embankment. Three times they succeeded in planting their battle-flags upon the parapet, and once they entered the fort, but only to be killed or captured after a desperate struggle. The assault failed. Three hundred Confederates were captured, and from five to seven hundred dead and wounded lay before the abattis, among the broken wires and in the ditch.
This attack upon Fort Saunders was one of the most gallant and desperate encounters of the whole war, and if it had occurred upon a more conspicuous field would have been ranked with Pickett's charge at Gettysburg.
General Longstreet now concluded to molest Burnside no more, and leisurely retired to Virginia. Grant sent twenty thousand men to re-*inforce Burnside, but Longstreet had already withdrawn.
Immediately after the war Knoxville began to increase rapidly in population. The loyalty of East Tennessee won much favor for it at the North, and many desirable additions to the population of Knoxville came from that section.
It is probable that no city in the South contains so large a proportion of citizens of
