Appalachian History Series – Mossy Creek, December 29, 1863: Cavalry, Creek Crossings, and East Tennessee’s Winter War
Before the name Jefferson City appeared on maps, the place was Mossy Creek.
The settlement began in the late eighteenth century beside a clear East Tennessee stream where green moss grew along the water. Adam and Elizabeth Sharkey Peck came down the Holston River from Virginia with their children and helped anchor a community with a home, a mill, and a church. By the time the Civil War reached East Tennessee, Mossy Creek was no longer only a rural stop between farms and ridges. It had stores, roads, mills, a seminary that would grow into Carson-Newman University, and a railroad connection that tied it to Knoxville, Bristol, and the wider war.
That railroad mattered. So did the road toward Morristown, the roads toward Dandridge and the Chucky, and the valleys around Bay’s Mountain. In the winter of 1863, these roads and ridges became part of the long struggle for East Tennessee after the Confederate failure at Knoxville.
Mossy Creek did not become one of the great famous battlefields of the Civil War. It was not Shiloh, Chickamauga, Gettysburg, or Antietam. Yet on December 29, 1863, a hard fight unfolded along the creek and the Morristown road. It lasted for hours, drew in cavalry, infantry, and artillery, and helped shape the winter campaign that followed.
Longstreet After Knoxville
The Battle of Mossy Creek grew out of Confederate lieutenant general James Longstreet’s failed attempt to retake Knoxville.
After the Confederate defeat at Fort Sanders in late November 1863, Longstreet withdrew northeast into upper East Tennessee. His army moved through a region already worn thin by military occupation, divided loyalties, foraging parties, and winter hardship. By late December, the Confederate army had settled around Russellville and Morristown, while Federal forces pushed east from the Knoxville and Strawberry Plains area.
The Federal advance was not only about chasing Longstreet. It was also about holding East Tennessee, protecting the railroad, watching the roads through the valleys, and keeping Confederate cavalry from breaking back toward Knoxville. Brigadier General Samuel D. Sturgis commanded Federal cavalry in this forward zone. Across from him, Confederate major general William T. Martin commanded Longstreet’s cavalry. Martin’s men watched a wide arc from Rutledge toward Dandridge, with Mossy Creek near the center of the struggle.
By late December, both armies were cold, tired, and short on supplies. Horses were wearing out. Men were living off a countryside that had already been stripped by marching columns. The fight at Mossy Creek came from this uneasy pressure. Each side was probing for weakness, and each side hoped to punish the other before the winter campaign settled into another round of marches and skirmishes.
Sturgis Divides His Force
On the night of December 28, 1863, Sturgis received information that a brigade of Confederate cavalry had moved toward Dandridge and gone into camp. He believed Martin’s force was divided. If that was true, it gave him a chance to strike part of the Confederate cavalry before it could reunite.
Sturgis ordered troops toward Dandridge by different roads. Colonel LaGrange’s brigade and two rifled guns moved at dawn toward the point where the Mossy Creek road crossed Bay’s Mountain. Other cavalry moved by the Mossy Creek and New Market roads. The plan was simple in outline but dangerous in practice. Sturgis wanted to catch a Confederate force near Dandridge, but doing so thinned his line in front of Mossy Creek.
He left Colonel Archibald P. Campbell to cover the front near Talbott’s Station and fall back if heavily attacked. Colonel William J. Palmer’s command, including the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry and Tennessee mounted infantry, guarded the right flank near the Chucky road. Infantry from Colonel Samuel R. Mott’s brigade of the Twenty-third Corps stood near Mossy Creek as support.
Sturgis had made a gamble. He hoped the Confederates were divided. Instead, Martin’s cavalry had reunited.
Martin Attacks
About 9 a.m. on December 29, Confederate cavalry under Martin advanced in force. Sturgis’s report named Martin, Frank Armstrong, and J. T. Morgan among the Confederate leaders. Washington L. Elliott, the Federal cavalry chief from the Army of the Cumberland, later described the attacking force as two divisions of cavalry under Armstrong and Morgan, with artillery, all commanded by Martin.
The Confederates came on dismounted, in line of battle, pushing along and across the roads east of Mossy Creek. Their line stretched across a broad front, from the Chucky road across the Morristown road toward the road leading to Dyer’s Ferry. Campbell’s men did what they had been ordered to do. They contested the ground, then fell back toward the line selected near Mossy Creek.
The Confederate advance was strong enough that Sturgis quickly understood the danger. His troops had gone out toward Dandridge, and the enemy in front of him was not a small detached brigade. He sent orders for LaGrange, Foster, and Wolford to return if they found no enemy at Dandridge.
This was the turning point before the battle’s turning point. The Federal line had to hold long enough for the detached troops to come back.
Lilly’s Battery And The Federal Line
The Federal position near Mossy Creek became a mixed line of cavalry, infantry, and artillery.
Captain Eli Lilly’s Eighteenth Indiana Battery stood near the Morristown road. Lilly’s guns had already seen hard service with the Army of the Cumberland, and at Mossy Creek they became one of the anchors of the Federal defense. Three of his pieces were posted on a hill south of the Morristown road, supported by cavalry. A section of the Elgin Battery and men of the 118th Ohio Infantry and 16th Kentucky Infantry strengthened the line. Sturgis sent the 118th Ohio into woods on the left of the road, partly hidden from Confederate view, and placed guns and infantry to cover the creek crossing.
