blockading the Holston above the junction, leaving open the French Broad, by means of which supplies were constantly conveyed to the besieged.
On the 29th of November, at daylight, the Confederates assaulted Fort Saunders, on the west of the town, an almost impregnable point in its outer defences. The attacking force consisted of three brigades of McLaw's division. The attack was delivered upon the northwest angle of the fort, probably its strongest point. It was necessary for the storming party, after climbing a high hill, to pass a difficult abattis, and to make its way through a labyrinth of telegraph wires stretched between the stumps of the original forest trees which had been felled. Having overcome these obstacles, a deep ditch was reached, beyond which rose the parapet of the fort to the height of more than twenty feet. When the broken, disordered and bleeding mass of Confederates reached the verge of the ditch there was no hesitation. In the face of a deadly musket fire and of a continuous discharge of hand grenades, they hurled themselves into the ditch and scrambled upon hands and knees up the steep and slippery
