its young men enlisted in the army, and its devoted women nursed the wounded in the hospitals.
Unhappily, Fort Donelson soon fell; the Federal gunboats steamed up the river; General Buell and his troops appeared on the north bank of the Cumberland, and in February, 1862, the proud city was forced to surrender to the Union army.
Nashville became a vast military camp. Federal brigades and divisions marched through its streets and camped in the beautiful woodland parks about the city. A cordon of elaborate forts and earthworks was built along the chain of suburban hills to the south and west. An imposing fortress soon encircled the stately Capitol building, in the very heart of the city, and towered threateningly above the homes of its people. Its battlements and sharp angles, the very porticos of the Capitol, bristled with cannon. It became the central citadel of Federal defence. The fierce cannonade that announced the bloody battle at Murfreesboro, thirty miles away, could almost be heard by the anxious mothers and friends within the walls at Nashville.
General N. B. Forrest, with his cavalry force,
