Prelude: Fall
East Tennessee, home to a largely Unionist population, was a key object of President Abraham Lincoln. Troops from both sides passed through the area frequently in 1862 and 1863, although the focus of battle was elsewhere. Hayslope saw Union and Confederate officers and soldiers during this time. Lincoln ordered a more focused operation in the region in March 1863, particularly toward Knoxville. The main thrust of that operation was delayed until mid-August, when Union Gen Ambrose Burnside began his march from Lexington, Kentucky. Two weeks later, after Confederate Maj Gen Simon B Buckner had been sent south to Chickamauga, Burnside’s troops were welcomed into Knoxville by the citizens. Burnside then ignored orders to go to Chickamauga, instead concentrating on keeping Knoxville and worrying Confederate troops on the vital supply chain through East Tennessee into southwestern Virgnia. Two battles – Blountville on September 22 and Blue Springs on October 10 – helped in that regard. And then Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered Lt Gen James Longstreet to challenge Burnside in Knoxville, against Longstreet’s better judgement. His troops began arriving mid-November, prompting Burnside to withdraw his troops inside the city’s defenses. Longstreet began the Siege of Knoxville. Two weeks after the siege began, Longstreet ordered an attack on Fort Sanders, thinking he could overwhelm the fort and gain entry to the city. It was a horrible idea. In 20 minutes, Longstreet lost more than 800 men and called off the attack.
Longstreet was ordered to reinforce Gen Braxton Bragg after his defeat at Chattanooga, but again Longstreet objected, telling Bragg he’d hold the siege on Knoxville as long as possible to keep Burnside there. That ended up helping Bragg, at least temporarily, when Union Gen Ulysses S Grant sent 25,000 troops to relieve the siege. Longstreet abandoned it on December 4 and began moving east while Union troops dispatched from Knoxville went looking for him.
They found him – or rather he found them – on December 13 – at Bean’s Station. The battle continued for a day but ended mostly in a draw as both sides headed to winter quarters, the Union troops back in Knoxville, and Longstreet across the Holston River to Russellville.
Winter
Maj Gen Lafayette McLaws, the Longstreet commander who would soon quarter at Hayslope, had already written to his wife, on October 14 – before Knoxville – that “many of my command are without tents and hundreds are without blankets or shoes. Added to these wants, the ration is not sufficient, and hundreds are sick.” Things changed only for the worse as the troops settled in for the winter. The troops had marched from Knoxville largely in cold rain, and even when it wasn’t raining, the roads were pure mud.
As the troops and generals settled into Russellville, Longstreet set up his headquarters at the Nenney House in downtown Russellville. A half mile to the west, toward Morristown, Maj Gen Joseph Brevard Kershaw stayed with his friends the Taylor family at their home, Greenwood. His headquarters was a small outbuilding that is now on the grounds of the old Nenney House, the home of the Longstreet Museum.
And a half mile to the south, McLaws encamped at Hayslope.
But shortly after Bean’s Station, Longstreet abruptly relieved McLaws of command – blaming him for the failure at Fort Sanders – on December 18, ordering him to Augusta for reassignment. But McLaws countered with a request for a court martial, which would wait until adjutants could arrive in March. Meanwhile, the troops settled in Russellville on December 22.
Sgt William H Hill, quartermaster of the 13th Mississippi Regiment serving under McLaws, wrote in his diary that the troops were ordered “to build houses as we will remain here until the spring campaign opens. The temperature had reportedly dropped to near zero, and snow began to fall on Christmas Eve, when Hill reported “heavy cannonading in the direction of Knoxville.”
“This is a very dull Christmas,” the sergeant wrote. “The men can’t get any liquor to enjoy themselves so they are spending the day working on their winter quarters.”
The snow changed to sleet on December 29 and the temperature reportedly hit 24 below on New Year’s Day. Longstreet had issued a furlough order for enlisted men and junior officers, Hill documented: “5 men from every 100 shall have furloughs for 30 days, those who have been good soldiers and never been home on a furlough to have the preference. All men who are detailed on permanent duty are not allowed furloughs.”
Hill’s last known diary entry came on New Year’s Eve:
It turned very cold suddenly and sleeted for several hours. Our men had scarcely finished making their quarters and they made themselves very comfortable as to shelter but they are needing shoes and clothing very much.
Out of 300 men in the 13th Regiment, only 32 are reported today as having shoes. The balance have been going barefoot over the frozen ground and a great many were without shoes during the campaign of the last two months. I have seen them marching on the frozen ground with their feet bleeding at every step.
Orders were issued for the men who are barefooted to make moccasins out of rawhide. The men have tried this and found that they don’t answer the purpose. When they get wet and dry again they are so hard that it is painful to wear them.
A large number of the men have been without blankets for several months and very few have … one blanket. No one who has not experienced it can imagine the suffering that this Regiment and the balance of the Army have endured during the last two months for want of shoes, clothing, and blankets.
