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The Battle of Fort Donelson was the first major victory for Federal forces and the first decisive battle in the vital area from the Appalachians to the Mississippi. It gave the Federals control of both the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers; led directly to the fall of the first Confederate capital at Nashville and the Battle of Shiloh, and was the beginning of the fame and/or infamy of several Civil War generals, including U.S. Grant, N. B Forrest, Gedion Pillow and John B. Floyd. It also resulted in the first surrender of an army by a Confederate general, and the largest capture of enemy troops in American history, up to that time.
About the author
James R. Knight is a graduate of Harding University, 1967. He spent five years as a pilot in the United States Air Force, flying the C-130E, and thirty-one years as a pilot for Federal Express, flying the Dassault DA-20 Falcon, the Boeing 727 and the McDonnell Douglass DC-10. In the early '90s, he began researching a historical incident in his hometown and published his first work, an article in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly in 1997. In 2003, Eakin Press published his biography of two Texas outlaws titled Bonnie and Clyde: A 21st Century Update. In 2007, he published the story and correspondence of a Confederate cavalryman from Tennessee titled Letters to Anna. This is his second work in The History Press's Sesquicentennial Series, having written The Battle of Franklin in 2009. Knight retired from Federal Express in 2004 and lives in Franklin, Tennessee, where he works part time as a historical interpreter for the Battle of Franklin Trust. When not encouraging visitor at the Carter House to relive some moments of the Battle of Franklin, he sings on the worship team at church, collects historical documents and artifacts and occasionally drives around in his restored 1934 Ford V-8. He and his wife, Judy, and have three children and six grandchildren.
