Civil War Battlefield and National Cemetery on the Cumberland River
120 Fort Donelson Park Road, Dover, TN 37058
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Park admission is free.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved auto tour route, accessible visitor center, mowed grass at cemetery and earthworks
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1862 · National Park Service Site · Civil War Battlefield · National Cemetery · Ulysses S. Grant Surrender Site · Union First Major Victory · Cumberland River Campaign · National Park Service Unit · Site of Confederate Surrender
Fort Donelson National Battlefield occupies the bluffs above the Cumberland River near Dover, Tennessee. The site preserves the earthworks, river batteries, and surrounding ground where Confederate and Union forces fought from February 11 through February 16, 1862. The battle, alongside the simultaneous capture of Fort Henry to the west, opened the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers to Federal naval traffic and forced the Confederate evacuation of much of Tennessee.
Union Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant commanded the army that invested the fort, working in conjunction with Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote's gunboat flotilla. After three days of fighting that included a failed Confederate breakout attempt, Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner requested terms. Grant's reply demanding 'unconditional and immediate surrender' became the line that gave him the nickname Unconditional Surrender Grant. The surrender was finalized at the Dover Hotel, today preserved as the Surrender House within the park.
Following the war, Fort Donelson National Cemetery was established in 1867 on roughly 15 acres adjacent to the fort site. The cemetery contains 670 Union dead, the majority reinterred from temporary battlefield burials. Confederate dead were largely interred on the battlefield itself; the precise locations of those burials are not documented and a single obelisk near the park entrance commemorates the unknown Confederate graves.
The National Park Service administers the battlefield, the river batteries, the Surrender House, and the national cemetery. Fort Heiman, on the Kentucky side of the Tennessee River, is a separate unit of the same park.
Sources
Folklore associated with Fort Donelson National Battlefield centers on the cemetery. The Shadowlands Haunted Places Index entry describes the residual presence of a Union infantryman identified as Reuben Hammond, said to view his role as standing watch over the dead and to welcome verbal greeting from visitors. The account describes Hammond following visitors through the cemetery and waving from the high ground near the entrance as they leave. A name corresponding to Hammond is reported by the Shadowlands contributor to appear in the cemetery records held at the Surrender House.
The National Park Service does not include this account in its formal interpretive material, and the story does not appear in published Civil War-era memoirs or in the academic battlefield literature. It functions as visitor folklore — a category of contemporary cemetery legend rather than a documented paranormal investigation.
Visitors to the cemetery are asked to behave with respect appropriate to a national burial ground. Investigation activity, equipment use, and disturbance of headstones are not permitted, and the site's interpretive focus remains on the soldiers buried there and the events of February 1862.
Drive the National Park Service's auto tour route through the 1862 battlefield, with stops at the Confederate Monument, the river batteries above the Cumberland, and the Surrender House where Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant.
Walk the 15-acre national cemetery established in 1867 for Union dead reinterred from the surrounding battlefield. The cemetery contains 670 Union soldiers and sailors and continues to receive veteran burials.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Shiloh, TN
The Battle of Shiloh on April 6 and 7, 1862, was the bloodiest engagement in American history to that point, producing 23,746 combined casualties. Congress established the battlefield as one of the first four national military parks in 1894; the National Park Service has administered it since 1933.
Fernandina Beach, FL
Fort Clinch on Amelia Island in northeast Florida is a Third System masonry coastal fort begun in 1847 and never fully completed. The fort changed hands twice during the American Civil War, served briefly as a Spanish-American War garrison, and is now operated as Fort Clinch State Park by the Florida Park Service.
Savannah, GA
Fort Pulaski is a brick coastal fort on Cockspur Island at the mouth of the Savannah River, constructed between 1829 and 1847. The April 1862 Union bombardment with new rifled cannon breached the fort's masonry walls in 30 hours, demonstrating that masonry forts had become obsolete. In late 1864 the fort held the Immortal Six Hundred, Confederate officers held in retaliation; thirteen died on the island.