Fort Sanders

At Knoxville, Tennessee, on November 29, 1863, the Knoxville campaign reached its decisive moment when Confederate forces under Lt. Gen. James Longstreet threw themselves against the fortified positions held by Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. The attackers could not pierce the defenses, and the fighting produced casualties heavily skewed against the Confederates. With that failure, the Siege of Knoxville moved into its closing days.

Background

Loyalty to the Union ran deep among East Tennessee's farming population, most of whom fell into the Yeoman class. So strong was this sentiment that Tennessee sent more men fleeing to join Union ranks than every other Confederate state combined, and the bulk of these men hailed from the eastern part of the state. When Burnside took control of Knoxville in September 1863, local residents gave his soldiers relatively few problems. Getting there, however, proved far harder, since the region's steep mountain roads were both punishing to travel and stubbornly held by Confederate defenders.

Captain Orlando M. Poe led the Union engineering effort that produced a series of bastioned earthwork fortifications around Knoxville. Fort Sanders stood among these, positioned west of the downtown area on the far side of a creek valley. Known first as Fort Loudon, this earthen structure ran along Seventeenth Street between Laurel and Clinch before extending eastward along Laurel and Clinch to Sixteenth Street. The fort took its permanent name from Brig. Gen. William P. Sanders, who died of wounds suffered in a skirmish just outside the city on November 18, 1863. Standing as a salient within the ring of earthworks that enclosed three sides of Kn

Battle

On November 29, 1863, the assault went forward with little in the way of sound planning or execution. Longstreet had underestimated the physical challenges his infantry would confront. Peering through field glasses, he had spotted a Union soldier crossing the ditch and, unaware the man had actually used a plank to do so, concluded the ditch itself must be quite shallow. He also assumed his troops could carve out footholds in the steep walls, making scaling ladders unnecessary.

Through a night of sleet and snow, Confederate soldiers crept to within 120 to 150 yards of the salient, waiting there for the command to strike. What followed at daybreak has been called cruel and gruesome by nineteenth century standards. The first obstacle they met was telegraph wire, strung knee high between tree stumps, possibly the earliest use of such entanglements in the war, and numerous soldiers fell to gunfire while struggling to break free of it. Those who made it to the ditch discovered a nearly impossible vertical wall, coated in ice and impossible to grip. Union defenders poured down a storm of musket fire, canister shot, and artillery shells lobbed like grenades. With no way to dig in footholds, attackers resorted to climbing atop one another in hopes of reaching the summit. One color bearer after another fell as they tried to plant their flags atop the fort. Briefly, three banners, belonging to the 16th Georgia, the 13th Mississippi, and the 17th Mississippi, actually made it to the top.

Aftermath

Longstreet had launched his move against Knoxville with two goals in mind: pulling Union forces away from Chattanooga and putting distance between himself and Braxton Bragg, a commander with whom he shared a bitter rivalry. He later admitted the timing had been rushed. Looking back on the planned surprise assault, he recognized how badly it had been organized and carried out. Judging by the casualty numbers alone, the engagement ranked among the most one-sided Union triumphs of the entire war.

The assault on Fort Sanders, measured from the opening artillery barrage to the Confederate collapse and retreat, ran roughly forty minutes in total. Half of that span, about twenty minutes, was consumed by the fierce fight over the parapet itself. Orlando M. Poe, serving as Burnside's chief engineer, later wrote that in all his knowledge of military history he could not recall an instance where an attacking force had come so close to complete destruction, and this happened within that same twenty-minute window. Confederate casualties reached 813 in total, broken down into 129 killed, 458 wounded, and 226 missing. Union losses within the fort itself numbered only around 20, though an additional 30 men were killed or wounded outside its walls by Confederate cannon fire. Lieutenant Benjamin's own tally of Federal casualties inside the fort listed just five dead and eight wounded, a stark contrast to the Confederate toll. The Union side also came away with roughly 250 prisoners and three captured flags.

As Longstreet prepared to pull his forces back, Burnside offered a truce so the Confederates could retrieve their dead and wounded, a gesture of mercy the Confederates deeply valued. Union soldiers carried the fallen out on blankets, hauling them to the midpoint of the open ground between the lines to hand over to Confederate hands. Because many corpses had already stiffened, the Federals were forced to prop them temporarily against the walls of the ditch, now stained with blood. In the end they pul