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The final volume of The Papers of Jefferson Davis follows the former president of the Confederacy through the completion of his two monumental works on the history of the Confederate States of America. In the first, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881), Davis sought to recast the Confederacy as a just and moral nation that was constitutionally correct in standing up for its rights. Himself the subject of heated debates about why the Confederacy lost, Davis also used the book to castigate Confederate government and military officials who he believed had failed the cause. Later, A Short History of the Confederate States (1890) attempted to burnish the image of the former Confederacy and to refute accusations of intentional mistreatment of Union prisoners. While completing these books, Davis attended and spoke at numerous Confederate memorial services and monument dedications, all the while waging a bitter feud with two of his former top generals-Joseph E. Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard-over the reasons for the fall of the Confederacy. In late 1889, having returned to New Orleans from a trip to his plantation, Brierfield, Davis succumbed to pneumonia. His funeral procession attracted an estimated 150,000 mourners, a testament to the lasting popularity of the Confederacy's only president. In volume 14 of The Papers of Jefferson Davis, the editors have drawn from over one hundred manuscript repositories and private collections, in addition to numerous published sources, to offer a compelling portrait of Davis over the last decade of his life.
When General Ulysses S. Grant targeted Forts Henry and Donelson, he penetrated the Confederacy at one of its most vulnerable points, setting in motion events that would elevate his own status, demoralize the Confederate leadership and citizenry, and, significantly, tear the western Confederacy asunder. More to the point, the two battles of early 1862 opened the Tennessee River campaign that would prove critical to the ultimate Union victory in the Mississippi Valley. In Grant Invades Tennessee, award-winning Civil War historian Timothy B. Smith gives readers a battlefield view of the fight for Forts Henry and Donelson, as well as a critical wide-angle perspective on their broader meaning in the conduct and outcome of the war. The first comprehensive tactical treatment of these decisive battles, this book completes the trilogy of the Tennessee River campaign that Smith began in Shiloh and Corinth 1862, marking a milestone in Civil War history. Whether detailing command-level decisions or using eye-witness anecdotes to describe events on the ground, walking readers through maps or pulling back for an assessment of strategy, this finely written work is equally sure on matters of combat and context. Beginning with Grant's decision to bypass the Confederates' better-defended sites on the Mississippi, Smith takes readers step-by-step through the battles: the employment of a flotilla of riverine war ships along with infantry and land-based artillery in subduing Fort Henry; the lesser effectiveness of this strategy against Donelson's much stronger defense, weaponry, and fighting forces; the surprise counteroffensive by the Confederates and the role of their commanders' incompetence and cowardice in foiling its success. Though casualties at the two forts fell far short of bloodier Civil War battles to come, the importance of these Union victories transcend battlefield statistics. Grant Invades Tennessee allows us, for the first time, to clearly see how and why.