BATTLES OF BLUE SPRINGS, HOUGH’S FERRY, AND CAMPBELL’S
STATION--SIEGE OF KNOXVILLE--THE SUFFERINGS OF THE MEN--BATTLE
OF FORT SANDERS--GALLANT CONDUCT OF THE REGIMENT--IT CAPTURES
TWO BATTLE-FLAGS--THE SIEGE RAISED--GENERAL SHERMAN RE-ENFORCES
BURNSIDE.
During the early part of October, a portion of the Ninth Corps
under General Potter, and a large body of cavalry under General
Shakleford, were sent up the valley some fifty miles in the direction
of Morristown, Jefferson County. A force of the enemy had crossed
into Eastern Tennessee from Virginia, and were threatening our
communications with Cumberland Gap. This movement on the part of the
Federals was made for the purpose of clearing the enemy away from the
flank of our army.
On the 8th of October, the regiment with its brigade was ordered
forward from Knoxville to join the rest of the corps, and on the night
of the 9th halted at Bull’s Gap, a pass in the mountains near the line
between Jefferson and Green counties.
The movement of the enemy was a very important one; they had reached
and occupied Greenville, and moved out beyond as for as Blue Springs.
Foster’s brigade of cavalry and mounted infantry was sent out from
Knoxville, up the valley of the French Broad River, to turn the right
of the enemy and get upon his rear, which movement was accomplished on
the 9th. Foster got himself into position, and on the 10th, General
Custer with his mounted infantry came up with the enemy at Blue
Springs, and began to skirmish. Ferrero’s division of twelve small
regiments, of which the Twenty-ninth was one, arrived about noon, and
went into position a half-mile from the field, where they had a good
view of the skirmish for nearly half an hour. At the end of this time,
two brigades of the division--namely, Humphrey’s and Christ’s--were
sent forward.
The enemy had a battery well supported on the left of the main road
leading to Greenville, on a high hill. They had thrown forward their
first line and skirmishers well advanced to a distance of perhaps
three-quarters of a mile from their battery, across the road and across
a rivulet, and had advanced another body of skirmishers through a
corn-field to the crest of a hill about three hundred yards from where
the Twenty-ninth was lying. Custer’s men had slowly retired before the
Confederates, and passed to our rear, when the order came for our two
brigades to charge. The men rose to their feet and went forward at a
rapid run, with arms aport and bayonets fixed, up the hill. The enemy,
closely followed by our men, fell back rapidly down the hill, across
the rivulet, into and through a belt of woods, where the pursuit ended
by the direct orders of our generals. Here Colonel Christ re-formed
his Brigade, to carry one of the Confederate batteries that had begun
to fire shell into our lines. The enemy, seeing the preparations for
a charge, wheeled their guns about and fled; and at this stage in
the affair, it became so dark that all further hostilities ceased.
Captain Leach, then sixty-three years of age, led his company on this
charge; and when the rivulet was reached, which was some eight feet
wide, sprang into it and scrambled up the opposite bank as actively as
the youngest of his men, refusing the proffered assistance of Major
Chipman, who was leading the regiment.
Captains Leach and Clarke messed together; their negro servants,
Bob and Isaac, were left in the rear of the field, where this fight
had occurred, with their rations and baggage, and when the battle
was over, were sought to prepare supper; but the darkies could not
be found,--neither the rations nor baggage. Upon investigation, it
appeared that a rumor had spread to the rear that both these officers
had been killed in the fight. The negroes had of course heard of it,
and, considering themselves absolved from all further obligations as
servants, had gone back towards Bull’s Gap, taking the effects of
the officers with them, where at night they held a sort of barbecue,
feasted on the rations, and concluded their entertainment with an
auction sale of the baggage. These recreant negroes were found
the next morning and subjected to a severe questioning. “Where are
our rations?” “Where’s the coffee-pot?” “What has become of our
blankets?” Bob acted as spokesman: “De rations and blankets is done
gone; de coffee-pot is done gone, too,--dey’s stole.” This ended the
examination, and these two unfortunate captains had short rations and
hard fare for the rest of the march. The enemy retired during the
night, and soon after daylight our army started in pursuit. After
marching a mile or two, the infantry halted, and Shakleford’s brigade
of mounted men, with several horse batteries, swept by the head of
the column, and then the infantry marched again. The most annoying
information came from the farmers along the road. They scarcely knew
which were our enemy,--the troops that had passed the night before, or
the mounted column of Shakleford,--and these were some of the answers
they gave in reply to questions of the whereabouts of the Confederates:
“They are just ahead”; “Not far from an hour ago, they went by”; “A
good gallop off”; and so forth.
