The Battle of Philadelphia (October 20, 1863) saw the Confederate cavalry brigades of Colonels J. J. Morrison and George Gibbs Dibrell attack a Union cavalry brigade under Colonel Frank Wolford at Philadelphia, Tennessee, during the Knoxville campaign of the American Civil War. While Dibrell's brigade skirmished with Wolford's cavalrymen, Morrison led his brigade around the west side of Philadelphia to attack the Union force from the rear. Wolford sent half his brigade to counter Morrison's envelopment, but Dibrell's soldiers suddenly attacked. The Confederates completely routed Wolford's troopers, capturing over 400. A Union infantry-cavalry force reoccupied Philadelphia the next day, but a week later it withdrew to the north bank of the Tennessee River, abandoning Loudon, Tennessee.
On March 25, 1863, Major General Ambrose Burnside took command of the Army of the Ohio with the understanding that his assignment was to seize East Tennessee. Burnside's operation was to be made in coordination with a campaign by Major General William Rosecrans and the Army of the Cumberland against Chattanooga, Tennessee. A two-month delay occurred when Burnside's IX Corps was sent to assist in the Siege of Vicksburg. On August 24, 1863, Burnside launched the invasion of East Tennessee, using XXIII Corps troops moving in several columns. Burnside's infantry entered East Tennessee by way of Kingston while a Union cavalry brigade entered Knoxville unopposed on September 1. When Burnside directed his march northeast from Kingston toward Knoxville, he dropped off Brigadier General Julius White's infantry division to hold Loudon.
The nearly bloodless conquest occurred because Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner, the Confederate commander of East Tennessee, evacuated Knoxville on August 22. Following orders, Buckner took 8,000 troops to join the Army of Tennessee, burning the railroad bridge at Loudon and leaving only small garrisons in East Tennessee. On September 9, Brigadier General John W. Frazer surrendered 2,000 Confederates in the Battle of Cumberland Gap after being caught between Union soldiers under Colonel John F. De Courcy on the north side and Burnside's troops on the south side of Cumberland Gap. Soon afterward, the Union army set up a telegraph line connecting Knoxville with Kentucky. Union general-in-chief Major General Henry Halleck urged Burnside to march his forces to join the Army of the Cumberland at Chattanooga, but this could not be done right away. On September 24, the IX Corps troops finally joined Burnside at Knoxville with 6,000 soldiers in two divisions.
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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