Fort Donelson

On Feb. 3, 1863, Forrest cooperated with Gen. Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry in an attack on the town of Dover, Tennessee, adjacent to Fort Donelson.

In 1862, the Civil War Battle of Fort Donelson in Tennessee ended as some 12,000 Confederate soldiers surrendered; Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s victory earned him the moniker “Unconditional Surrender Grant.”

Fort Grant, named for the greatest American military strategist and general — a man who, uniquely, took the surrenders of three separate conquered armies, at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg and Appomattox Court House — did not survive long into the 1900s.

Six years later, when the South seceded from the Union, Redan fortresses were built by Confederates in places like Vicksburg, Mississippi, Fort Donelson, Tennessee and Petersburg, Virginia, where 13 Redans extended across a three-mile front guarding the city.

By February 1862, Grant had led the Union army to its first important Civil War victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson.