Battery Wiltsie

Orlando Poe, Burnside's chief engineer, laid out Knoxville's defenses on a ridge at least 100 feet above the ground around it. The earthworks were built by a mixed workforce of pro-Union volunteers, drafted sympathizers and Black laborers. East of the depot defenses, Battery Wiltsie sat beyond Battery Billingsley, whose three three-inch rifles covered the approaches. Fort Comstock overlooked the depot from Summit Hill. Longstreet's one real assault fell on the western end of this line, at Fort Sanders, not here.

What the plaque says

Battery Wiltsie A large Federal earthwork was located back of Vine Avenue between Gay and Walnut Streets when Gen. James Longstreet besieged Knoxville, Nov. 17 - Dec. 4, 1863. The Federal defense line ran along this ridge from Fort Hill, (Surrey Street and Saxton Avenue) 2400 yards east, to Fort Sanders, (17th street and Laurel Avenue) 1400 yards west. Ten forts crowned these heights, five east and four west of this point.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blount Mansion — 0.6 mi
  The 1792 frame house of William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, where the people he enslaved are named.
• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 1.4 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
• Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 15 mi
  The 1935 school in Clinton that sent twelve Black students down Foley Hill to desegregate Clinton High School in August 1956, now a museum with bronze statues of the Clinton 12.
• Museum of Appalachia — 17 mi
  John Rice Irwin's 65-acre collection of moved log cabins and mountain objects north of Knoxville, opened in 1969, with a cabin believed to be Mark Twain's father's.

More markers nearby

• Civil War Hospital — steps away
• Market Square — steps away
• First Presbyterian Church — 0.3 mi
• Thomas William Humes — 0.4 mi