Two Armies, One Railroad

When 11 southern states broke their ties with the U.S. government in spring 1861, military commanders on both sides of these mountains calculated how to use Cumberland Gap to aid their cause. Federal commanders saw the Gap as one way to cut the Confederacy in two, helped by strong anti-secession sentiment in East Tennessee and the mountain counties. Confederate generals saw the Gap as a favored defense against Union strikes that might cripple the saltworks, mines, and railroads vital to their war effort, and also as a route to invade Kentucky and reclaim its resources for the Confederacy. During the Civil War years, the only railroad crossing the Appalachian mountains linked the two largest Confederate armies, so troops, ammunition, and food moving from one side of the Confederacy to the other had to funnel through East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. Confederate and Federal troops each garrisoned forts in Cumberland Gap twice.

Kentucky · United States