Fort Dickerson 1863–64

Fort Dickerson was one of sixteen Federal forts and battery emplacements constructed around Knoxville during the Civil War. Temporary earthworks were thrown up here in November 1863, and the fort, designed by Capt. Orlando M. Poe, Chief Engineer of the Army of the Ohio, was completed between December 1863 and February 1864 by the 21st Ohio Artillery Battery. Irregular in shape and built of earth and timber, it had 25 gun embrasures that allowed defenders to move cannon to the area under attack, though only four to six cannon were usually stationed there. The forts surrounding Knoxville were named for Federal officers who died during the Knoxville Campaign, and Fort Dickerson honored Capt. Jonathan C. Dickerson of the 112th Illinois Mounted Infantry, who was killed in action at Cleveland, TN. Rising 200 feet above Knoxville and the Holston, now Tennessee, River, and flanked by Fort Higley on the west and Fort Stanley on the east, it was designed to protect Knoxville from the south and guard the roads from Maryville and Sevierville. The fort came under direct attack only once, during the early stages of Confederate Gen. James Longstreet’s campaign to capture Knoxville, when Confederate Gen. “Fightin’ Joe” Wheeler, ordered to take the heights opposite Knoxville, surprised the Federal cavalry outpost at Maryville on the morning of November 14, 1863, with 4,500 cavalry. The attack alerted Gen. William P. Sanders’ Federal Cavalry Division of 1,500 men at Rockford, and although badly outnumbered, Sanders fought a series of delaying actions that gave the Federals time to dig rudimentary earthworks and man the fort with artillery and infantry. After exchanging artillery and small arms fire, Wheeler concluded the heights could not be easily taken and, because of the formidable heights, steep slopes, and unexpected firepower, decided further attacks would be too costly in men and time. The Confederates retreated southward and rejoined Longstreet’s force after the Battle of Campbell’s Station on November 16th. Though Fort Dickerson has survived for over 140 years, it is now only a shell of the 1864 fort, with its parapet reduced, its gun embrasures faint, its powder magazine collapsed, and its dry ditch partly filled, yet it remains an enduring reminder of East Tennessee’s role in the Civil War.

Knoxville, Tennessee · United States