Daniel Smith Donelson

In June of 1863, Col. William P. Sanders led a cavalry raid of 1,300 men from the Union Army of the Ohio through Confederate-held East Tennessee. The raid severed the Confederate rail supply line from Virginia to the Western Theater and made national headlines. Until now, this incredible feat has been relegated to a footnote in the voluminous history of the American Civil War. In Yankee Commandos, Stuart Brandes presents readers with the most complete account of the Sanders raid to date by using newly discovered and under-explored materials, such as Sanders’s official reports and East Tennessee diaries and memoirs in which Sanders is chronicled. The book presents important details of a cavalry raid through East Tennessee that further turned the tide of war for the Union in the Western Theater. It also sheds light on the raid’s effect on the divided civilian population of East Tennessee, where, unlike the largely pro-secession populations of Middle and West Tennessee, the fraction of enlisted men to the Union cause rose to nearly a quarter. Colonel Sanders remains an enigma of the American Civil War. (He was a cousin of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and his father and three brothers donned Confederate gray at the outbreak of the war.) By studying the legend of Sanders and his raid, Brandes fills an important gap in Civil War scholarship and in the story of Unionism in a mostly Confederate-sympathizing state.

"Richard Douglas Spence has written a biography of Daniel Smith Donelson, a soldier and politician and the nephew of Andrew Jackson. Spence begins with Donelson's upbringing at the Hermitage after Donelson's father died when he was five and follows Donelson's career as a planter, militiaman, state congressman, and finally a general overseeing the Confederate Department of East Tennessee. Fort Donelson was named in his honor, and his brigades fought at Stones River, Perryville, and Murfreesboro before he was transferred to Charleston, South Carolina. He was posthumously promoted to major general after dying of disease on April 17, 1863, at the age of sixty-one"--

Native Tennessee generals, about forty Confederate and six Union, are profiled here with brief biographies. Forrest, Polk, Stewart, and many more are discussed with regard to their childhoods, prewar vocations, participation in battles around the country, and life after the war if they survived.

Andrew Donelson became the president's private secretary, and Emily assumed the role of White House hostess, filling a void left by the death of Jackson's beloved wife, Rachel, shortly after the election.".

Rachel Jackson, wife of President Andrew Jackson, never wanted to be First Lady and tried to dissuade her husband from his political ambitions. Yet she publicly supported his political advancement and was the first wife of a presidential candidate to take to the campaign trail. Privy to his political decisions, she offered valued counsel, and Jackson sometimes regretted not taking her advice. Denied a traditional education by her father, Rachel's innate business savvy made the Jacksons' Tennessee plantation and businesses profitable during her husband's continual absences. This biography chronicles the life of a First Lady who rebelled against 19th-century constraints on women, overcame personal tragedies to become an inspirational figure of persistence and strength, and found herself at the center of one of the vilest presidential smear campaigns in history.

This richly detailed biography of Andrew Jackson Donelson (1799-1871) sheds new light on the political and personal life of this nephew and namesake of Andrew Jackson. A scion of a pioneering Tennessee family, Donelson was a valued assistant and trusted confidant of the man who defined the Age of Jackson. One of those central but background figures of history, Donelson had a knack for being where important events were happening and knew many of the great figures of the age. As his uncle's secretary, he weathered Old Hickory's tumultuous presidency, including the notorious "Petticoat War." Building his own political career, he served as US chargé d'affaires to the Republic of Texas, where he struggled against an enigmatic President Sam Houston, British and French intrigues, and the threat of war by Mexico, to achieve annexation. As minister to Prussia, Donelson enjoyed a ringside seat to the revolutions of 1848 and the first attempts at German unification. A firm Unionist in the mold of his uncle, Donelson denounced the secessionists at the Nashville Convention of 1850. He attempted as editor of the Washington Union to reunite the Democratic party, and, when he failed, he was nominated as Millard Fillmore's vice-presidential running mate on the Know-Nothing party ticket in 1856. He lived to see the Civil War wreck the Union he loved, devastate his farms, and take the lives of two of his sons.

Rogin shows us a Jackson who saw the Indians as a menace to the new nation and its citizens. This volatile synthesis of liberal egalitarianism and an assault on the American Indians is the source of continuing interest in the sobering and important book.

Brief family histories of people who lived in Tennessee in the 18th and 19th centuries.