Earl J. Hess and Timothy B. Smith are my favorite currently writing ACW authors. As Smith's new book about Corinth costs 40 USD, while Hess' treatment of the Knoxville campaign is available for a more reasonable 27 USD, I ordered the latter one. Hess does not disappoint. This is another fine title about a muddy side-show of the American Civil War. The reason for the Knoxville campaign were political for the Union and personal for the Confederacy. Abraham Lincoln wanted to shield the Union loyalists of Eastern Tennessee from Southern repression and establish some sort of bipartisanship between Northerners and Southerners. The reason that made Eastern Tennessee averse to slavery, its inaccessible terrain, made it logistically challenging for the Federals as all supplies had to carried by wagon from Kentucky, as the only rail links from Virginia and Chattanooga were controlled by the Confederates.

For the Confederates, the control of the railroad linking Virginia and Chattanooga was only secondary after the twin defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. The victory at Chickamauga restored some of the Confederate initiative. Bragg unfortunately used it to get rid of James Longstreet who certainly had ambitious to replace Bragg as army commander. Longstreet's troops and Wheeler's cavalry would be sorely missing at the battle for Chattanooga.

Longstreet was unsuitable by nature for the bold strike necessary to knock out Ambrose Burnside's forces at Knoxville. Longstreet's similar venture against Suffolk earlier in 1863 failed to capture the place. A better choice would have been Patrick Cleburne, but he only commanded a division. The Confederacy lacked the logistical resources to strike quickly, anyway. So Longstreet more or less limped towards Knoxville.

His Federal adversary was no stranger to mud marches either. The siege of Knoxville would be a tiny re-match for the battle of Fredericksburg where Ambrose Burnside commanded his soldiers to attack Longstreet's secure heights. At Knoxville, it was Burnside's turn to await Longstreet's attack on his lines. Waiting and delaying was Burnside's core competency. Stricken by diarrhea, he asked Lincoln to relieve him of command, time and again. Grant made sure that Burnside at least would stay put in Knoxville and not retreat. In the end, Burnside locked down an important number of Confederate soldiers who couldn't assist Bragg in his final battle. The "siege" of Knoxville was a sorry affair in dreadful weather whose only notable event was the botched attack on Fort Sanders. The campaign and the war was decided elsewhere. Keeping Longstreet at bay restored some of Burnside's reputation which his soldiers were to pay for in the Overland campaign and at Petersburg.

Hess has written an excellent account of this small campaign. The only detriments are that he does not try to drill down the numbers of soldiers engaged in the different engagements, offering only approximate total numbers per side, and the lack of a scale on many maps, turning them into mere sketches. A comparison of Longstreet at Suffolk and Knoxville, as well as Burnside at Knoxville and the Crater, is unfortunately also left to the reader. Overall, this will be the standard account of the campaign for many years. ( )