The Battle
of Fort Sanders a part of the Knoxville Campaign was fought November 29th
1863, hastening the end of the Siege of Knoxville.
When a Union
force occupied Knoxville, Tennessee, engineer Captain Orlando M Poe built
several earthwork fortifications around the city, including Fort Sanders to the
west of Knoxville. The Fort was 70 feet
higher than the surrounding plateau, and included a ditch 12 feet wide and 4 to
10 feet deep. The fort was held by 440
men of the 79th New York Infantry with 12 cannon.
Confederate
Lieutenant General James Longstreet was ordered to the area of Knoxville to
prevent Union Major General Ambrose E Burnside from moving his troops to
support Union troops at Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Longstreet decided that Fort Sanders was the best place to attempt a
break in the Union line.
On November
29th 1863 the assault began, which quickly went wrong due to poor
planning and unknown obstacles the Confederate soldier would run into. In the very early morning hours Longstreet’s
men moved to within 130 yards of the Fort, and then waited for dawn in a
freezing rain. The men first encountered
telegraph wire which had been strung about knee high, then reaching the ditch
they found the ground to steep, frozen and slippery to get up. The Union soldiers defending the Fort shot
into the massed Confederates below them with deadly fire. As the Confederates attempt to reach the top,
they climbed up each other. For a short
time the flags of the 13th Mississippi, 16th Georgia, and
17th Mississippi Infantry were planted at the top of the ditch, but
color bearers were quickly shot down.
Twenty
minutes into the attack Longstreet had it called off. Union soldiers captured over 200
Confederates, stuck in the ditch. The
casualties were quite lopsided, with the Confederates loosing 813 to the
Union’s 13 looses.
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