Battle of Huntsville
Taking place on August 13, 1862 between Union forces of Col. William T. Clift and Confederate forces under the command of Capt. T.M. Nelson, the Battle of Huntsville was the largest battle of the Civil War to take place in Scott County.
Precursor to the fight
William Clift (1795-1886) was Chattanooga’s first millionaire, a slave-owner who had amassed thousands of acres of property in Hamilton County.
Despite being a slave-owner, Clift was staunchly pro-Union. He placed a cannon on the front lawn of his Chattanooga home as a symbol of defiance towards the Confederacy, and offered refuge to Federal sympathizers who needed it. He organized a militia of likeminded Union sympathizers that he called the Seventh Tennessee.
On November 14, 1861, Tennessee Gov. Isham Harris issued an order that Clift and those loyal to him be captured, dead or alive. The 6th Alabama Infantry was dispatched to Sale Creek, Tenn. to capture Clift. When they arrived, Clift and the Seventh Tennessee had already broken camp and escaped into the mountains.
In May 1862, Brig. Gen. George W. Morgan commissioned Clift a colonel in the Union army, and ordered him to establish a regiment of federal troops in Scott and Morgan counties in Tennessee, in order to “annoy the enemy’s rear.” Both counties were overwhelmingly loyal to the Union, making it a common-sense choice for raising a regiment of Federal soldiers in Tennessee.
Clift arrived in Huntsville on June 1, 1862. He set up headquarters, recruited men from throughout Scott, Morgan and Anderson counties — including members of the Scott County Home Guard — and set about the task of fortifying the hill along River Road on the southeast side of town.
William H. Robbins, the Scott County man who had helped organize the Home Guard and had his home attacked by Confederate forces months earlier, was one of the first to join Clift’s company. He was commissioned a captain.
The fight begins
Col. Clift had 250 men serving in the 7th Tennessee Volunteer Infantry by August 1862. However, they were green, had little training, and were ill-prepared for a fight. Clift had repeatedly written to his superiors, urging them to send more supplies.
Meanwhile, Nelson’s forces marched on Huntsville from Knoxville, crossing the Clinch River and climbing into the Cumberland Mountains. They arrived on River Road on August 13, 1862.
Nelson had an estimated fighting force of 1,500 to 2,000 men, far out-numbering Clift’s small army of 250. Within minutes, Clift’s regiment had broken. Most of them fled the breastworks that had been constructed on the hillside along River Road. Clift said it was a scene of “wild confusion.”
Ironically, Clift was suffering from a bout of diarrhea, and could not flee with the rest of his men. A small force of about 50 men stayed with him, and managed to hold the Confederate forces at bay for more than 90 minutes. That prevented the entire regiment from being captured.
“I am proud to speak in the most honorable terms of a part of the officers and men that remained under my command,” Clift said of the 50 men who remained by his side. He specifically mentioned Capt. William Robbins, Maj. James S. Duncan, and two other men named Wilson and Shelton, whose exact identities aren’t clear.
Eventually, Clift and his remaining men fled the breastworks and escaped up the hill.
Aftermath
Following the fight, Nelson’s Confederate forces descended on Huntsville, where they spent two hours searching for members of Scott County Court who had voted to secede from Tennessee two months earlier. No one was apprehended. Instead, the Rebels ransacked the county courthouse, where they apparently took the written records of the “Free and Independent State of Scott.” Following the war, there was a reference made in court minutes to a couple of missing minute books that needed to be rewritten. They never were. The missing books were never found, and it was assumed they were destroyed.
Clift slowly regrouped his 7th Tennessee regiment. On October 28, 1862, Clift wrote to his superiors that his position in Scott County was “very perilous” but that he had encamped his men in “the most obscure parts of the county” and had posted pickets 20 to 25 miles from his camps.
The Confederacy believed that Clift was planning a sneak attack on Rebel positions. On August 23, 1862, Joseph F. Belton wrote to Col. S.J. Smith, the commanding officer of Confederate forces at Loudon, Tenn., and said that he believed Clift’s regiment was “awaiting an opportunity to attack at some vulnerable point — probably Loudon.”
However, Clift’s regiment never left the northern Cumberland Plateau. Instead, they focused on rooting out the Confederate guerrillas that roamed the region. On one excursion in October 1862, Clift’s men captured Rebel prisoners. Two weeks later, on October 15, 1862, they skirmished with Confederate guerrillas under the command of the infamous Champ Ferguson, killing four of Ferguson’s men.
The disbandment of the 7th Tennessee
In late 1862, Col. Clift was relieved of his command and the men enlisted in the 7th Tennessee were ordered to transfer to other companies. Most simply deserted and went home. Clift had been ordered to leave Scott County before the Battle of Huntsville and fall back to Barboursville, Ky., and had refused. That angered Brig. Gen. George W. Morgan, who telegraphed Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell — commander of the Union forces in the Western theater of the war — to tell him that Clift had twice disobeyed his commands.
Some of Clift’s men transferred to the 8th Tennessee, under the command of Col. Felix A. Reeve. But the 7th Tennessee had a reputation as being both untrained and undisciplined. Reeve complained to his superiors that his new soldiers were “mildly denominated a drunken, refectory and lawless mob,” and begged to be relieved of them.
Gen. Ambrose Burnside, who was in command of the Union forces in Kentucky, reinstated Clift’s command. But he revoked it four days later, after an assistant visited Clift’s camp and reported a state of disarray. He wrote: “Discipline and manners were entire strangers to the party,” and recommended that Clift’s men “be permitted to remain as they are, unrecognized and unpaid.”
Based on that report, Burnside disbanded the 7th Tennessee once and for all.
More: Scott County’s ill-fated Union regiment, a chapter of ‘Enclave.’