When our troops reached Greenville, they learned to their surprise
that the enemy had passed through there six hours before, and that
they had a sharp engagement with General Foster’s men a few miles out
at Henderson’s. The tired troops pressed on; at Henderson’s, they
saw some signs of a fight, but the bridge was intact. General Foster
had refrained from destroying it, and the enemy had neglected to do
so. Toward night the regiment went into camp at Rheatown, twenty-one
miles from Blue Springs. Shakleford and Foster followed the enemy into
Virginia, inflicting upon them great injury, and, upon returning, took
up the line of the Watauga, to cover the passes from Virginia into East
Tennessee.
One of the abandoned wagons of the Confederates, found near Rheatown,
furnished our regiment with a liberal supply of excellent bread and
some other food. At this place our troops had two full days’ rest, and
it was much needed, for the men had performed a forced march hither,
and in the course of it had an encounter with the enemy.
At the close of the second day, the columns were turned towards Bull’s
Gap, making the distance by easy marches, and upon arriving there
the regiment took the cars, but had proceeded but a short distance
when an accident rendered it necessary for them to march six miles
to Morristown, at which place they again took the cars and went to
Knoxville, reaching there on the 10th of October.
While the Confederates held East Tennessee, a merciless conscription
had been enforced by them, to avoid which many of the male population
had abandoned their homes and taken refuge in the deep forests, or
fled into Kentucky. After the country had been occupied by Burnside,
many of these loyal people returned to their homes, and signified
their willingness to enlist in the Federal army. Burnside issued an
order encouraging such enlistments, and especially into the veteran
regiments of the Ninth Corps, which had been greatly depleted by
their recent campaigns. Shortly after the Twenty-ninth returned to
Knoxville, Captain Clarke and Lieutenant Atherton were detailed for
this recruiting service, and ordered to station themselves at Rheatown,
where they spent several weeks, and secured a number of recruits. On
the 11th of November, a force of Confederates again invaded Tennessee
from Virginia, and evading the left of our army on the Watauga,
attacked with about 3,500 cavalry our post at Rogersville, and captured
its small garrison. This, and other hostile movements at various
points, rendered necessary the evacuation of Rheatown, and the drawing
in of all our forces in that part of the State, nearer Knoxville. Our
recruiting party, therefore, returned to the latter place, and went on
after their regiment, which, in the meantime, had gone out to Lenoir’s
Station.
A serious invasion of East Tennessee, by General Longstreet, had
already begun. That officer, with a large force, had early in November
been detached from Bragg’s army, in the vicinity of Chattanooga, and
was now marching up the valley towards Knoxville. On the 20th of
October, the Ninth Corps left Knoxville and went to Campbell’s Station,
fifteen miles southwest of the city, on the East Tennessee and Virginia
Railroad; on the 21st, it moved down the railroad to Lenoir’s Station,
and remained there, with the exception of a few days, till the 14th of
November. On the night of the 10th of November, Longstreet made his
appearance on the south side of the Holston River, at Hough’s Ferry,
about six miles below Loudon, and where was stationed General White,
with one division of the Twenty-third Corps. November the 14th, early
in the morning. General Potter, in a hard rain-storm, started with the
whole of the Ninth Corps to re-enforce General White. The Twenty-ninth
with its brigade (Christ’s) was in advance, and toward noon arrived
at a point five miles from the ferry, when rapid and heavy firing was
distinctly heard. Now the clouds parted and the storm slackened, but
the roads were as heavy and broken as before, making it exceedingly
difficult to get the artillery along, and rendering the progress of
the troops very slow. It was nearly dark when the Brigade reached the
ferry; by this time the battle there had nearly ceased, nothing save
an occasional musket-shot indicating the near presence of the enemy.
