One of the driving forces for Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, from start to finish, was to reassert Federal control over east Tennessee with its vocal Unionist stalwarts. Lincoln continually pressed his generals and the War Department to push forces into the region, but the Federals would have to wait until the end of 1863 before they were finally able to reclaim control.
SEMINAR
A recent trip took me to an annual two-day seminar offered by Civil War historian Dave Powell and the Chief Historian for the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park James Ogden. They tend to split the two days into one day all about some aspect of the battle at Chickamauga and another day where everyone hops into a bus and heads off in other directions to explore wider range operations involving the events and armies involved at Chickamauga and Chattanooga. This year, our bus took us up Interstate 75 to Loudon, Tennessee where the freeway leaps across the Tennessee River much more forcefully than the old railway bridge carrying the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad.
EAST TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA
The East Tennessee and Georgia originated in 1836 with a group of businessmen in Athens, Tennessee chartering the Hiwassee Railroad. They hoped to link Knoxville with the Charleston and Hamburg line – officially known as the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company which soon became the South Carolina Railroad Company after merging with the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Charleston Railroad. In 1847, the Hiwassee became the East Tennessee and Georgia as the company looked to connect Knoxville with Atlanta.
Three links made up the rail line, all finished during the 1850s. First, the line running between Loudon to Dalton, Georgia, a little over 80 miles built in 1852. The second section of the line was finished in 1855 between Loudon and Knoxville – almost 29 miles. In 1859, a final spur of 29 miles connected Chattanooga – through Tunnel Hill – to the main ET&G line at Cleveland, Tennessee. The ET&G hooked up with the Western & Atlantic railroad at Dalton from where rails extended south to Atlanta. Most of the copper produced by the Confederacy came from mines in the mountains to the east of Cleveland. Those mines closed causing major problems within the Confederate armaments system when Cleveland was occupied by Federal forces in late 1863.
EAST TENNESSEE AND VIRGINIA
About the same time the Hiwassee Railroad reformed into the ET&G, a new line incorporated, the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad Company. Between 1850 and 1856, the company laid down a little over 130 miles of rail between Knoxville and Bristol, Tennessee. From Bristol into Lynchburg, Virginia – just over 204 miles – another railroad, the Virginia and Tennessee, linked Tidewater Virginia to southwestern Virginia and eastern Tennessee via the South Side Railroad. All of these various lines would fold into the orbit of the Norfolk Southern Railroad with time after the war. A problem between railroad gauges meant transshipments needed to happen at Bristol between the broad five-foot gauge of the ET&G and the standard four-foot 8½ gauge of the V&T.
EASTERN TENNESSEE BEFORE THE WAR
Like western Virginia, eastern Tennessee was not heavily involved with slavery. The locals remained loyal to the Federal government; the Whig Party played a continued role versus the predominately Democratic legislature in Nashville. John Bell, the candidate of the Constitutional Unionist Party – the successor party to the southern branch of the Whig Pary – won more counties in eastern Tennessee – he did relatively well in western Tennessee, as well – than the southern Democratic Party candidate, John C. Breckinridge.
In the subsequent June 1861 vote for secession, a large percentage of counties in the east voted against secession by figures of 50 to 75% against. At another session in Greeneville, Tennessee, local legislators called upon the Tennessee General Assembly to allow the east to form its own state which would remain with the Union. That was rejected and Confederate military units commanded by Brigadier General Felix K. Zollicoffer, a former Congressman – Whig Party – and newspaper editor.
Zollicoffer had forces occupy Cumberland Gap 14 September 1861 to stymy Federal attempts at invading eastern Tennessee. He would die at the Battle of Mill Springs 18 January 1862. Well before Mill Springs, a plan organized by a local Presbyterian minister William B. Carter, targeted nine rail bridges for burning which would precede an invasion by a Federal army into eastern Tennessee.
BRIDGE BURNERS
Those plans set forward by Carter were bandied about at the highest levels of the Federal government in Washington, D.C., after getting approvals from local Federal military commander in eastern Kentucky, Brigadier General George H. Thomas and district commander for the Ohio valley, Brigadier General William T. Sherman. Zollicoffer, however, upset the plans by launching a raid into eastern Kentucky. This caused Sherman to call off Thomas who had advanced to within 40 miles of Cumberland Gap.
Unaware of the cancellation of the invasion – 7 November – bridges along the railroads of both the ET&G, the ET&V, one bridge across the Tennessee River at Bridgeport, Alabama on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad and one bridge crossing Chickamauga Creek – on the Western and Atlantic were targeted. Making their move 8 November, the bridges over Chickamauga Creek and the Hiwassee River were successfully burned. Two other bridges on the ET&V line fell to the burners, but four other bridges were too heavily defended.
Response from Richmond was swift. Confederate Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin ordered all bridge burners to be rounded up and hung in the vicinity of the bridges they burned or attempted to burn. Five were hanged eventually with more than 150 people arrested. The people in eastern Tennessee would have to wait until Major General Ambrose Burnside’s mid-1863 invasion of the region finally came to pass.
LOUDON
On our tour, we drove up Interstate 75 from Chattanooga to Loudon where we discussed the bridge burners at the base of the bridge carrying US Highway 11 over the Tennessee River located next to the modern railroad bridge. The old rail bridge, like many others, was a covered wooden bridge. The bridge was burned by the Confederates on 1 September as they retreated from Knoxville in the face of Burnside’s advance – most of the Confederate forces were in process of massing further to the south around Chattanooga with the Chickamauga campaign underway.
