After the clash at Bean’s Station in northeastern Tennessee, the Federals fell back and formed a defensive line between Bean’s and Rutledge. Major-General John G. Parke, commanding the Federal expedition from Rutledge, sent more troops from his Ninth Corps to support this new line. Lieutenant-General James Longstreet’s Confederates advanced, still hoping to cut the Federals off from their primary base at Knoxville and destroy them so his Confederates could subsist in eastern Tennessee for the winter unmolested.
Longstreet dispatched Major-General Micah Jenkins’s division to probe the Federal defenses while Major-General William T. Martin’s cavalry worked its way around the Federal right. Jenkins reported that the enemy right was vulnerable to an attack, but Longstreet would not authorize a full-scale assault because he feared that both the Ninth and Twenty-third corps from the Army of the Ohio had arrived on the field. Meanwhile, Martin’s troopers rode around the right, and according to Martin:
“A high hill was gained from which my artillery could enfilade the enemy’s breastworks. With great labor the guns were placed in position and rapidly and effectively served. My guns were in sight of, and only 400 or 500 yards from, our infantry skirmishers, who it was expected would attack in front. My fire was continued for 1 1/2 hours, and the enemy began to retire, but was able to detach a large force to hold my men in check, as he was not pressed in front.”
Martin believed that had Jenkins launched a frontal attack, his troopers could have flanked and routed the Federals. He concluded, “With concert of action, great damage could have been done the enemy on this day.” The Federals continued their fighting retreat, joining the rest of the expeditionary force at Rutledge on December 16. From there, they fell back to Blain’s Crossroads, about 15 miles from Knoxville. Longstreet continued to pursue, but his men were hampered by freezing rain and mud.
Major-General John G. Foster, commanding the Federal Army of the Ohio from Knoxville, informed Major-General Ulysses S. Grant, commanding the Western Theater, that he would “take up the most advantageous position and accept battle.” Grant told Foster to drive Longstreet “as far to the east as possible.” Foster’s plan to stay on the defensive forced Grant to devote resources to eastern Tennessee that could have otherwise been used to invade Georgia and the Deep South.
For Longstreet, the fighting in mid-December amounted to an empty victory. The Federals had been driven back toward Knoxville, but Longstreet could do little more now that they held strong defensive positions with superior numbers. Even worse, the Confederates were low on supplies, and winter was approaching in the forbidding country of eastern Tennessee. One of Longstreet’s aides, Moxley Sorrel, wrote, “It is distressing in the extreme that we should lose so great an opportunity to lift up our poor country, merely for the lack of shoes and clothing for our men.”
All told, the Knoxville campaign was a dismal failure for the Confederacy, with Longstreet losing 1,296 men and the Federals losing 681. As criticism of Longstreet’s performance mounted, he turned to his subordinates for blame. He issued Special Orders Number 27, relieving one of his division commanders (and former close friend) Major-General Lafayette McLaws from command. He explained why he issued the order to McLaws:
“I am directed to say that throughout the campaign on which we are engaged you have exhibited a want of confidence in the efforts and plans which the commanding general has thought proper to adopt, and he is apprehensive that this feeling will extend more or less to the troops under your command. Under these circumstances the commanding general has felt that the interest of the public service would be advanced by your separation from him, and as he could not himself leave, he decided upon the issue of the order which you have received.”
Longstreet also accused Brigadier-General Evander M. Law of being too slow in leading his brigade at Bean’s Station on the 14th. Law responded by submitting his resignation, which Longstreet “cheerfully granted.” Longstreet dismissed another brigade commander, Brigadier-General Jerome Robertson, who had been accused by Jenkins, his division commander, of “conduct highly prejudicial to good order and military discipline.” Longstreet asserted that Robertson had announced that there were only–
“… Three days’ rations on hand, and God knows where more are to come from; that he had no confidence in the campaign; that whether we whipped the enemy in the immediate battle or not, we would be compelled to retreat, the enemy being believed by citizens and others to be moving around us, and that we were in danger of losing a considerable part of our army; that our men were in no condition for campaigning; that General Longstreet had promised shoes, but how could they be furnished? that we only had communication with Richmond, and could only get a mail from there in three weeks; that he was opposed to the movement; would require written orders, and would obey under protest.”
Finally, Longstreet lashed out at Richmond for its lack of support:
“I am here without authority to order courts-martial or any other authority which is necessary to a separate command. I am entirely cut off from communication with General (Braxton) Bragg’s army, and cannot get from those headquarters orders for courts, boards of examination, or anything else. I desire to be assigned as part of some other officer’s command, whom I may reach with less trouble and in less time.”
In fact, Longstreet was so out of touch with Bragg’s Army of Tennessee that he did not even know that Bragg had been removed as commander over two weeks ago. Longstreet wrote that if Richmond could not grant his request, “it will give me much pleasure to relinquish” his command. Ultimately, Longstreet’s offer to resign was rejected, and the charges against McLaws, Law, and Robertson were dropped. With his command structure crippled and his freezing men short on supplies, Longstreet took up winter quarters between Russellville and Morristown, south of Bean’s Station. His artillery chief, Colonel E. Porter Alexander, later wrote:
“It was on the southern and western slope of extensive hills, covered with a virgin forest of oak and hickory, and with a fine mountain stream close by, a few hundred yards east of the road between the two towns. A better site could not be desired, and the very next day, every mess in camp, including our own, began work on a hut, of some sort, according to its own ideas.”
Bibliography
- Longstreet, James, From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co. (Kindle Edition), 1895.
- Stanchak, John E. (Patricia L. Faust ed.), Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.