloodier Civil War battles to come, the importance of these Union victories transcend battlefield statistics. Grant Invades Tennessee allows us, for the first time, to clearly see how and why.

Download or read book Where the South Lost the War written by Kendall D. Gott and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2011-07-20 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the collapse of the Confederate defenses at Forts Henry and Donelson, the entire Tennessee Valley was open to Union invasion and control.

Download or read book The Battle of Fort Donelson No Terms but Unconditional Surrender written by James R. Knight and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2011-03-04 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Personal Memoirs of U S Grant written by Ulysses Simpson Grant and published by New York, C. L. Webster & Company. This book was released on 1885 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faced with failing health and financial ruin, the Civil War's greatest general and former president wrote his personal memoirs to secure his family's future - and won himself a unique place in American letters. Devoted almost entirely to his life as a soldier, Grant's Memoirs traces the trajectory of his extraordinary career - from West Point cadet to general-in-chief of all Union armies. For their directness and clarity, his writings on war are without rival in American literature, and his autobiography deserves a place among the very best in the genre.

Download or read book War on the Waters written by James M. McPherson and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-09-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although previously undervalued for their strategic impact because they represented only a small percentage of total forces, the Union and Confederate navies were crucial to the outcome of the Civil War. In War on the Waters, James M. McPherson has crafted an enlightening, at times harrowing, and ultimately thrilling account of the war's naval campaigns and their military leaders. McPherson recounts how the Union navy's blockade of the Confederate coast, leaky as a sieve in the war's early months, became increasingly effective as it choked off vital imports and exports. Meanwhile, the Confederate navy, dwarfed by its giant adversary, demonstrated daring and military innovation. Commerce raiders sank Union ships and drove the American merchant marine from the high seas. Southern ironclads sent several Union warships to the bottom, naval mines sank many more, and the Confederates deployed the world's first submarine to sink an enemy vessel. But in the end, it was the Union navy that won some of the war's most important strategic victories--as an essential partner to the army on the ground at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, Mobile Bay, and Fort Fisher, and all by itself at Port Royal, Fort Henry, New Orleans, and Memphis.

Download or read book Forts Henry and Donelson The Key to the Confederate Heartland written by Benjamin Franklin Cooling and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Fort Pillow Massacre written by United States Congress Joint Commit and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book The Battle of Belmont written by Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The battle of Belmont was the first battle in the western theater of the Civil War and, more importantly, the first battle of the war fought by Ulysses S. Grant. It set a pattern for warfare not only in the Mississippi Valley but at Fort Donelson and Shiloh as well. Grant's 7 November 1861 strike against the Southern forces at Belmont, in southeastern Missouri on the Mississippi River, made use of the newly outfitted Yankee timberclads and all the infantry available at the staging area in Cairo, Illinois. The Confederates, led by Leonidas Polk and Gideon Pillow, had the advantages of position and superior numbers. They hoped to smash Grant's expeditionary force on the Missouri shore and cut off the escape of the Illinois and Iowa troops from their boats. The confrontation was a bloody, all-day fight that a veteran of a dozen major battles would later call "frightful to contemplate." At first successful, the Federals were eventually driven from the field and withdrew up the Mississippi to safety. The battle cost some twenty percent of his troops, but as a result of this engagement Grant became known as an audacious fighting general. Using diaries and letters of participants, official documents, and contemporary newspaper accounts, Nathaniel Hughes provides the only full-length tactical study of the battle that catapulted Grant into prominence. Throughout the narrative, Hughes draws sketches of the lives and fates of individual soldiers who fought on both sides, especially of the colorful and enormously dissimilar principal actors, Grant and Polk.

Download or read book Island No 10 written by Larry J. Daniel and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 1996-04-30 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is useful to historians of the Civil War who wish to draw on it for an authoritative account of this campaign, and Civil War buffs will want it in their libraries". -- James M. McPherson Princeton University

Download or read book The Civil War in the Jackson Purchase 1861 1862 written by Dan Lee and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-02-26 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jackson Purchase is the far western section of Kentucky. In 1861, it was a rich agricultural and iron producing region. It also controlled the mouths of the Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee rivers, as well as that middle stretch of the mighty Mississippi where it transitions from a northern to a southern river. The Purchase was the riverine gateway to the Deep South. The obvious military importance of the region caused both the Federal and Confederate governments to pour material resources and military talent into the Purchase in an effort to hold it and defend it against the incursions of their enemies. The Jackson Purchase was the Civil War training ground of such army officers as U.S. Grant, C.F. Smith, Leonidas Polk, Lloyd Tilghman, and the navy's own Andrew H. Foote, commander of the Federal "Brown Water Navy." Four major amphibious battles were fought for control of the area: Columbus-Belmont, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Island Number Ten. This book tells the story of the bloody years 1861 and 1862 and the tense, contested Union occupation that followed in the region known as "The South Carolina of Kentucky."

Download or read book Captured written by Mary Blair Immel and published by Indiana Historical Society. This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fourteen-year-old Johnny Ables left his farm one morning in early 1862 to gather wood, riding into danger and adventure he could never have imagined. A desperate group of Confederate soldiers kidnapped Johnny for his horses and wagon. Forced into battle at Fort Donelson, Johnny endured cannon fire and hand-to-hand combat and was stranded freezing, alone, and dazed among wounded and dying men. After a miserably cramped voyage by steamboat and train, Johnny and his kidnappers were marched to Camp Morton Prison in Indianapolis. There, Johnny struggled to survive.

