Just five minutes ago, we stood where the brutal assault of Fort Sanders took place. Now, as you look to your right, let's zoom out to examine the larger machine that drove those men into that trench... the Knoxville campaign.
In the fall of eighteen sixty-three, President Abraham Lincoln had his eye on East Tennessee. The region was rich in grain and livestock, but more importantly, it controlled the vital railroad corridor linking the Confederacy east and west. Enter Union Major General Ambrose Burnside. Burnside bypassed heavily defended mountain gaps, marching eighteen thousand troops over rugged roads... sometimes thirty miles a day... to secure the city. Needing a suitable headquarters, Burnside simply commandeered the home of the Croziers, a prominent family of Confederate sympathizers who had fled. He made himself right at home, even taking time to compliment their excellent personal library.
When Burnside occupied the city, the Civil War in Knoxville quickly devolved into a vicious, localized guerrilla war. Burnside actively commissioned local Unionist guerrillas to spy on and ambush Confederate forces. This irregular warfare... bushwhacking... turned neighbors against one another. These divided loyalties tore the community apart, plunging the region into a state of absolute lawlessness.
Remember J.G.M. Ramsey from our earlier stops? His extensive historical archives were burned to ash during this exact campaign... a bitter casualty of a community destroying its own memory in the name of war.
To break Burnside's grip, Confederate General James Longstreet arrived with ten thousand freezing, under-supplied men. Their journey was a spectacular logistical nightmare. The trains were pulled by underpowered locomotives that could not negotiate the steep mountain grades. The engineers had insufficient wood for fuel, forcing the men to stop and dismantle wooden fences along the tracks just to keep the boilers burning.
Once they finally arrived, Longstreet commandeered Bleak House, a massive pre-Civil War mansion, using its high tower for sharpshooters. In a tragic twist of irony, the Confederate artillery chief directing that sector was Colonel Edward Porter Alexander. From that tower, a sniper fatally shot Union cavalry chief General William P. Sanders... who happened to be Alexander's former roommate and close friend at West Point, the United States military academy. Fearing the loss of the popular general would crush morale, Burnside ordered the death of Sanders kept a strict secret. His body was hidden inside the Lamar House hotel and buried at midnight with only a few officers in attendance.
After the lopsided bloodbath at Fort Sanders... engineered brilliantly by Captain Orlando Poe... Longstreet was out of options. When word arrived that the Union had broken the siege at Chattanooga and General William Tecumseh Sherman was marching twenty-five thousand troops to relieve Knoxville, Longstreet abandoned the siege. He withdrew his troops into the bitter Appalachian mountains, leaving Knoxville firmly in Union hands.
This campaign left the city battered. Its homes were occupied, its people alienated, and its history reduced to embers. Yet, Knoxville survived. The city you have explored on this tour is defined by this exact struggle... a relentless fight against utter destruction, met always by a stubborn, fierce drive to rebuild and protect its legacy. We have seen it in saved theaters, preserved mansions, and scarred battlegrounds.