Immediately upon its arrival, the regiment was ordered to the right of
the line, marched nearly two miles through a thick woods, and formed in
line of battle within one hundred yards of that of the enemy. The night
soon came on, and early in the evening the storm broke out again with
increased fury; the wind blew with the force of a tornado; the trees
swayed to and fro in the blast, threatening to fall upon the heads of
the men, who stood to arms all night without fires.
Very early the next morning (15th), when the men were expecting to
march against the enemy, the order came to fall back, and taking the
same track by which it had entered the gloomy forest, the Brigade
picked its way back to the place where it had first halted the night
before. All along the way brightly-burning camp-fires were passed, but
no troops were seen; these had already left, and were well under way
towards Lenoir’s. At noon the regiment reached the latter place. The
men had tasted no food for several hours, and were nearly worn out
with fatigue; during the march here, they had managed to pluck a few
ears of corn from the fields by the roadside, and as soon as a pause
was made and the arms stacked, the place was ablaze with fires; every
man at once went to work making coffee and preparing little messes for
dinner. Happily the poor, hungry men had time to finish their meal,
but they had barely finished it when they were ordered under arms. The
enemy had just then appeared a half-mile away on the Kingston Road,
and thither the Brigade was hurried at the double-quick. This movement
of the Confederates was at once checked, and the rest of the day passed
without any further hostile demonstrations, except a night attack upon
our pickets.
The morning of the 16th was sharp and cold; as early as two o’clock the
regiment was ordered to march. The roads that had been muddy the day
before were now frozen; the artillery horses were pinched with cold and
hunger, and quite unable to drag the heavy cannon. It was resolved to
sacrifice a portion of the baggage train, which, to the number of many
wagons, was parked at Lenoir’s. The horses and mules were detached and
harnessed into the guns; the spokes of the wagon-wheels were hacked,
and, with their contents, set on fire,--not, however, till the soldiers
had replenished their haversacks with a goodly quantity of smoked pork,
coffee, sugar, and hard bread.
The whole corps was in full retreat soon after daylight, and the enemy
at once began the pursuit, harassing our rear guard continually. The
road from Lenoir’s Station to Knoxville intersects at Campbell’s with
the road from Kingston, and Longstreet had detached a column on his
left to seize the junction of these roads. The possession of Campbell’s
Station was, therefore, of great moment to Burnside, for should the
enemy arrive there before him, his retreat to Knoxville would surely
be cut off. A division of troops under Hartranft, by rapid marching,
succeeded, in the early part of the forenoon, in reaching Campbell’s,
and going out on the Kingston Road deployed across it, his left on the
Loudon Road, along which our army and trains were moving. Hartranft
was just fifteen minutes ahead of the enemy; he had only time to
form his line, when the Confederate column appeared hurrying up the
Kingston Road. A sharp engagement ensued; but the enemy was foiled in
his attempt, and driven back in confusion. Soon after, all our trains
passed this dangerous point in safety, and moved on to Knoxville. At
about noon, the rest of the army came up, and went into position on “a
low range of hills about a half-mile from the cross-roads.” The Ninth
Corps was posted on the right of the field, which was nearly a mile
broad, and extended a half-mile along the main road, and was bordered
by heavy woods, passable for infantry. Christ’s brigade was on the
right of the corps, and the Twenty-ninth on the right of the Brigade,
fifty yards from the woods in front, while its right flank actually
touched them.
