Unfortunately, Daniel Smith Donelson left no body of papers, which leaves any biographers, as Richard Douglas Spence contends, to approach their subject through a “historical back door” via Donelson’s legendary uncle and his brother, Andrew Jackson Donelson, who enjoyed a significant political career in his own right. Spence’s biography begins with Donelson’s upbringing at the Hermitage after Donelson’s father died when he was three. From there Spence follows Donelson’s career as a planter, militiaman, state congressman, Civil War general, and finally an administrator overseeing the Confederate Department of East Tennessee. Fort Donelson was named in his honour, and his brigades fought at Cheat Mountain, Perryville, and Murfreesboro (Stones River). He was posthumously promoted to major general after dying of disease on April 17, 1863, at the age of sixty-one.

Spence’s approach reveals aspects of Donelson’s life and career that in many ways rival his Civil War record for importance, providing fresh perspectives on Jackson’s tumultuous presidency and the contentious nature of antebellum politics in Tennessee.