Following the Confederate victory, Confederate forces began to push up north from around Chattanooga to confront Burnside’s forces. This became the rail base for James Longstreet’s advance as his forces moved to unsuccessfully capture Knoxville. Not long after Longstreet, Sherman was sent north after the Federal victory on Missionary Ridge to relieve Burnside. The Loudon bridge site would then be controlled by Federal forces for the rest of the war with a temporary bridge in place by April 1864 and a permanent bridge rebuilt by November.
PHILADELPHIA
From Loudoun, we headed back, slower now, on US Highway 11 sown past Philadelphia and Sweetwater. In the fields near Philadelphia – 6 miles south of Loudon, the cavalry brigades of George G. Dibrell and James J. Morrison teamed up to attack a Federal cavalry brigade under Colonel Frank Wolford. Dibrell, Morrison, and an infantry division under Major General Carter Stevenson came north to threaten Burnside though Stevenson’s men made only slow progress due to a shortage of equipment on the ET&G line. They were still in Charleston on 19 October 1863 on the Hiwassee River. Stevenson sent the two cavalry brigades north to attack Philadelphia. As backup, there was another Confederate infantry brigade another 6 miles south of Philadelphia at Sweetwater. This brigade – Brigadier General John C. Vaughn – had been captured at Vicksburg and exchanged but was not quite ready for field action so soon after the exchange.
The Confederates managed to get behind the Federals routing them, capturing some wagons, six cannons, and almost 450 Federal troopers. Wolford was able to get his remaining men out of the trap recapturing Philadelphia the 21 October with men from Brigadier General Julius White’s infantry division holding Loudon to the north. White’s men then abandoned Philadelphia that night with the Confederates reoccupying the town the next day. Stevenson’s division finally reached Sweetwater on 22 October while Burnside came down from Knoxville to Loudon on 23 October. With reports of more Confederate infantry on their way, Burnside decided to withdraw to the north bank of the Tennessee River across from Loudon on 28 October.
ON TO KNOXVILLE … OR NOT
Worried that Burnside could reinforce the Federals partially besieged at Chattanooga, Bragg had President Jefferson Davis order Longstreet to march north with two divisions of about 10,000 men and 5,000 cavalrymen, replacing the men of Carter Stevenson who returned to Chattanooga. The rail line in eastern Tennessee was a single track making two-way traffic difficult. Also, the locomotives were underpowered with limited supplies of wood fuel – trains had to stop while men got off to dismantle fences along the route to keep the trains moving.
After eight days, Longstreet’s men reached Sweetwater – 60 miles north – reaching there on 12 November. Burnside kept about 5,000 of his 12,000 infantrymen and 8,500 cavalrymen in contact with Longstreet to keep them from returning to Chattanooga. Burnside’s men then slowly withdrew in front of Longstreet towards Knoxville. But the battles leading up to the siege and defeat of Longstreet lie beyond our tour this day. Suffice it to say, Longstreet was unsuccessful and after a hard winter, he would return his command to Virginia in time for the Overland Campaign, his reputation and self confidence suffering damage in the process.
TMI
We continued on US 11 south towards Sweetwater. On the north side of the little town sit the abandoned buildings of the former Tennessee Military Institute established in 1874 as the Sweetwater Military College, renamed one last time as the TMI Academy in 1975. “TMI” refers in computer parlance to “too much information”, but to locals, the acronym translated to “Ten Million Idiots”. The school continued until 1988 living a short life afterwards as the Tennessee Meiji Gakuin High School from 1989 until 2007.
Retreating further south, we passed through the little town of Niota. Here you can find the only remaining antebellum train depot of ET&G railroad. Next, we passed through the west edges of Athens, Tennessee through Riceville to the large pulp mill on the north side of the Hiwassee River in the adjoining community of Calhoun.
HIWASSEE BRIDGE
Our interest lies on the other side of the river in the little town of Charleston. This was an area important in the removal of the Cherokee between 1832 and 1838. Fort Cass became established here through which thousands of Cherokee passed through internment camps along the Trail of Tears. Here, we passed the Henergar House, used by several Federal and Confederate generals as a headquarters – Sherman, Oliver O. Howard, Marcus J. Wright and Samuel B. Buckner. We passed the Charleston Cumberland Presbyterian Church – used by Confederates as a hospital in 1863. The Cumberland Presbyterians have an interesting history as an offshoot from the main Presbyterian movement in the early 19th century.
A discussion then ensued above the banks of the Hiwassee next to the Norfolk Southern rail bridge. This was one of the few which the rail burners of 1861 were successful in burning.
CLEVELAND, TENNESSEE
A few miles further south brought us to the city of Cleveland, Tennessee. Driving into town past the Lee University buildings – named after Reverend F. J. Lee (not the general) the second president of Lee College -affiliated with the Church of God, formerly the Bob Jones College.
We drove to our final destination, the former train station in Cleveland. From the parking lot of the former home of the Whirlpool Corporation, we looked across the tracks at the Old Woolen Mill dating to the 1890s. The town was important for the copper mines to the east in the Ducktown Basin. There was a rolling mill in town used to manufacture artillery shells and percussion caps. 90% of the copper used by the Confederate army came from Ducktown.
A raid by Colonel Eli Long destroyed much of the town while Federal forces were in charge by January 1864 for the rest of the war. It is amazing to see the area around where Whirlpool was – all now flattened – before they moved to a new campus further north in Cleveland.
We then returned to Fort Ogelthorpe on the north side of the Chickamauga Battlefield through heavy rain and traffic in lieu of the next day’s walks on the battlefields.
For further information about the American Civil War in eastern Tennessee, your study should start with Earl Hess’ The Knoxville Campaign: Burnside and Longstreet in East Tennessee.