The Battle of Morristown took place during the American Civil War in present-day Hamblen County, Tennessee on October 28, 1864. Union forces under General Alvan C. Gillem attacked Confederate forces under General John C. Vaughn who were defending Morristown, Tennessee. Vaughn's Confederates were routed and Gillem's forces pursued them into nearby Russellville, Tennessee.
Morristown, Tennessee sat at the crossroads of the East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad and the turnpike to Cumberland Gap. This railroad location meant that troops were moving through Morristown as early as Spring 1861. The town would remain a key military crossroads for the rest of the war. At the time, it was a small collection of buildings surrounded by open farm land. Shortly after becoming Abraham Lincoln's running mate for the election of 1864, Andrew Johnson began working on removing Confederate resistance in East Tennessee. Johnson sent Brigadier General Alvan C. Gillem to establish civil law and protect loyal mountaineers. In October 1864, Brigadier General John C. Vaughn's Confederate forces captured the railroad depot at Bull's Gap, before taking up positions southwest at Morristown. Gillem moved his Union forces from New Market, Tennessee to Morristown in order to dislodge Vaughn out of East Tennessee and capture his men. The Union troops reached Mossy Creek (now Jefferson City) and Panther Creek, just west of Morristown, on October 27.
In preparing his defenses, Vaughn deployed his Confederate forces into two lines. The first line, dismounted, ran west of the town for around a mile long. The second line, also about a mile long, was east of the town and was most likely flanked on both sides with artillery. One section of artillery was stationed where Morristown College (now Fulton-Hill Park) used to be.
On the morning of October 28, 1864, Gillem's Union brigade arrived at the battlefield around 9 o'clock coming from the west. On his approach to Morristown, he was engaged by about 100 Confederates under the command of Col. James Rose (namesake of Morristown's Rose Center). They were sent by Vaughn to scout the size of the Union army. This forced Gillem's forces to deploy as Col. Rose returned to Vaughn to report the superior Union force. Upon nearing the first Confederate line, Gillem's artillery deployed itself to his right flank and opened fire on the Confederate left, whose artillery promptly returned fire. A brigade of Gillem's Union cavalry charged the center and the right of the first Confederate line under fire. There, they slammed into the Rebels and began to push them back. The Confederate left, seeing the charge develop on their right, used dismounted forces from the first line and cavalry from the second line to attack the Union right. Despite initially pushing the Union line back, the Confederates failed to break through.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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