During the American Civil War, both the Union Army and the Confederate States Army used the Wilderness Road. An early battle (Camp Wildcat), stymied the first Confederate attempt to seize control of neutral Kentucky. The Cumberland Gap changed hands four times throughout the war. Southern troops used the road for marches into Virginia. General Ulysses S. Grant came down the road for the Union campaign in Tennessee in 1864. Grant was so taken by the Road that he said, "With two brigades of the Army of the Cumberland I could hold that pass against the army which Napoleon led to Moscow."