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The Battle of Fort Donelson was the first major victory for Federal forces and the first decisive battle in the vital area from the Appalachians to the Mississippi. It gave the Federals control of both the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers; led directly to the fall of the first Confederate capital at Nashville and the Battle of Shiloh, and was the beginning of the fame and/or infamy of several Civil War generals, including U.S. Grant, N. B. Forrest, Gideon Pillow and John B. Floyd. It also resulted in the first surrender of an army by a Confederate general, and the largest capture of enemy troops in American history, up to that time.
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During the Civil War, few men had seen camels on the battlefield. But one Mississippi infantry marched into battle with Old Douglas, who served with the Bloody 43rd and died in the Siege of Vicksburg. The regiment became known as the Camel Regiment, and its soldiers carried memories of Old Douglas through the end of the war and until the end of their own lives. They went on to fight in fourteen battles, including Corinth, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Atlanta, Franklin, Nashville and Bentonville before they surrendered at war's end. Author W. Scott Bell's fascination with the Camel Regiment began because his great-great-grandfather fought with them.
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The Chancellorsville Campaign was the true high water mark for both the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac. The campaign would be the Confederates' greatest battle, though it came at the cost of losing General Stonewall Jackson. Although the Confederacy prevailed at Chancellorsville, Hooker used the defeat to institute a multitude of reforms, which paved the way for the hard-fought victory at Gettysburg.