Civil War Knoxville

Knoxville was a pro-Confederate town of some 3700 persons when Tennessee seceded from the Union in June of 1861, and as the commercial and light manufacturing center of East Tennessee it held strategic importance because the region produced large quantities of wheat, corn, pork, and other foodstuffs, lay near the head of navigation on the Tennessee River, sat on the South’s most direct rail link between Richmond and the Confederate region west of the Appalachian Mountains, and stood near vital mountain passes controlling access to Tennessee from Kentucky. Although Knoxville was a Confederate island in a largely Unionist East Tennessee, the Lincoln Administration long hoped to liberate the region, and in late summer 1863 favorable conditions and military necessity led the Army of the Ohio under Major General Ambrose E. Burnside to invade and occupy East Tennessee, with the XXIII Corps marching through the Cumberland Mountains toward Knoxville and the IX Corps returning from Vicksburg under General U.S. Grant to rejoin the army in Tennessee. The invasion aimed to cut the railroad between Virginia and the western Confederacy, deny the Confederacy East Tennessee’s food resources, gain the strategic mountain passes, liberate the largely Unionist population, deny use of Knoxville’s mills, foundries, and arsenal, and protect the vulnerable flank of William S. Rosencran’s Federal Army of the Cumberland during operations in northern Alabama and Georgia. In response, the Confederacy sent an army under Lt. General James Longstreet into East Tennessee in November and December 1863 to retake the region and destroy Burnside’s army, and the main battles around Knoxville determined the fate of the region through the end of the war.

Knoxville, Tennessee · United States