The lines had been formed but a short time, when the blue uniforms of
our rear guard were seen, and finally our skirmishers,--the latter
crossing the fields, creeping along the fences, and coming up the road,
guns in hand, occasionally pausing to load and fire. Now and then a
soldier in gray showed himself on the edge of the woods, but he would
soon dart back out of sight. Colonel Pierce, now in command of the
regiment, had orders to cover his front and flank with skirmishers,
and Companies A and I, under Captain Clarke and Lieutenant Williams,
were detailed for this purpose. The companies had proceeded but a
short distance into the woods, when they came upon the enemy, who were
approaching stealthily from tree to tree, evidently attempting what
Colonel Christ had feared; namely, to flank the Brigade. A brisk fire
began at once, but our men kept their line intact, and maintained
perfect coolness. After the lapse of about an hour, the officers on
the skirmish line discovered that the enemy were gradually overlapping
the right of the Brigade, and promptly informed Colonel Christ of the
fact. The skirmishers were ordered to come in at once, and the Brigade
changed front and began to fall back. This movement was not made a
moment too soon, for a dense mass of the enemy’s infantry immediately
poured out of the woods in the rear of the retreating Brigade; while
his flanking party, which had not yet lapped over our old position,
also at the same moment, emerged from the woods, and, with loud yells,
joined in the pursuit, firing an occasional shot, and with terrible
oaths, shouting to our men to surrender and lay down their arms.
Our men, loading as they marched, halted by files, turned about and
fired, and again took their places in the ranks. At last, the regiment,
which was in the rear, reached a sunken road, and, leaping into it,
moved rapidly to the left of our lines; while over the heads of the
men, now fully protected by the high bank, played the cannon of our
reserve batteries, at last free to fire without endangering the lives
of our own troops. The slaughter wrought upon the pursuing enemy
is described as terrible; and as the Twenty-ninth came up the hill,
gaining the plateau of the Knoxville side, Generals Burnside and
Ferrero, standing on either side of the road, clapped their hands as it
filed proudly between them.
It was now, perhaps, five o’clock in the afternoon, and the battle
degenerated into an artillery duel on our side, varied by the enemy
with occasional charges, by which they took nothing but disaster. One
by one, as it grew dark, the batteries retired, and after nightfall the
Brigade moved off and took up its weary march for Knoxville, where it
arrived at about three o’clock the next morning, and lay down for a few
brief hours to rest upon the bleak hillside near Fort Sanders.
During this battle, Charles H. Dwinnell of Company A, a worthy comrade
and brave soldier, was killed, and William O’Conner of Company H
was captured. Dwinnell was shot through the brain by a sharpshooter
stationed in a tall pine. The ball was probably aimed at Captain
Clarke, who was quite conspicuous at the time; the sharpshooter was
instantly marked and shot by two of Dwinnell’s comrades, who fired
simultaneously, the enemy’s body being seen to fall out of the tree.
The siege of the city commenced on the 17th, and progressed rather
gradually, beginning on the west and northwest, and finally extending
around the entire city, from river to river. As the work of investing
the place continued, our pickets were constantly pressed in close upon
the main works, so that by the 29th of November we scarcely held more
than the slope of the plateau crowned by our main fortifications, and
in some cases not even that.
To the right of Fort Sanders, named after a brilliant cavalry general
who was killed early in the siege, and west of the city, Humphrey’s and
Christ’s brigades picketed one side of the railroad cut, and the enemy
the other.
On one occasion, before the pickets were drawn in, a little squad of
the Twenty-ninth assaulted a house in front of them, and driving away
the enemy’s pickets there stationed, captured it, and brought in the
supplies, which consisted of a small sack of meal, a few pounds of
bacon, a box of tobacco, an eight-gallon keg of blackberry brandy, and
two boxes of cartridges. The enemy re-formed and recaptured the house,
but our men brought their booty safely into camp. There was meal enough
to give each man in the company to which these adventurers belonged,
a dish of hasty-pudding, and tobacco enough to furnish every man in
the regiment with a good-sized piece. The brandy and cartridges were
accounted for during the night by some of the wildest picket-firing
that occurred during the siege. There was by no means a large supply of
food in the city when the siege began, but long before it concluded,
all kinds of provisions became extremely scarce.
On the 19th, the Confederates drove in our outer pickets and took
possession of the woods. On the evening of the 23d, they attacked our
picket line in front of the Brigade, and seemed to be on the point
of bringing on a general engagement. The order was given to set fire
to a long line of buildings between the two armies. This was done
to break the enemy’s lines and unmask their movements, and resulted
very successfully. The conflagration that followed was both grand and
awful. The dark wintry sky was lighted up by the flames, which roared
and crackled with an unearthly sound, casting a broad belt of dazzling
light over the fields and into the forests. In the round-house of the
railroad, there was stored a large amount of condemned ammunition, and
when the flames reached that, there was an explosion that shook the
earth, and startled the anxious residents of the city.
