page_title: Fort Sanders, Knoxville
section_title: Battle of Fort Sanders
hierarchical_section_title: Fort Sanders, Knoxville / History / Battle of Fort Sanders
caption_attribution_description: English: Fort Sanders in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, photographed just over a year after the failed Confederate assault on the fort. A man stands atop the fort's wall at the center of the image.
context_page_description: Fort Sanders is a neighborhood in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, located west of the downtown area and immediately north of the main campus of the University of Tennessee. Developed in the late 19th century as a residential area for Knoxville's growing upper and middle classes, the neighborhood now provides housing primarily for the university's student population. The neighborhood still contains a notable number of its original Victorian-era houses and other buildings, several hundred of which were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 as the Fort Sanders Historic District.
  Fort Sanders is named for a Civil War-era Union bastion that once stood near the center of the neighborhood, which was the site of a key engagement in 1863. In the 1880s, several of Knoxville's wealthier residents built sizeable houses in what is now the southern half of Fort Sanders, then known as "White's Addition," while the northern half, known as "Ramsey's Addition," was developed to provide housing for plant managers and workers employed in factories along Second Creek. Fort Sanders was incorporated as the separate city of West Knoxville in 1888, and was annexed by Knoxville in 1897.
context_section_description: In November 1863, Confederate forces under General James Longstreet marched north from Chattanooga to Knoxville in hopes of dislodging Union forces under Ambrose Burnside, who had occupied Knoxville a few months prior.  After a brief skirmish at Campbell's Station (Farragut), Longstreet's forces approached Knoxville from the west along Kingston Pike.  Delaying maneuvers executed by General William P. Sanders gave Union forces in the city time to complete fortifications, although Sanders was mortally wounded on November 18, and died at the Lamar House the following day.  With Union fortifications in place, Longstreet decided to surround the city and starve Union forces out.
  During the Siege of Knoxville, Confederate pickets stretched roughly along what is now Twenty-First Street between Cumberland and Forest avenues.  Union fortifications included Fort Byington atop "The Hill," Battery Noble at what is now the intersection of Melrose and Seventeenth, and Battery Zoellner near the intersection of Highland and Eleventh.  Fort Sanders, originally "Fort Loudon" but renamed in honor of the deceased General Sanders, was an earthen fort that spanned Seventeenth between Laurel and Clinch, and continued along Laurel and Clinch eastward to Sixteenth Street.
  On the morning of November 29, 1863, after a two-week siege, Longstreet ordered three brigades under General Lafayette McLaws to attack Fort Sanders, in hopes of breaching Union lines.  The attackers marched from what is now the intersection of Nineteenth and Forest, southeastward across the intersection of Eighteenth and Highland, toward the fort's northeast corner at the intersection of Seventeenth and Laurel.  They were unable to overcome a deep trench at the base of the fort, however, and retreated with heavy casualties.  The battle, which lasted just twenty minutes, effectively ended Longstreet's chances of taking the city, and he retreated shortly afterward.
caption: Fort Sanders, photographed in 1864
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