Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[129] extreme left; another, under General Shackelford, for Loudon Bridge, farther up the Tennessee; and a third, under Colonel Foster, for Knoxville, on the Holston River. Bird and Foster reached their respective destinations on the first of September, without opposition, but when Shackelford approached Loudon, he found the Confederates there in considerable force, and strongly posted. After a brisk skirmish, they were driven across the bridge — a magnificent structure, over two thousand feet in length — which they fired behind them, and so laid it in ruins. The main army moved steadily forward, and was soon posted on the line of the railway from Loudon, southwesterly, so as to connect with Rosecrans, then in possession of Chattanooga.

General Simon B. Buckner was in command of about twenty thousand troops, in East Tennessee, with his Headquarters at Knoxville, when Rosecrans moved upon Bragg, and Burnside began his march. To hold Chattanooga, as we have observed, was of vital importance to the Confederacy, and, as its fall would involve the abandonment of East Tennessee, Bragg ordered Buckner to evacuate the valley, and hasten to his assistance at Chattanooga. Buckner accordingly fled from Knoxville on the approach of Burnside, and it was his rear-guard which Shackelford encountered at Loudon Bridge. At that time, the stronghold of Cumberland Gap, captured by General Morgan eighteen months before, was in possession of the Confederates, and held by one of Buckner's brigades, under General Frazer. That officer was ordered to join Buckner in his flight, but, on the recommendation of the latter, he was allowed to remain, with orders to hold the pass at all hazards. There he was hemmed in, by troops under Shackelford on one side, and on the other by a force under Colonel De Courcey, who came up from Kentucky. He held out for three or four days, when Burnside joined Shackelford, with cavalry and artillery, from Knoxville, and Frazer surrendered.

Sept. 9, 1863.

In the mean time a cavalry force had gone up the valley to Bristol, destroyed the bridges over the Watauga and Holston rivers, and driven the armed Confederates over the line into Virginia. Thus, again, the important pass of Cumberland Gap¹ was put into the possession of the National troops, and the great valley between the Alleghany and Cumberland Mountains, from Cleveland to Bristol, of which Knoxville may be considered the metropolis, seemed to be permanently rid of armed Confederates. The loyal inhabitants of that region received the National troops with open arms as their deliverers; and Union refugees, who had been hiding in the mountains, and Union prisoners from that region, who had escaped from the clutches of their captors, and had been sheltered in caves and rocks, all ragged and starved, now flocked to their homes, and joined in ovations offered to Burnside and his followers at Knoxville and elsewhere.²