The Battle of Fort Sanders was the critical event of Longstreet's 18 day siege of Knoxville TN. From November 17 to December 4, 1863 the veterans of the Army of the Potomac under Burnside & the Army of Northern Virginia faced off in a reverse of fortunes. It was the AoP that was on friendly ground surrounded by the Unionists of East Tennessee. The AoNV was the invader forced to attack a defender standing behind well prepared defenses. Longstreet surrounded & cut Knoxville off from supplies from outside. Like all besiegers, time was not on his side. Forced to forage from the sparse mountainous country & suffer the brutal cold of an El Niño winter, there was a real limit to how long his corps could stay in place.
Assault on Fort Sanders. Library of Congress
The weakest link in Burnside's defenses was Fort Sanders, a recycled Confederate earthwork. On the night of November 28, Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws' proud veterans drove in the picket line in front of Fort Sanders. Alerted to their peril, the garrison prepared for what was intended to be a surprise assault on the 29th. McLaws men rushed forward, rebel yell echoing off the surrounding hills. Their yipping turned to shouts of a very different kind when they discovered a telegraph wire obstruction. The front line tripped & were trampled by following lines that became entangled in a grid pattern of ankle high wires stretched between wooden stakes. The lay of the land forced the attackers to funnel into a narrow approach to the deceptively weak walls of Fort Sanders.
The glacis of the fort hid a ditch 8 feet deep in places. (A glacis is a wide wedge of earth in front of the wall of an earthwork designed to absorb or glance incoming cannon balls over the wall.) During a frigid day of preparation, Burnside's men had poured water onto the earthen walls & it pooled in the ditch between the glacis & the wall. Professionally cited artillery & infantry positions poured a concentrated crossfire into McLaws' men.
In a scene right out of a medieval siege, the defenders hurled axes, lighted shells lengths of split wood down on the attackers packed against the frozen face of the fort. A small forlorn hope did manage to penetrate the defenses, but was immediately overwhelmed. From start to finish, the attack lasted 20 minutes. Faced with the prospect of retracing their steps through the wire obstruction under withering fire, McLaws veterans who were still alive accepted their fate & gave up. 813, 1/4 of whom were prisoners, were lost in the assault. Five dead & eight wounded was the butcher's bill for the defenders. The triumphant veterans of Burnside's disaster in Virginia chanted a taunting, 'Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg!" When Longstreet heard that Sherman was advancing up the valley from Chattanooga, he ordered the siege lifted & withdrew into upper East Tennessee & went into winter quarters. In the spring, after what my friend who studies this campaign calls the "Valley Forge of the AoNV," Lee ordered Longstreet back to Virginia.
Note:
The earthworks of Fort Sanders are largely intact amid a neighborhood in Knoxville. Confederate earthworks have also been preserved.
<visitknoxville.com> Civil War Driving Tour online or call (800) 727-8045.
Bleak House / Confederate Memorial Hall is a restored antebellum Classical Revival style house that should be included on any tour of the Knoxville area. It was Longstreet's HQ during the siege of Knoxville. Regular tours are Wed.-Friday 1 to 4:00 PM March through December. It is operated. by Chapter 89 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
I have a curious personal connection with Bleak House. In my youthful stash of Civil War reading materials, including a comic book like history filled with extremely gory full color illustrations, there was a booklet or brochure about Bleak House printed by the UDC. It was a prime example of Lost Cause puffery. It was only during a college trip to the Smoky Mountains that I learned that Knoxville was a disastrous defeat for the noble Virginians under Longstreet. It was a head shaking what the... revelation. It was a major crack in the crust of Lost Cause disinformation that had to be shattered before I could begin a lifelong quest to understand what brought on the war & how it was fought.
Also on a personal level, the print I used to illustrate this posting is a typical piece of Lost Cause puffery. The noble Virginians are depicted as charing manfully & pouring over the wall of the fort in apparent victory. With the exception of the man in the lower right corner, who apparently is a reenacter cannoneer with his hand on his ear, everybody is bullet proof. In fact, the scene should depict bodies piled one atop another & men fleeing in confusion. It is images like this that I bought into as a young person & had to unlearn as an adult. I think it is very important that those of us who study the Civil War to debunk romanticization & misinformation.