Siege of Knoxville

The Knoxville Campaign was a series of American Civil War battles and maneuvers in East Tennessee during the fall of 1863 designed to secure control of the city of Knoxville and with it the railroad that linked the Confederacy east and west. Union forces under Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside occupied Knoxville, Tennessee, and Confederate forces under Lt. Gen. James Longstreet were detached from Gen. Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee at Chattanooga to prevent Burnside's reinforcement of the besieged Union forces there. Ultimately, Longstreet's own siege of Knoxville ended when Union Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman led elements of the Army of the Tennessee and other troops to Burnside's relief after Union troops had broken the Confederate siege of Chattanooga. Although Longstreet was one of Gen. Robert E. Lee's best corps commanders in the East, he was unsuccessful in his role as an independent commander in the West and accomplished little in the Knoxville Campaign.

The mountainous, largely Unionist region of East Tennessee was considered by President Abraham Lincoln to be a key war objective. Besides possessing a population largely loyal to the Union, the region was rich in grain and livestock and controlled the railroad corridor from Chattanooga to Virginia. Throughout 1862 and 1863, Lincoln pressured a series of commanders to move through the difficult terrain and occupy the area. Ambrose Burnside, who had been soundly defeated at the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, was transferred to the Western Theater and given command of the Department and the Army of the Ohio in March 1863. Burnside was ordered to move against Knoxville as swiftly as possible while, at the same time, Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland was ordered to operate against Bragg in Middle Tennessee (the Tullahoma Campaign and the subsequent Chickamauga Campaign).

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