Men of Fire - 9780465031849

Prior to the battles of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, Union Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant had yet to win a battle and barely clung to command of his army. His commander was already seeking to replace him when, just days before this campaign, Grant was officially charged with chronic drunkenness. Grant's Confederate opponent, an obscure lieutenant colonel named Nathan Bedford Forrest, was similarly untested in battle. Politically, the two men could not have been more different. Forrest had made himself rich before the war trading slaves, while Grant had freed the only slave he ever owned. But the two had something in common: a desperate, unrelenting desire for victory at any cost.
Ill-clad Union and Confederate soldiers endured horrific combat in rain, snow, and sleet. Blood ran thick on both sides; wounded soldiers froze to death on the battlefields. After ten days, Grant won the victory he needed to keep his army and, ultimately, to save the Union itself. It was a turning point for Forrest as well. He had fought bravely but was undone by his superiors: a quarter of history's most flawed generals led the Confederate command. Nonetheless, Forrest emerged from these battles with fifteen bullet marks on his coat and an aura of iron. Forrest was beginning to win the renown that would later account him the continent's greatest horse soldier and one of its most wily, ruthless raiders.
The Fort Henry and Fort Donelson battles forever changed the course of the Civil War - and American history. Grant's dogged aggressiveness opened Tennessee to the Union armies and gashed a wound in Dixie from which the Confederacy would never recover. And, most importantly, Grant saved and launched the career of the individual on whom Federal triumph in the Civil War most depended: himself.