Battery D First Rhode Island Light Artillery in the Civil War

by George C. Sumner

The line of defence established commenced at a point on the river and ran at nearly right angles with the river to a fort which the enemy had commenced on a hill north of the Kingston road and about a thousand yards in front and to the right of the College. From this point it ran along and nearly parallel to the river, across Second and First Creeks, over Temperance Hill to Mabey's Hill near to Bell's house, thence to the Holston River.

Our forces at this time in Knoxville numbered about twelve thousand effective men, exclusive of the new recruits of loyal Tennesseeans. The enemy was estimated at from twenty to twenty-three thousand, including cavalry.

In the line of our defence occurred the following strategic points: College, Loudon, Summit, Temperance, and Mabey's Hills, all of them of considerable height, and upon these hills were built forts of varying strength, those upon Loudon, Summit, and Temperance Hills being bastioned earthworks, protected by ditches of considerable depth and width, while those upon the other hills were merely earthworks without ditches. The parapets of all these forts were protected by cotton bales, covered with raw hides.

Upon Loudon Hill was constructed by far the most important work of the entire system. As has before been intimated, this fort was commenced by the enemy before Knoxville was occupied by the Army of the Ohio. From its strategic situation, coupled with the fact that the single assault made by the enemy upon our lines during the siege of Knoxville was upon this fort, when a force of less than three hundred men successfully repelled and disastrously defeated nearly four thousand picked men from Gen. Longstreet's army, it would seem to require a somewhat detailed account of its principal features.

There have been several different ideas expounded in relation to the build of Fort Sanders (called by the enemy Fort Loudon); the atlas accompanying the War Records has been taken as the most accurate one, but that differs very materially from what was built as Fort Sanders. Capt. Poe, Chief Engineer of the Army of the Ohio, laid out the works in quite an elaborate style, but on our arrival at Knoxville we went to work on the old fort that the Confederates had started, on Loudon Hill. The bastion on the extreme northwest corner was where the members of our battery put in hard labor with pick and shovel, and when it was completed we had a good defensible work. Perhaps it was not not quite up to the engineer's idea; every fort is expected to have a berme, ours did not; the western face of the bastion was as near a straight line as possible; the line from the bastion running to the Kingston road took a slight curve outward (or towards the west).

The following are the dimensions as we knew them at that time, and by actual measurements:

Starting at the northwest corner of the bastion it ran about south four hundred feet, then east one hundred and thirty-five feet, then south to the Kingston road, six hundred and seventy feet; from the northwest corner of the bastion running east one hundred and fifteen feet, then southeast eighty feet, then in an easterly direction until it reached the creek at the foot of the hill.

When we arrived at the fort it was simply a rifle-pit, but in two or three days it was in good shape. The irregularity of the site was such that the parapets of the bastion varied in height, the one on the north being thirteen feet, while the western front was twelve feet. The ditch on the west was twelve feet wide and eight feet deep; on the north it was eight feet deep at the corner of the bastion, and ran back to almost nothing at the northeast angle; on the south side of the bastion the ditch ran from eight feet deep to about a level where it joined the line running south. There was one embrasure on the west and one on the north side of the bastion. On the northwest angle the ground was built up so that a gun could be fired in barbette.

The line running south was quite heavy, where it joined the bastion, and had four embrasures, which were occupied by Benjamin's regular battery. As the line ran down the hill it was lighter, being about four feet with no ditch, or only a slight one where dirt had been thrown up from the outside, except in two places where the ground inside the breastworks had been dug lower to allow a piece of artillery to be placed and an embrasure cut in.

In front of the northwest angle of the bastion Capt. Poe had some telegraph wire stretched from stump to stump. Some time after the siege was over a fort was built south of the bastion, so as to command the ditch on the west, but during the siege there was no line of fire that could enfilade the ditch on the west side of the bastion.