The 26th of November was Thanksgiving Day. The men got a full ration of
bullets, but only a half-ration of bread.
About midnight of the 28th, the picket line near the river on the
southwest was driven in, and could not be re-established by the brigade
which furnished it. The line in front of Fort Sanders had also been
assailed and taken by the enemy, and about nine o’clock in the evening
an order was sent to take the regiment out of the lines and place it
in the immediate rear of the fort for special duty; Major Chipman had
command. A little later in the evening, Companies A, C, D, and K were
detached, and ordered to our lines near the river, where the enemy had
a few hours before captured our rifle-pits.
The night had nearly gone, and the first glimmer of day had appeared,
when the familiar charging yell of the enemy was heard directly in
front of the fort. Our pickets at this point were forced in, and in
a moment more a large body of the enemy’s infantry were swarming at
the very edge of the ditch. The battalion of the Twenty-ninth, under
Chipman, were hurried into the fort, and the four detached companies
at once sent for. The latter had a perilous experience in joining
their comrades, and though exposed to the fire of the enemy’s cannon,
reached the works without the loss of a man, and in ample time to
lend a hand in the severe contest which was now well under way. The
Confederates, led by fearless officers, crowded the ditch, and crossing
it on each other’s shoulders, began to ascend the bank; one of their
standard-bearers came running up and planted his colors upon the
parapet, in the very faces of Major Chipman’s men; but he had hardly
performed his deed of daring, when one of our soldiers shot him through
the heart, and he fell forward into the works. Inspired by the example
of their color-bearer, a large body of the Confederates, led by a
gray-haired old officer (Colonel Thomas of Georgia), with wild shouts
made a dash up the bank. All seemed lost; but at this moment Companies
A, C, D, and K of the regiment came running into the fort, and ranging
themselves along the parapet, opened a deadly fire upon the assaulting
party. The gray old leader of the enemy, while waving his sword and
shouting to his men to come on, was shot dead. Many of his brave
followers suffered the same fate, and the handful of survivors fell
hurriedly back into the ditch. At the same instant, like scenes were
transpiring all along the works. The Seventy-ninth New York was sharply
engaged, and the artillerymen, not being able to use their pieces,
busied themselves by tossing among the enemy lighted shell with their
fuses cut to a few seconds’ length. Finally a sergeant of one of the
batteries, observing a renewed preparation of the enemy to charge up
the bank, slewed one of the large guns about so as to make it bear upon
the edge of the ditch, and, with a single charge of canister, raked it
for a distance of several yards with deadly effect. About this time the
assault slackened; but in a few moments another column of the enemy
came rushing towards the fort, and with almost sublime courage faced
the withering fire of our troops, and large numbers of them gained the
bank. The first terrible scenes of the battle were re-enacted; three of
the enemy’s standards were planted simultaneously upon the parapet, but
they were quickly torn away by our men. The resistance was as desperate
as the assault: officers used freely their swords, the men clubbed
their muskets, others used their bayonets, and others still axes and
the rammers of the cannon. A struggle so severe as this could not be
otherwise than of short duration. In a few minutes the enemy’s soldiers
began to falter and fall back into the ditch. Seeing this, General
Ferrero, who was in command of the fort and closely watching the fight,
ordered one company of the Twenty-ninth on the left, and one company
of the Second Michigan on the right, to go through the embrasures and
charge the disorganized enemy. Sweeping down the ditch, these commands
captured about two hundred of the enemy, and drove them into the fort,
the little squad of the Twenty-ninth following their captives and
bearing triumphantly two battle-flags of the foe; the capturers of
which were Sergeant Jeremiah Mahoney of Company A, and Private Joseph
S. Manning of Company K, both of whom afterwards received the medals of
honor voted by the Congress of the United States.
