History
Fort Donelson was garrisoned by the Confederate troops until 1862. The fort was captured by Union General Ulysses S. Grant and his army during a winter offensive to divide the Confederacy in two by controlling the Mississippi River. (see Battle of Fort Donelson)
The fort was attacked again on August 25, 1863, by a Confederate force demanding its surrender. The attack was unsuccessful and was repulsed.
Bushrod Johnson of the Corps of Engineers approved the build site. Construction was started by a large force of men brought from the nearby Cumberland Iron Works.
Confederate commanders
- Bushrod Johnson (Feb 9, 1862)
- Gideon J. Pillow (Feb 10-13, 1862)
- John B. Floyd (Feb 14-16, 1862)
- Simon B. Buckner, Sr. (Feb 16, 1862)
- Major Rice E. Graves, Jr., Artillery Commander
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“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
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“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)