Fort Sanders
| Battle Name: | Fort Sanders |
|---|---|
| Other Names: | Fort Loudon |
| State: | Tennessee |
| Location: | Knox County |
| Campaign: | Knoxville Campaign (1863) |
| Dates: | November 29, 1863 |
| Principal Commanders: | Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside [US]; Lt. Gen. James Longstreet [CS] |
| Forces Engaged: | Department of the Ohio [US]; Confederate Forces in East Tennessee [CS] |
| Estimated Casualties: | 880 total (US 100; CS 780) |
| Description: | In attempting to take Knoxville, the Confederates decided that Fort Sanders was the only vulnerable place where they could penetrate Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside’s fortifications, which enclosed the city, and successfully conclude the siege, already a week long. The fort surmounted an eminence just northwest of Knoxville. Northwest of the fort, the land dropped off abruptly. Confederate Lt. Gen. James Longstreet believed he could assemble a storming party, undetected at night, below the fortifications and, before dawn, overwhelm Fort Sanders by a coup de main. Following a brief artillery barrage directed at the fort’s interior, three Rebel brigades charged. Union wire entanglements--telegraph wire stretched from one tree stump to another to another--delayed the attack, but the fort’s outer ditch halted the Confederates. This ditch was twelve feet wide and from four to ten feet deep with vertical sides. The fort’s exterior slope was almost vertical, also. Crossing the ditch was nearly impossible, especially under withering defensive fire from musketry and canister. Confederate officers did lead their men into the ditch, but, without scaling ladders, few emerged on the scarp side and a small number entered the fort to be wounded, killed, or captured. The attack lasted a short twenty minutes. Longstreet undertook his Knoxville expedition to divert Union troops from Chattanooga and to get away from Gen. Braxton Bragg, with whom he was engaged in a bitter feud. His failure to take Knoxville scuttled his purpose. This was the decisive battle of the Knoxville Campaign. This Confederate defeat, plus the loss of Chattanooga on November 25, put much of East Tennessee in the Union camp. |
| Results: | Union victory |
Related Articles
- Confederate President Jefferson Davis calls for March 27 to be a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer.
- Following the Underground Railroad Route By Bicycle
- March is Women's History Month! Read the fascinating accounts of women spies hiding coded messages in women's hair, conductors of the Underground Railroad, soldiers disguised as men, surgeons, and advisors to the President!
- Teachers tackle race, economic disparity and history
- The President's Hymn: 'Give Thanks All Ye People'
- Thanksgiving Day during the Civil War
- Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation in a divided time: ‘one heart and one voice by the whole American People’
- What Abraham Lincoln found reading the Book of Job amid civil war
- Civil War stories on display at Lincoln Highway museum in Unity
- Who was Henry Benning, for whom Fort Benning in Columbus was named?
- Fort Gordon Army Base: Who was John Brown Gordon?
- From the Civil War to the football field, we have been celebrating the wrong values
- History and Healing: Removing Controversial Artifacts from the Civic Landscape
- How to Reframe the Civil War in the Classroom
- Man scores Abraham Lincoln autograph in box of trading cards
- Native Americans' role in the Civil War
- Abraham Lincoln Healed a Divided Nation. We Should Heed His Words Today.
- An escaped slave was the 'Florence Nightingale’ of Indiana's Civil War regiment
- A Southern Democrat survived impeachment trap and came to be in charge of Reconstruction
- New Statue Unveiled In Response To Richmond's Confederate Monuments