The fight immediately died away in front of Fort Sanders, and the
remnant of the enemy’s charging column shrank back within their lines
in dismay and confusion. But on the left, where the Federal rifle-pits
had been captured on the afternoon of the 28th, a fierce battle was
heard. Hartranft’s division was sharply engaged with the enemy in its
efforts to recapture the pits, and the effort was soon successful. The
Confederates were everywhere routed, our entire line re-established,
and by ten o’clock that Sunday morning quietness had settled down over
the whole field. The enemy seemed appalled by the dreadful calamity
that had overtaken him,--a calamity, as we shall presently see, that
practically ended the siege. Ninety-eight dead bodies were taken out
of the fatal ditch from a space of four hundred square feet around the
salient. General Humphrey, who commanded the Mississippi brigade, was
found dead on the glacis, within twenty feet of the face of the ditch.
Lying among the dead in the moat, in every conceivable condition,
were the wounded; and scattered all over the open space in front of
the fort, through which telegraph wires had been stretched from stump
to stump to impede the movements of the assailants, were scattered
hundreds of both dead and wounded, and among them not a few of the
enemy’s soldiers unhurt, who, dismayed at the awful storm of shell and
grape that poured upon them, had lain prone upon the earth until the
battle was over, only too willing to be captured. Nearly five hundred
stand of small arms were collected on the field within our picket
lines. Pollard states the enemy’s loss in this battle at seven hundred.
The great bravery of this charge entitles those who participated in it
to honorable mention. The troops who engaged in this assault “consisted
of three brigades of McLaw’s division; that of General Wolford,--the
Sixteenth, Eighteenth, and Twenty-fourth Georgia regiments, and
Cobb’s and Phillips’s Georgia legions; that of General Humphrey,--the
Thirteenth, Seventeenth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and Twenty-third
Mississippi regiments; and a brigade composed of Generals Anderson’s
and Bryant’s brigades, embracing among others, the Palmetto State
Guard, the Fifteenth South Carolina Regiment, and the Fifty-first,
Fifty-third, and Fifty-ninth Georgia regiments.”[42] The troops that
garrisoned the fort were Benjamin’s United States Battery, Buckley’s
Rhode Island Battery, a part of Roemer’s New York Battery, the
Seventy-ninth New York Highlanders, and, at the very beginning of the
fight, a battalion of the Twenty-ninth under Major Chipman, and before
the repulse of the assault on the salient, Captain Clarke’s and the
other companies of the regiment already named. When the battle was well
advanced, and affairs had assumed a serious aspect, the One Hundredth
Pennsylvania was moved up in the rear of the fort, and a few minutes
before the close of the fight, the Second Michigan was ordered into
the works on the right, one of its companies being detailed to sweep
the ditch. Our loss in the fort was eight killed and five wounded,
and among the former were two members of the Twenty-ninth; namely,
Sergeant John F. Smith of Company H, and Corporal Gilbert T. Litchfield
of Company K, both most excellent soldiers. The loss of the enemy in
this encounter doubtless exceeded greatly that given by Mr. Pollard;
one of our officers engaged stating it to be fourteen hundred.
When Longstreet had drawn off his troops from the scene of his defeat,
General Burnside kindly directed General Potter to send out a flag of
truce, granting the enemy permission to remove his dead and wounded
from the field. The flag was courteously received, and for the space
of several hours there was a complete cessation of all hostilities. As
a reward for its services in this action, the regiment was retained
in Fort Sanders as a part of its garrison, and consequently relieved
from much severe picket duty, only occasionally going on to the line
immediately in front of the fort. But the duties of the fort, while
not so arduous as those of the rifle-pits, were very important, and
called for the exercise of constant vigilance. By day, one-third of
the men were allowed to sleep in camp, one-third to rest in the fort
with their belts on, and one-third stood to arms at the parapet; while
at night all the men except a camp guard were required to be in the
fort, one-half under arms and one-half resting with their belts on. At
three o’clock each morning, the whole garrison was called up and stood
to arms till six o’clock. One-half of the officers could be in camp by
day, one-fourth must be at the parapet, and the remainder at rest in
the works; and at three o’clock in the morning, all the officers were
ordered to stand to arms with their men.
