At Camp Wildcat in eastern Kentucky, Union and Confederate forces struggled over a rugged mountain position shaped by the Wilderness Road, a route long seen as a gateway into Kentucky and east Tennessee but one that proved badly worn and of limited military value. President Lincoln turned to Navy officers William “Bull” Nelson and Samuel P. Carter to help organize the Union war effort in the region; Nelson recruited and trained soldiers at Camp Dick Robinson, while Carter selected the site for Camp Wildcat and later became the only man commissioned both a brevet major general in the Army and a rear admiral in the Navy. During the battle, the steep hills, cliffs, and narrow approaches strongly favored the Union defense, especially at Hoosier Knob, where about six hundred Union soldiers from the 33rd Indiana Infantry and 1st Kentucky Cavalry repelled repeated Confederate attacks, including an assault led by Colonel Tazewell Newman in which Company E of the 17th Tennessee suffered severe losses. At one point some Union soldiers panicked and tried to flee, but their officers restored order at gunpoint, and by evening reinforcements had helped strengthen the position with trenches, log breastworks, and heavy cannon hauled up the hill. Both sides used artillery, with Confederate solid shot and log chains answered by Union exploding shells, and the fighting became widely known through newspaper accounts written by soldiers and professional correspondents, though General Schoepf complained bitterly about reporters in camp. The battle was also preserved in its only illustration by Alfred E. Mathews of the 31st Ohio Infantry, who arrived afterward and based his drawing on eyewitness descriptions. Soldiers on both sides worried over families at home, mourned comrades and acquaintances buried far from home, and faced the war’s aftermath in disease, which killed more than two hundred Union soldiers after the battle, far surpassing the four Union deaths in the fighting itself.