What Brought the Armies of the Blue and the Gray to Knoxville?
Knoxville was a pro-Confederate town of some 3700 persons when Tennessee seceded from the Union in June of 1861. It was the commercial and light manufacturing center of East Tennessee, a region of considerable agricultural importance that provided large quantities of wheat, corn, pork and other foodstuffs to areas beyond the great valley of the Tennessee River. Lying near the head of navigation of this great stream, Knoxville also sat astride the Souths most direct rail link between the Confederate capital of Richmond and the geographic region of the Confederacy that lay west of the Appalachian Mountains. To the north of the city lay vital mountain passes that controlled access to Tennessee from Kentucky, passes that would be of critical military importance during the Civil War. With the majority of the population of East Tennessee remaining loyal to the United States, Knoxville was a Confederate island in a sea of Union sympathy. For almost two years the liberation of East Tennessee f
