A Visit to Armstrong’s Hill

John Banks

Chad Gardner stands atop Armstrong’s Hill in Tennessee.

At 7:45 on a Sunday morning, I stand in a parking lot near the remains of the Union army’s Fort Higley, mentally prepping for tramping the rugged, heavily wooded Armstrong’s Hill battlefield nearby. Gloomy-gray skies and cold conditions, with a 100 percent chance of rain, are not ideal for any outdoor meandering. But for fellow tramper Chad Gardner—a 60-year-old Army vet sporting an impressive, long white beard—this bleak day is near perfect.

In fact, any day he can walk Armstrong’s Hill—site of an obscure battle on November 25, 1863, about two miles from Knoxville, Tennessee—is a good day. Gardner often walks the battlefield alone, usually arriving well before sunrise from his home 90 minutes away in Johnson City. Battlefield conditions rarely faze him. Well, except for the time he nearly got lost in summertime laurel and briars thick enough to deter a mountain goat.

“Didn’t want anyone to find my carcass out in the woods that day,” says Gardner, who first visited the battlefield in July 2024.

So what fascinates him about this unheralded hallowed ground, a battlefield even many knowledgeable Knoxvillian Civil War buffs have never heard of?

“American soldiers died here,” says Gardner, “and I’ll go anywhere that happened.”

Of course, the solitude of the place—a lightly visited wildlife area/park—also inspires Gardner to visit frequently. In Knoxville, where frenzied developers seem intent on carving up every square inch of ground, it’s remarkable that this urban Civil War oasis exists at all.

John Banks

Jim Freeman, descendant of a 24th Kentucky (U.S.) soldier, at the Armstrong’s Hill battlefield

After my arrival at the High Ground Park parking lot with battlefield tramping pal Jack Richards, Gardner and I are joined by three other trampers, including Jim Freeman, a descendant of a 24th Kentucky (U.S.) Infantry soldier who fought at Armstrong’s Hill. Minutes later, we cross the rolling, serpentine Cherokee Trail for the short walk to a path that takes us to the battlefield. There are no historical markers at Armstrong’s Hill, no monuments, either, and on this god-awful day, no humans besides us diehards.

Soon into our ascension to the summit of Armstrong’s Hill, which was occupied by Union troops in 1863, an unholy downpour dampens at least one spirit.

“Dude, I think I need the keys to your car,” Richards tells me out of earshot from the group. “I’m considering turning back.”

But he soldiers on to the summit, which provides a stunning view, after the rain clears, of the Tennessee River and downtown Knoxville beyond. In the distance, near a 20th-century railroad bridge, the Union army placed a critical pontoon bridge: the objective of the Confederates’ assault on the Union-held city.

Steps away, a sign warns about climbing on or near the cliffs overlooking the river: “Death or serious injury can occur.” Richards, a veteran of such adventures, warns of getting too close. “Don’t forget the No. 1 rule,” he says. “No one gets killed on our trips.”

Gardner experienced such dangers during his four years in the Marine Corps and 16 more in the Army. On a training exercise, he suffered a serious back injury when the helicopter he was riding in plummeted to an especially hard landing. And he also honed a soldier’s eye for terrain, a skill that becomes clear as we tramp.

“You see a battlefield as much with your feet as you do your eyes,” he says.

My eyes see terrain that reminds me of the South Mountain battlefield in western Maryland. In the far distance, opposite a massive postwar pond, stand the imposing Cherokee Heights, the starting point of the Confederates’ assault. Much of the fighting probably occurred in the middle distance, site of a deep ravine and the current eyesore pond. In 1863, the only flat ground on the battlefield was a farm field.

My feet, meanwhile, “see” steep terrain that flashes warning signs to my legs and brain. So I borrow Gardner’s crooked but sturdy walking stick while he totes the carrying case for my drone.

“Let’s give John the full monty,” says Tim Vane, a fellow tramper.

“Buy a ticket and take the ride,” Gardner chimes in.

The Battle of Armstrong’s Hill, probably more a big skirmish than a battle, resulted in about 150 casualties and scant mention in the Official Records. With a victory here, Confederate troops under Major General James Longstreet could have thrown a real scare into the Union army holding Knoxville.