Download or read book Fort Donelson s Legacy written by Benjamin Franklin Cooling (III) and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Fort Donelson's Legacy portrays the tapestry of war and society in the upper southern heartland of Tennessee and Kentucky after the key Union victories at Forts Henry and Donelson in February 1862. Those victories, notes Benjamin Franklin Cooling, could have delivered the decisive blow to the Confederacy in the West and ended the war in that theater. Instead, what followed was terrible devastation and bloodshed that embroiled soldier and civilian alike. Cooling compellingly describes a struggle that was marked not only by the movement of armies and the strategies of generals but also by the rise of guerrilla bands and civil resistance. It was, in part, a war fought for geography - for rivers and railroads and for strategic cities such as Nashville, Louisville, and Chattanooga. But it was also a war for the hearts and minds of the populace ... In exploring the complex terrain of 'total war' that steadily engulfed Tennessee and Kentucky, Cooling draws on a huge array of sources, including official military records and countless diaries and memoirs. He makes considerable use of the words of participants to capture the attitudes and concerns of those on both sides."--Dust jacket.

Download or read book The Battle of Fort Donelson written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-05-09 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the campaign written by generals on both sides *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender." - Ulysses S. Grant at Fort Donelson "It was not possible for brave men to endure more." - General Lew Wallace While the Lincoln Administration and most Northerners were preoccupied with trying to capture Richmond in the summer of 1861, it would be the little known Ulysses S. Grant who delivered the Union's first major victories, over a thousand miles away from Washington. Grant's new commission led to his command of the District of Southeast Missouri, headquartered at Cairo, after he was appointed by "The Pathfinder," John C. Fremont, a national celebrity who had run for President in 1856. Fremont was one of many political generals that Lincoln was saddled with, and his political prominence ensured he was given a prominent command as commander of the Department of the West early in the war before running so afoul of the Lincoln Administration that he was court-martialed. In January of 1862, Grant persuaded General Henry "Old Brains" Halleck to allow his men to launch a campaign on the Tennessee River. As soon as Halleck acquiesced, Grant moved against Fort Henry, in close coordination with the naval command of Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote. The combination of infantry and naval bombardment helped force the capitulation of Fort Henry on February 6, 1862, and the surrender of Fort Henry was followed immediately by an attack on Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River, which earned Grant his famous nickname "Unconditional Surrender." Grant's forces enveloped the Confederate garrison at Fort Donelson, which included Confederate generals Simon Buckner, John Floyd, and Gideon Pillow. In one of the most bungled operations of the war, the Confederate generals tried and failed to open an escape route by attacking Grant's forces on February 15. Although the initial assault was successful, General Pillow inexplicably chose to have his men pull back into their trenches, ostensibly so they could take more supplies before their escape. Instead, they simply lost all the ground they had taken, and the garrison was cut off yet again. During the early morning hours of February 16, the garrison's generals held one of the Civil War's most famous councils of war. Over the protestations of cavalry officer Nathan Bedford Forrest, who insisted the garrison could escape, the three generals agreed to surrender their army, but none of them wanted to be the fall guy. General Floyd was worried that the Union might try him for treason if he was taken captive, so he turned command of the garrison over to General Pillow and escaped with two of his regiments. Pillow had the same concern and turned command over to General Buckner before escaping alone by boat. With no attempt to conceal his anger at the cowardice displayed by his commanding officers, Forrest announced, "I did not come here to surrender my command!" He then proceeded to round up his own men and rallied hundreds of men before leading them on a daring and dramatic escape under the cover of darkness through the icy waters of Lick Creek to escape the siege and avoid capture. Despite all of these successful escapes, General Buckner decided to surrender to Grant, and when asked for terms of surrender, Grant replied, "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender." In addition to giving him a famous sobriquet, Grant's campaign was the first major success for the Union, which had already lost the disastrous First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861 and was reorganizing the Army of the Potomac in anticipation of the Peninsula Campaign (which would fail in the summer of 1862). It also exposed the weakness of the outmanned Confederates, who were stretched too thin across the theater.

Download or read book Across Five Aprils written by Irene Hunt and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-01-08 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Newbery Award-winning author of Up a Road Slowly presents the unforgettable story of Jethro Creighton—a brave boy who comes of age during the turbulent years of the Civil War. In 1861, America is on the cusp of war, and young Jethro Creighton is just nine-years-old. His brother, Tom, and his cousin, Eb, are both of fighting age. As Jethro's family is pulled into the conflict between the North and the South, loyalties are divided, dreams are threatened, and their bonds are put to the test in this heart-wrenching, coming of age story. “Drawing from family records and from stories told by her grandfather, the author has, in an uncommonly fine narrative, created living characters and vividly reconstructed a crucial period of history.”—Booklist

Download or read book Corinth 1862 written by Timothy B. Smith and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A panoramic new look at the critical role of Corinth, Mississippi in the Civil War. Vividly details the nearly year-long campaign that opened the way to Vicksburg and presaged the Confederacy's defeat in the West.

Download or read book Africa and the American Flag written by Andrew Hull Foote and published by . This book was released on 1854 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Men of Fire written by Jack Hurst and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2007-07-10 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the Civil War battles of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, focusing on the opposing generals: Grant, in command of the Union forces and yet to win a battle, and his opponent, the equally untried but less fortunate Forrest.