Title: Fort Donelson's legacy
First published: 1997
Description: 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.
Subjects: Civil-military relations, Fort Donelson, Battle of, Tenn., 1862, Fort Henry, Battle of, Tenn., 1862, History, Kentucky Civil War, 1861-1865, Social aspects, Tennessee Civil War, 1861-1865, United States Civil War, 1861-1865, United states, history, civil war, 1861-1865, Kentucky, history, Tennessee, history
Places: Kentucky, Southern States, Tennessee, United States
Time periods: 19th century, Civil War, 1861-1865
LC classification: E472.97 .C66 1997