Longstreet Encampment

Getting here was the hard part. Longstreet's corps, detached from Bragg's army outside Chattanooga, was meant to ride the railroad to Sweetwater, but the trains came late and the men set out on foot. The locomotives that did come were too weak for the grades, so soldiers climbed down and walked beside the cars on steep stretches, and tore down fences to fuel the engines. Moving the whole force about sixty miles took eight days. At Sweetwater the promised rations were not there, and men fresh from Virginia faced an East Tennessee winter short of food and clothing.

What the plaque says

Longstreet Encampment In mid to late 1863, Sweetwater was a supply and staging area for the Confederacy. It was the last secure depot on the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad, South of the Union lines. In November 1863, General Longstreet, with 15, 000 men, camped here for 4 days to provision, prior to his siege of Knoxville in early December 1863.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sequoyah Birthplace Museum — 14 mi
  The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' museum on Tellico Lake, near the town where Sequoyah was born, telling how he built the Cherokee syllabary and what the Tellico Dam drowned.
• Fort Loudoun State Historic Park — 14 mi
  A reconstructed 1756-57 British fort on the Little Tennessee River in Overhill Cherokee country, besieged in 1760 and surrendered on August 9 of that year.
• Fort Southwest Point State Historic Park — 18 mi
  A reconstructed 1797 federal fort on a knoll at the meeting of the Clinch and Tennessee rivers, headquarters of Cherokee agent Return J. Meigs, a state park since July 2026.

More markers nearby

• Sweetwater Depot — 0.3 mi
• TMI Academy — 1.1 mi
• Lost Sea — 4.9 mi
• Hiwassee College — 6.4 mi