The casual mention, in the course of this chapter, of the telegraph
wires which were stretched over the field in front of the fort, leads
the author to speak of another device employed by our engineers
who constructed these fortifications,--a defensive preparation, as
ingenious in its nature as it was destructive in its results. The
whole open space within our lines, directly in front of the fort, had
been carefully plowed, with furrows leading generally to the work, not
parallel, but converging towards a point opposite the main battery.
It is natural for men when passing over broken ground to avoid the
ridges and seek the smooth places and hollows. The furrows were quite
wide and well defined, and when the enemy’s column charged in the gray
of the morning, his men coming suddenly upon the plowed ground, were
thrown into great confusion. They took to the furrows, as was expected,
and by the time they had reached the point where the furrows converged,
the whole of the first battle line, consisting of a brigade, was
huddled together in a disorganized mass, and in this condition received
the concentrated fire of every gun on the works, which poured into them
several very destructive charges of canister and grape.
At midnight on the 4th of December, as our men in Fort Sanders were
standing to arms, something of an unusual nature was observed to be
going on in the enemy’s camp. Lanterns were seen flitting about in
their batteries; night signals were at work, a fixed lantern low down
near the ground and a movable one above it bobbing about from right
to left. Our pickets all along the siege line were doubled, and the
troops in the fort ordered to the parapets. All sorts of speculations
were indulged in by our officers and men; some thought the enemy was
preparing for another and final assault upon our works, and others that
he was retreating.
General Sherman had for some days been marching to the relief of
Burnside, and a rumor was prevalent that his cavalry had already
attacked the rear of the enemy’s army. The army of General Bragg,
of which Longstreet’s forces were a part, had fallen back from
Chattanooga, and was then moving South. These circumstances, together
with the hopeless nature of the siege, forced upon Longstreet the
abandonment of his undertaking. Daylight revealed the fact that the
enemy had gone. “Stack arms! All but the camp guard may rest!” was the
order given to the garrison of Fort Sanders, when this state of things
became officially known. The order was indeed a welcome one, for our
soldiers in Knoxville had not tasted the pleasure of absolute repose
for many long weeks. The termination of the siege was an important
and joyful event to the whole nation; it was also a great crisis in
the lives of the soldiers there, and what they said and did on this
important occasion, our readers may be curious to know. The answer
shows how utterly unromantic and prosaic were the Yankee soldiers who
made so much history during the four years of war. “Thank God! now I
can have a good snooze,” said one, in no irreverent spirit. “Captain,
can I go down to the run and wash my shirt?” said another. “Sergeant,
has the company got any soap?” asked a third. Probably the thought of
one-half of the men in Knoxville, at that moment, was sleep, and of
the others, a wash, either of clothes or person. A few officers of the
staff, a few orderlies, and surgeons rode out to visit the deserted
camp, while our pickets were thrown out to capture the stragglers. In
the course of an hour the loiterers and laggards of the late besiegers
began to come into our lines in crowds. Some of them had overslept,
others had strayed away, and others still had lost heart and skulked in
the woods.
A report reached the ears of General Ferrero about noon, that a full
regiment of the enemy had been left behind their main army, at a
point about five miles distant. Colonel Christ’s brigade, with the
Twenty-ninth, was ordered out at once to capture these troops, and
a forced and fruitless march was the result. No enemy, save a few
worthless stragglers, were found, and the Brigade toward the close
of the day returned, tortured with the conviction that they had been
made the victims of a practical joke. The men had taken just so much
wear out of their last pair of shoes, so travel-worn already, and
had been brought just ten miles nearer to raw-hide moccasins. On the
same day (December 5), Major-General Sherman, with his own corps and
that of General Granger and a portion of General Howard’s, arrived at
Marysville (near Knoxville), and sent by his aid-de-camp to General
Burnside the following hearty message:--
“I am here, and can bring twenty-five thousand men into
Knoxville to-morrow; but Longstreet having retreated, I feel
disposed to stop, for a stern chase is a long one. But I will
do all that is possible.... Send my aid, Captain Audenried,
out with your letters to-night. We are all hearty, but tired.
Accept my congratulations at your successful defence and your
patient endurance.”
The endurance of the men had indeed been patient, and their sufferings
and privations very great; but they had saved to the Government the
stronghold of East Tennessee, and consequently both East Tennessee and
Kentucky.