The Battle of Fort Donelson: No Terms but Unconditional Surrender

The Battle of Fort Donelson: No Terms but Unconditional Surrender
Author: James R. Knight
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2011-03-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1614230838

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.

Where the South Lost the War

Where the South Lost the War
Author: Kendall D. Gott
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2011-07-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 081173160X

With the collapse of the Confederate defenses at Forts Henry and Donelson, the entire Tennessee Valley was open to Union invasion and control.

Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant ...

Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant ...
Author: Ulysses Simpson Grant
Publisher: New York, C. L. Webster & Company
Total Pages: 606
Release: 1885
Genre: Generals
ISBN:

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.

War on the Waters

War on the Waters
Author: James M. McPherson
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2012-09-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807837326

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.

Grant Invades Tennessee

Grant Invades Tennessee
Author: Timothy B. Smith
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: HISTORY
ISBN: 9780700623136

Though the battles of Forts Henry and Donelson are often neglected in Civil War historiography, their importance cannot be overstated. It was there that Ulysses S. Grant became a national hero, that a Southern field army ceased to exist, and most importantly, where the Confederacy's vital western defense line was broken and shattered. The South was hard pressed to ever recover.

Master of War

Master of War
Author: Benson Bobrick
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2010-02-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780743290265

• A first-rate historian: Benson Bobrick is the author of several celebrated books, including The Fated Sky and Testament . His work has been hailed as “Lucid and vivid” by The New Yorker , “elegant” by The Washington Post Book World , and “engrossing…detailed and gripping” by the Chicago Tribune . And The New York Times Book Review says, “Bobrick is perhaps the most interesting historian writing in America today.”. • A fascinating biography of an underappreciated American hero: George H. Thomas was, Bobrick argues, the greatest general of the Civil War. Known as the Rock of Chickamauga, Thomas was regarded by his contemporaries as the equal of Grant and Sherman. In the entire Civil War, he never lost a battle or a movement, and he was the only Union commander to destroy two Confederate armies in the field. But Thomas never wrote a memoir and history neglected him. Until now. . • Powerfully told and grippingly rendered: With his characteristic flair for drama and fast-paced writing, Bobrick takes readers onto the battlefields, into the smoke of gunpowder and the stench of bodies. From the parade grounds of West Point to the bloody Battle of Chattanooga, Bobrick masterfully renders every detail, right down to the buckles on Thomas’s boots and the courage in his heart. Backed by scholarly research, this informed and vivid biography at last brings Thomas’s tale to readers everywhere..

Civil War 150

Civil War 150
Author: Civil War Trust
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2011-05-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0762769025

The year 2011 marks the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, and so the time is right for this indispensable collection of 150 key places to see and things to do to remember and to honor the sacrifices made during America’s epic struggle. Covering dozens of states and the District of Columbia, this easy-to-use guide provides a concise text description and one or more images for each entry, as well as directions to all sites.

The Mississippi River Campaign, 1861-1863

The Mississippi River Campaign, 1861-1863
Author: Benton Rain Patterson
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2010-08-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 078645900X

Telling the story of the Civil War's Mississippi River Campaign through the experiences of leading officers, ordinary soldiers, and civilians, this book explains how the river campaign came to be one of the key tenets of the Union's strategy and a fundamental contributor to the war's ultimate outcome. It describes the Union's drive down the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois, the drive up the river from the Gulf of Mexico, and the capturing of key cities and rebel fortifications along the way, including New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Memphis, Vicksburg, and finally, Port Hudson, Louisiana. The text is supplemented with 24 historical photographs from the Library of Congress and the National Archives.