A scouting report from Union Col E.M. McCook on January 1 noted that Longstreet’s “army is in miserable condition , 50 per cent, barefooted; provisions very scarce; go three or four days on one day’s rations.” A report from Brig Gen S.P Carter four days later says Longstreet’s troops “seem much demoralized, being half-clad and always hungry.”
Longstreet himself had sent a note to Gen Samuel Cooper in Richmond, after Bean’s Station, telling him that “We shall be obliged to suspend active operations for want of shoes and clothing.” Confederate Secretary of War J.A. Seddon replied that he referred the “alleged want of shoes and clothing” to the quartermaster-general.
In a January 19, 1864, Longstreet noted that “we have been making shoes since we left Knoxville, but with all our workmen can only make one hundred pairs a day. As our shoes are all old, they were out faster than we can make them. Most of those that we have we have made ourselves.” Three days later, Longstreet again asked for “shoes, clothing of all kinds, and blankets” from the quartermaster-general, this time in Atlanta.
And the Union side knew the condition of their battlefield opponents. Col. William J Palmer reported to his headquarters on January 10, 1864, that two deserters from Mississippi units had come into his lines:
They are both remarkably intelligent men and their stories coincide on a separate examination … Humphrey’s Brigade has 800 muskets for duty … being naked and starving …
One of these deserters has his stockings on the ground and says two-thirds of the men of his regiment are worse off than himself …
These men say they do not consider their division to be fit for duty, nor the rest of Longstreet’s army …
Longstreet’s chief of staff, Moxley Sorrel, collected his remembrances from his time during the war and included a lengthy and highly descriptive passage about that winter, noting the back and forth the people of East Tennessee endured during the whole of the war:
The cold was intense, the record showing the lowest temperature for many years. During the last days of 1863 the glass went down to zero and the entire army was quiet in the effort to keep warm.
Fortunately there was fuel in abundance. The primeval forests of oak and hickory were food for some of the grandest campfires ever seen, but we froze in front while scorching in back, and vice versa. And as to sleeping, many a fine fellow woke to find his shoes crisp from the too generous blaze. At this time the roads were so bad as to be almost impassable; artillery and wagons would be drawn hub deep. The artillery horses, Leyden’s especially, were in bad condition, very weak, and six or eight pairs would be hitched to a single gun or caisson. It amused the infantry footing it on the side paths, and they would call out, “Here comes the cavalry, but what’s that gun tied to the tail for?
The people of these valleys made an interesting study. They doubtless went through much during the Civil War, and part of their disposition at the period of our occupation may be accounted for. There were, of course, some exceptions to be found in families of wealth, intelligence, and breeding, but the general run of people was hard in the extreme. Apparently they were without pity or compassion — generosity and sympathy were strangers to them; but hatred and revenge made their homes in the breasts of these farmers.
When the Confederates came on the ground, then was the time for acts of brutality against their Union neighbors, the political feeling in the valleys being about equally divided. Burnings, hangings, whippings were common — all acts of private vengeance and retaliation. When the turn came and the Unionists were in authority, Confederate sympathizers were made to suffer in the same way, and so it went on throughout the bloody strife.
Once an old woman came to my quarters with a request. She was a fierce, hard creature, strong, of wrinkled skin, but set, relentless features, clothed in the homespun worn by all, and like all, dipping snuff. Stick in mouth she made her statement. Some men had come to her house that morning — she knew them name by name. They had taken her old man from her and hung him to a tree by his own porch, and there left him — dead. She wanted the murderers caught and punished. Not a word of sorrow or softness, not a tear of regret, but only vengeance, and that instantly. I immediately sent a good troop of cavalry to seize the men, if to be found, but little hoped it. They had, as usual, taken refuge in the mountains, quite inaccessible to ordinary attack, and were safe there with numbers of others.
These mountain fastnesses were filled with evildoers of both sides, Union and Confederate; murderers, thieves, deserters — all crimes could there be known.
The authorities had found it quite impossible to break up these formidable gangs by any ordinary force.
So it was that winter of 1863 and 1864.
Sometime after McLaws’ court martial – he was ultimately acquitted of charges and returned to his command, but in name only as he soon went to Georgia to defend Savannah – the demoralized troops of Longstreet’s army broke camp in Russellville in late March and headed toward Virginia to join Gen Robert E Lee. They’d stay with Longstreet through the Wilderness and on to Appomattox.
See also: Units that wintered in Russellville, 1863-64
Sources
- The War of Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Government Print Office.
- From Manassas to Appomattox. James Longstreet.
- Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer. G. Moxley Sorrel, 1905.
- Campaign to Nowhere. David C. Smith, 1999.
- The Bloody Thirteenth: History in Diaries, Letters & Memories. Dick Stanley. 2013.
Hayslope is seeking more information about the winter of 1863-1864. If you know of other diaries, letters, etc, please contact us at info@hayslope.org.