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By Root 6652 0

Writing to his sister, he assured her that her “plain brother however has, as yet, had no reason to feel himself unequal to the task.” This was not a boast, he said, but “a presentiment” that proved accurate a few days later when he surrounded the rebel forces at Fort Donelson and began his successful assault. After many had died, the Confederate commander, Kentucky native General Simon Buckner, proposed a cease-fire “and appointment of commissioners to settle terms of capitulation.” On February 16, Grant telegraphed back the historic words that would define both his character and career: “No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.” Buckner and fifteen thousand Confederate soldiers were taken prisoner.

More than a thousand troops on both sides were killed and three times that number wounded. It was “a most bloody fight,” a young Union soldier told his father, so devastating to his company that despite the victory, he remained “sad, lonely and down-hearted.” Only seven of the eighty-five men in his unit survived, but “the flag was brought through.”

The North was jubilant upon receiving news of Grant’s triumph at Donelson, the first substantial Union victory in the war. Hundred-gun salutes were fired in celebrations across the land. The capital city was “quite wild with Excitement.” In the Senate, “the gallery rose en masse and gave three enthusiastic cheers.” Elaborate plans were made to illuminate the capital’s public buildings in joint celebration of the double victory and George Washington’s birthday.

The day after Grant’s victory at Donelson, the president signed papers promoting him to major general. Lincoln had been following the Western general since he had read the gracious proclamation Grant issued when he had marched into Paducah, Kentucky, the previous fall. “I have come among you, not as an enemy,” he told the Kentuckians, “but as your friend and fellow-citizen.” Reports that “Grant had taken the field with only a spare shirt, a hair brush, and a tooth brush” made comparisons between “Western hardihood” and McClellan’s “Eastern luxury” inevitable; it was well known that “six immense four-horse wagons” had arrived at McClellan’s door to carry his clothes and other items to the front.

Fort Donelson’s capture provided the Union with a strategic foothold in the South. After a ghastly battle at Shiloh two months later left twenty thousand casualties on both sides, the Union would go on to secure Memphis and the entire state of Tennessee. These victories would soon be followed by the capture of New Orleans.

THE COUNTRY’S EXULTATION at Grant’s victory at Donelson found no echo in the White House. Willie’s condition had grown steadily worse since the White House ball, and Tad, too, had become ill. It is believed that both boys had contracted typhoid fever, likely caused by the unsanitary conditions in Washington. The White House drew its water supply from the Potomac River, along the banks of which tens of thousands of troops without proper latrines were stationed. Perhaps because his constitution had been weakened by his earlier bout with scarlet fever, Willie was affected by the bacterial infection more severely than his brother Tad. He “grew weaker and more shadow-like” as the debilitating symptoms of his illness took their toll—high fever, diarrhea, painful cramps, internal hemorrhage, vomiting, profound exhaustion, delirium.

Tending to both boys, Mary “almost wore herself out with watching,” Commissioner French observed. She canceled the customary Saturday receptions and levees. For Lincoln, too, it was an agonizing period. Nicolay reported that the president gave “pretty much all his attention” to his sons, but the grim business of conducting the war could not be avoided.

Slipping in and out of consciousness, Willie would call for his friend Bud Taft, who sat by his bedside day and night. Late one evening, seeing Bud at his son’s side, Lincoln “laid his arm across Bud’s shoulder and stroked Willie’s hair.” Turning to Bud, he said quietly, “You ought to go to bed, Bud,” but Bud