The First Nebraska Regiment's baptism of fire during the Civil War occurred 150 years ago today, Feb. 15, 1862.
Mid-February marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Fort Donelson, fought in the tangled, snow-covered woods of northwestern Tennessee.
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Union troops laid siege Feb. 13 to Confederate fortifications surrounding the town of Dover, fortifications that guarded the vital Cumberland River route to Nashville, says the Nebraska State Historical Society.
Thousands of Confederate defenders were bottled up in their trenches. The First Nebraska Volunteer Infantry helped ensure they would not escape and made an important contribution to one of the first Union victories of the Civil War, said James Potter of Chadron, Neb., a senior research historian at the society.
Potter said Nebraskans can be proud of the regiment's role in the pivotal battle.
To read more about it, see the historical society's blog at http://blog.nebraskahistory.org/
The story also is told in Benjamin Franklin Cooling's article, "The First Nebraska Infantry and the Battle of Fort Donelson," in Nebraska History 45 (June 1964), and Cooling's, "Forts Henry and Donelson: The Key to the Confederate Heartland," (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987).
Potter's book, "Standing Firmly By the Flag: Nebraska Territory, the Civil War, and the Coming of Statehood, 1860-1867,'' will be published by University of Nebraska Press in January 2013.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1127, david.hendee@owh.com
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