A Startling Announcement

President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, lies in a curtained bed after being woken by a young Black boy who announces that Union troops have taken Fort Donelson--in the background Conderates are pursued by Union soldiers.
The Battle of Fort Henry, February 6, 1862, was the first significant Union victory of the Civil War. In an effort to gain control of rivers and supply lines west of the Appalachians, General Ulysses S. Grant and Commodore Andrew Foote launched an attack on the lightly defended Fort Henry in Tennessee. After a fierce naval bombardment, Confederate Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman secretly evacuated the bulk of his troops to nearby Fort Donelson before surrendering to Union forces. The fall of Fort Henry, followed ten days later by the capture of Fort Donelson, opened up both the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers to Union control, cutting off Confederate access to two key waterways for the remainder of the war.