Yards below the summit of Armstrong’s Hill, on ankle-turning and knee-buckling terrain, the 103rd Ohio Infantry and other Union troops in the army’s XXIII Corps braced for a Confederate assault. Along this ground, Vane’s local Civil War roundtable used orange tape to mark the line on tree limbs. My God, what a challenging place to fight.

“Never was a fortified position held longer against such odds,” a Union soldier wrote about the fighting. “And never was the bravery of troops subjected to a severer test.”¹

John Banks

A Confederate soldier’s view of Armstrong’s Hill, Tennessee.

“These sons of bitches were tough,” Gardner says of the soldiers on both sides. “And they did it wearing brogans after a night before of nearly freezing to death.”

Along our slow descent, I spot a large depression in the ground.

“We always wanted this to be a [wartime] trench,” Vane says. “But it’s probably just where a tree fell.” Minutes later, we hear a loud pop and crashing noise: It’s a tree tumbling in the distance in this urban forest. Standing in this bucolic setting, I try to imagine what soldiers saw, heard, and smelled in 1863.

“It sounded to me as if the earth, trees and bushes must have been full of the [Rebel] yell and it had all escaped at once,” a 103rd Ohio veteran recalled of the fighting. “Talk about hornet’s nests!”²

Back in the now, we slip, stagger, and slide along the precipitous ridge.

“Isn’t this the longest 140 yards of your life?” Gardner says to no one in particular. “Gotta love verticality.”

We finally make our way to that postwar pond, added to the landscape long ago by the farmer who owned the property. Here, the fighting swayed back and forth and attacking Union troops came under fire from Confederates on the Cherokee Heights.

According to a soldier in the 24th Kentucky, Union soldiers “established a line so close under the enemy’s guns that they could not depress them enough to make fatal shots, the shells and balls shrieking over our heads as if a myriad of demons were treating us to an infernal serenade.”³

Somewhere on this ground, after the fighting slackened, Union soldiers sent a “corpulent” Confederate scrambling to safety.

Recalled a 103rd Ohio soldier: “To see the fellow ducking his head at every step and the dust and gravel flying on all sides of his path from the showers of bullets fired by our brigade seemed very amusing [to] the fellows on our side of the fence, if not to him, and reminded one of a chicken running in and out of a hail storm.”⁴

After the fighting, a Union victory that prevented the capture of the pontoon bridge into Knoxville, mothers and fathers, wives and girlfriends, sisters and brothers and others mourned the dead—just like those who lost loved ones at Antietam, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, and elsewhere more notable. Private Charles Caldwell of the 103rd Ohio fell at Armstrong’s Hill from a bullet above his right eye. He was 18 or 19.

“He lived about six hours,” his captain wrote to Caldwell’s mother. “He did not speak a word after he was shot.… [H]e was a good & brave young man.” Comrades buried him in Knoxville.⁵ (Days later, another of our trampers, Daniel Stover, surprised me with a photo of Caldwell’s grave at Knoxville National Cemetery.)

While near the battlefield pond one September day, Gardner recalls, he set down his backpack and walked a short distance away. Upon his return, it was gone.

“Spirits,” I instantly wonder, half in jest.

“Coyotes,” says Gardner, who found the backpack on a subsequent visit to the field.

Nearby, we get a close-up view of the imposing Cherokee Heights, rising nearly 400 feet above us. An eagle-eyed tramper spies in the far distance the orange tape denoting the line for the 103rd Ohio.

On the final leg of our adventure, I stagger clumsily over a downed limb. But, damn, who cares? We all relish this exploration.

“This is your Civil Wargasm,” Vane tells me, a reference to journalist Tony Horwitz’s epic book, Confederates in the Attic.

Gardner, meanwhile, revels in sharing the battlefield—his battlefield—with new friends.

“I’m not spiritual,” he says before our return to the 21st century. “But to know a soldier was standing on this ground is awesome.”

Awesome—and terrible—indeed.

 

John Banks is author of A Civil War Road Trip of a Lifetime and two other Civil War books. A longtime journalist (at The Dallas Morning News, ESPN, The History Channel), he is secretary-treasurer of The Center for Civil War Photography. He lives in Nashville with his wife, Carol.