"The Forts Henry and Donelson - or Twin Rivers - Campaign of 1862 was one of the decisive campaigns in the American Civil War. The fall of the two forts, on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers in the West, handed the Confederacy its first major defeat, bolstered Northern enthusiasm for war, and opened an invasion route to Nashville and the deeper South. While the South ignored the western rivers, the north grasped their strategic and symbolic importance in American life. Union gunboats plied these rivers in an unusual show of cooperation between Union army and navy."--Book Jacket.