Knoxville Civil War RoundTable

"...ON THEY CAME WITH A YELL...."
One Man's View of the Battle of Fort Sanders

An article commemorating the 125th anniversary
of the Battle of Fort Sanders

Copyright 1988 by Dorothy E. Kelly and the Knoxville Civil War Roundtable.

One hundred twenty-five years ago this month two armies clashed on a hill northwest of Knoxville in an extremely short, ferocious action known as the Battle of Fort Sanders. To commemorate this anniversary, a view from the trenches seems appropriate. A look at Civil War Knoxville, as well as the Battle, is provided by an Ohio corporal in letters discovered in the University of Tennessee Special Collections Library.

JOHN WATKINS Photo courtesy of Special Collections, University of Tennessee Libraries (60K)

In a September 1863 letter, Corporal John Watkins of the 19th Ohio Battery describes Knoxville to his fiance, Sarah: "Knoxville must have been quite a place before the war began, but it looks now as though it was the oldest place in the world and been allowed to run down ever since it was built...." He also mentions that Knoxville had contained a Confederate conscript camp where the conscripts had to be confined "in order to hold them."

Writing to a friend in mid-December, he states, "on the 20th [November] there was hardly any firing till dark then the rebels got another battery in position fired 4 or 5 times throwing shell clear over the town and bursting 200 feet high. On the 21st it rained most all day and no fighting. The rebels had got clear round us from the river on the west side of the town to the river on the east side of town." In the same letter the corporal tells of a "sortie" made on November 24th by members of the 2nd Michigan to the Rebel rifle pits in front of the fort. After the 2nd was repulsed, a truce was called to retrieve the wounded, "then you had ought to have seen the rebel brutes rush out of the pits and strip the dead. Oh if I ever felt like taking a mans hearts blood, it was them devils. And right in plain sight to [sic]."

On the night of November 28th, Confederates in front of Fort Sanders drove in the Federal pickets. The Federal artillery in the fort began firing in response and, according to Watkins, fired all night. In the frigid dawn of Sunday morning, November 29th, the expected Confederate assault came as 4,000 of Gen. Lafayette McLaws' veterans stormed up the hill.

BATTLE OF FORT SANDERS Artist unknown (61K)

"...soon after daylight they opened on us from all their batteries or at least 5 positions and if the shell didn't fly around us I am no judge. The air was full of bursting shell but the most of them to [sic] high. I don't think that there was a man killed in the 3/4 of an hour that they shelled us and but one wounded and he was right beside us in a tent.... I was standing up against the breastwork and saw the shell coming just as plain as day. We could hear them coming before they got anywhere near us and what a noise they make. While this shelling was going on the rebels were forming for a charge on the fort and the first our folks new [sic] of them they were within 20 yards of the picket line and less than 300 from the point of the fort. And on they came with a yell 3 columns deep and one in reserve...the rebels came over logs, wire, and stumps and planted there [sic] colors right on the outer slope of the fort. The slope there is on an angle of 45 degrees and about 20 feet from the top of the work down to the top of the ditch. Then the ditch is about 7 feet wide and 6 deep. They just piled in there on top of one another dead wounded and dying and the living to get away from the fire of our troops. One of them got up to one of the embrasures with some 4 or 5 behind him in front of a piece that has 3 charges of canisters in it, and he ha hawed right out and says surrender you yankee sons of bitches. The words were hardly out of his mouth before the piece was pulled off and away went Mr. reb and companions blown into ribons [sic]. But all of this did not last more than half an hour for those that were alive in the ditches began to call for quarters and the order was given to cease firing.... There was arrangements made right off to cease hostilities till 7 o'clock in the evening. As soon as the firing stopped I went up and got on the parapet to look at them. And such a sight I never saw before nor do I care about seeing again. The ditch in places was almost full of them piled one on top of the other.... They were brave men. Most of them Georgians. I would give one of the wounded a drink as quick as anybody if I had it. That is about the only thing they ask for when first wounded. But at the same time I wished the whole Southern Confederacy was in that ditch in the same predicament.

After Knoxville, John Watkins served with Sherman through the Atlanta campaign and then served with Thomas at Nashville. At War's end, Watkins returned to Ohio where he married his Sarah. However, in 1895 he was once again in Knoxville for a reunion of the 19th Ohio Battery. Two letters written to Sarah at home give us an interesting insight into his visit.

We went out to the Armstrong house I spoke about. We were a little doubtful about our receipt... [but we were] escorted into the parlor to sit and rest awhile...showed us every room in the house. Showed us all the bullet-holes and shell marks...showed us where his guns were placed on either side of the house, also where some men were killed on both sides, rebel and Federal and where buried in her yard. We were also on the spot where General Sanders was shot about 80 rods from her house.

And....

Went to Fort Sanders, looked the place over and talked with old soldiers and some other people about it, but it will soon be of the past -- boys are helping to tear down the parapets to find bullets and they get lots of them.... We can locate the place where our gun stood all right, now there is a big house built within 100 feet of it and a road is graded right through the works between where we were.

Sadly, were John Watkins to visit the site of Fort Sanders today, he would find the scavenging boys and urban growth had finished their work. Today only a monument erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and a Tennessee historical marker identify the site of the bloody struggle for Fort Sanders and for control of East Tennessee.

The John Watkins Collection in the University of Tennessee's Frank H. McClung Museum, located on the University campus in Knoxville, Tennessee, contains many of the personal effects worn and used by John Watkins during the Knoxville Campaign, the Siege of Knoxville, and the Battle of Fort Sanders.

The John Watkins Papers are maintained, as Manuscript Collection #1161, in the University of Tennessee's Hoskins Library in Knoxville.

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