Knoxville was now delivered from the rebel rule; and the inhabitants hailed the presence of their deliverers with the warmest tokens of joy. Recruits flocked to the Union army by hundreds, from all the surrounding country, much faster than they could be either armed or clad.
Though the capture of Knoxville was an easy enterprise on the part of General Burnside, its retention promised to be a work of great difficulty. He was two hundred and fifty miles from the base of his supplies in Kentucky, and on either side of him were the two great armies of the rebellion—Lee on the east, and Bragg on the south. The country in the neighborhood swarmed with guerrillas, and important posts in the vicinity were liable to, and subjected to frequented attacks from the Confederate forces, yet too feeble to attack the main Union army. Clothes and shoes began to fail, and economy became necessary in all means of subsistence. The disastrous battle of Chickamauga, which imperilled the existence of General Rosecrans’ army, tended to increase the difficulties of General Burnside.
During the month of November it became certain that General Longstreet had been detached from the army of General Bragg, with the design of attacking General Burnside, at Knoxville. After fortifying the city in such manner as to insure confidence in his ability to maintain it, General Burnside advanced to meet his antagonist, cautiously luring him on, to invite his withdrawal from the support of Bragg, and finally falling back within the defences of Knoxville, on the 17th of November, with the rebel army pressing close upon his rear. The Union army was informed that there was now to be no more retreating. The old defences were strengthened and new ones erected, rifle-pits dug, and trees felled to resist the approach of the besiegers.
The city lies on the north bank of the Holston river, and a range of hills protects it on the west. The rebels, therefore, prepared to attack the defences from the north and east. Their line extended in a circular form, with their right touching the river, thus cutting off all water communication, and the supplies of the army were thenceforward to be obtained by forage trains alone. A long siege was not feared by General Burnside, as he had the promise of assistance from General Grant, who had just been called to the command of the army confronting Bragg. The brilliant victories of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge now enabled General Grant to hasten forward the expected succor. Of this fact Longstreet soon became informed, but as he had confidently anticipated the capture of the city and its defenders, he was loth to leave his anticipated prey without a desperate and hasty effort for its seizure. He would try to carry Knoxville by storm.
One of the principal defences of the place was called Fort Sanders, in honor of a brave general who had fallen in the early part of the siege. It was situated on a high hill on the northeast corner of the town, and was composed of well-planned earthworks. This fort commanded the approaches to the city both from the north and east, and its capture was a necessity before the assailants could enter Knoxville. The sides of the hill had been covered with a dense forest of pine, which had been felled, and now presented an abattis or network of brush or timber, almost impassable, to within two or three hundred yards of the fort, where a cleared space intervened, affording free range for grape or canister. The works consisted of a ditch and parapet.
Three picked regiments were assigned the duty of storming this fort by General Longstreet. On the night of the twenty-eighth of November these regiments succeeded in pushing their way through the pine abattis, reaching the edge of the clearing, after a short interval of skirmishing with the defenders, and lay on their arms at the edge of the abattis until daybreak on the morning of the twenty-ninth, when a charge was ordered. A scene of carnage and desperate valor now ensued, which had many parallels during this fratricidal war. As the rebels advanced across the open space, a furious storm of grape and canister met them, and decimated their ranks. A network of unseen wires, which had been interlaced across the approach, now entangled their ranks, and threw many of the men to the ground, who were trampled under feet by their comrades. The air was filled with the whiz of minie balls. Yet still the intrepid assailants rushed on, over the bodies of their dead and wounded comrades, until they reached the ditch, where they encountered a continuous storm of hand-grenades thrown into the midst of the struggling mass, and exploding with horrible effect. One of the assailants reached the parapet, and waved a Confederate flag, only to be hurled into the ditch the next instant, a mangled corpse. None of the rebels entered the fort, while scores lay dead before it. The whole force of the garrison was but three hundred—far less than the dead and dying who strewed the ground around it. The Federal loss was four killed and eleven wounded.
General Longstreet, now despairing of success, abandoned the siege, and retreated southward. On the sixth of December General Sherman entered the city with reinforcements, and railroad communication with Chattanooga was opened.
OPERATIONS IN TENNESSEE.
September 20-December 31, 1863.
The great battle of Chickamauga, ending on the 20th of September, 1863, resulted, as we have seen, in no material advantage to the rebels and in no additional success to the arms of the Union. It was substantially an equal and a fruitless contest—“a drawn battle.” Upon both sides the losses were very heavy. General Rosecrans lost sixteen thousand eight hundred and fifty-one men, all told, and a large quantity of material of war. General Bragg, on the other hand, lost eighteen thousand. Upward of two thousand rebels were captured by the National troops.
On the 2d of October, General Rosecrans issued the following order, dated at the Headquarters of the Department of the Cumberland, at Chattanooga.