The Battle for Ft. Donelson took place from Feb 11th to the 16th, of 1862. U.S. General Grant's tactics to take Ft. Donelson
were to surround the fort, and let Admiral Foote's riverboats bombard the fort into submission. It had worked at a half built,
half flooded, and poorly defended Ft. Henry, so well, that Ft. Henry had actually surrendered to the riverboats before Grants
land forces actually attacked the Fort.
Because Ft. Donelson was better built, heavily defended with nearly 15,000 Confederate troops and the weather had gone
from mild 60 degree days, to below freezing, with a snowstorm dumping 3 inches of snow on the ground, the battle for Ft. Donelson
was not nearly as easy as Ft. Henry had been.
Still, on the night of Feb 14th, early morning on the 15th, after having failed to open and hold an escape route out
of Ft. Donelson for the majority of the Confederate force to withdraw, the three Confederate Generals, Floyd, Pillow, and
Buckner, met in the basement of the old Dover Hotel, General Floyd's Headquarters, and decided to surrender the Fort and it's
garrison.
Floyd feared capture and being tried and hanged as a traitor because, just prior to the war, he had been the U.S. Secretary
of War in the President Buchanan administration, and as such, he used his authority to move military arms and supplies from
northern, to southern depots, so that those supplies would be available to the Confederacy when the southern states seceded
from the Union, which he was sure was about to happen. So General Floyd passed his Command of Ft. Donelson on to General Pillow.
General Pillow, had been a politician before the war and he too feared being captured, tried, and hung as a traitor.
So, he passed Command on to General Buckner.
General Buckner, accepted the Command, determined to stay with the troops and surrender the Fort to Grant, who happened
to be a close personal friend of Buckner's.
General Buckner delayed sending Grant a letter of surrender until the morning of Feb 16th to give Colonel Nathan B. Forrest
and Generals Floyd and Pillow, time to escape the Union stranglehold on Ft. Donelson.
Colonel Forrest led his 700 Cavalrymen out through the Lick Creek swamps, (along the route of what today is, highway
49, which we rode into Dover on). He then traveled through Cumberland City, Ashland city, and on to Nashville.
General Pillow, escaped in a small boat across the Cumberland River and made his way to Clarksville and eventually on
to Nashville.
General Floyd escaped early on the morning of Feb 16th, when two steamboats docked at the Dover Hotel and took him, along
with a couple of regiments of his beloved Virginia Infantry with him to Nashville.
Following are a few pictures from the Surrender House, (the old Dover Hotel), and the Fort.