As the Confederates advanced over open ground, Lilly’s battery fired into their lines. The Official Records show how heavily the guns were pressed. Colonel Edward M. McCook reported that Lilly kept up fire for more than two and a half hours while Confederate artillery answered with eight guns. Horses were killed, gunners were disabled, and the battery came under severe pressure. At one point, one gun was left on the field and temporarily taken by the Confederates, then recaptured by a saber charge.
The 118th Ohio, fighting one of its first major actions, also played an important part. Positioned in the woods near the left of the road, the regiment waited as the Confederate attack came within range. When the infantry fired and charged, it helped break the Confederate push at a critical moment.
Mossy Creek was not a clean cavalry fight. It was a battlefield of roads, woods, fences, artillery smoke, and infantry volleys. It was a place where mounted troops often fought on foot and where a few guns in the right position could decide whether a line held or collapsed.
The Left Holds
The heaviest Confederate pressure fell on the Federal left and left center. Martin’s men tried to secure ground that would command the crossing of Mossy Creek. If they succeeded, the Federal position could be bent back or broken.
Sturgis later wrote that the Confederates advanced “steadily and handsomely” over the open country. That line matters because it shows respect for the attack. The Confederates did not simply stumble into defeat. They pressed hard enough that, for a time, the Federal position looked vulnerable.
Campbell’s brigade and the rifled guns punished the advance. The 118th Ohio and supporting infantry waited until the Confederates came close, then fired and charged. On the extreme Federal left, the 1st Tennessee Cavalry under Colonel Brownlow made a saber charge that broke part of the Confederate line and threw it into disorder.
That Tennessee charge carried special meaning in East Tennessee. Many Union regiments from the region were made up of men who had chosen the United States in a divided mountain country where loyalty could split families and communities. At Mossy Creek, East Tennessee Unionists fought in their own region, along roads and valleys not far from home.
The Confederate push did not collapse all at once. The field remained dangerous. But the attack had lost its best chance to break the Federal line.
LaGrange Returns
While the left held, LaGrange’s brigade returned from the Dandridge movement.
Washington L. Elliott placed LaGrange’s arrival at about 2 p.m. Sturgis’s report describes LaGrange coming onto the field as the Confederates began to give way. The returning troops were sent forward on the Federal right to harass the retreat, while Campbell advanced along the Morristown road and through the fields on the left.
Around 3 p.m., the battle shifted. The Confederates, who had spent the day attacking, began falling back. Federal guns fired into retreating lines and columns. The pursuit continued until dark, driving Martin’s men back about four miles, beyond the ground they had occupied in the morning, toward Panther Springs and Talbott’s Station.
The Federals did not launch a long night pursuit. Sturgis later explained that darkness, worn horses, and the condition of his command limited what he could do. The battle had already lasted from morning until dark. His men had held Mossy Creek, turned back Martin’s attack, and recovered the ground toward Talbott’s Station.
Losses And Claims
Casualty figures for Mossy Creek can be confusing because Sturgis sent an early casualty summary and the Official Records also include a revised return.
On January 1, 1864, Sturgis reported 18 enlisted men killed, 7 officers and 66 enlisted men wounded, and 5 missing, for a total of 96. In his January 8 report, he gave a slightly different total, saying 18 soldiers killed, 7 officers and 70 soldiers wounded, and 5 missing, for a total of 100. The revised casualty return in the Official Records lists 109 Union casualties.
The Confederate loss is harder to pin down. Sturgis estimated Confederate losses between 300 and 400. Elliott thought 100 killed and 400 wounded would not be exaggerated. Such estimates came from battlefield observation, prisoners, deserters, citizens, and Federal officers, but they were not a complete Confederate casualty return. Modern summaries often repeat a range, generally agreeing that Confederate losses were probably heavier than Federal losses, but the exact number remains uncertain.
The names in the casualty return remind us that Mossy Creek was more than a strategic point. The dead and wounded came from units such as the 1st Tennessee Cavalry, 2nd Michigan Cavalry, 2nd and 4th Indiana Cavalry, 1st Wisconsin Cavalry, 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 18th Indiana Battery, 16th Kentucky Infantry, and 118th Ohio Infantry. Men from the mountains of Tennessee fought beside men from Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Wisconsin, and Illinois.
For them, Mossy Creek was not a minor action. It was the day they remembered, or the day their families remembered for them.
The Big Ripple
The Federal victory at Mossy Creek did not destroy Longstreet’s army. It did not end the East Tennessee campaign. It did not remove Confederate pressure from the region. That is why the battle can look small when placed beside the larger war.
Yet its ripple was real.
The fight helped the Federals hold their forward line around Mossy Creek and Talbott’s Station after Longstreet’s retreat from Knoxville. It checked Martin’s cavalry at a moment when Confederate horsemen were trying to regain the initiative. It also showed how dangerous the winter campaign remained. Even after Knoxville, Longstreet’s army was not beaten into helplessness. It still had cavalry, artillery, and enough strength to strike.
The weeks after Mossy Creek proved the point. Operations continued around Dandridge, the Chucky roads, Fair Garden, and the valleys east of Knoxville. Sturgis and other Federal commanders had to keep watching the same roads that had drawn them into the December 29 fight. Longstreet still looked for opportunities to feed his army, protect his winter quarters, and threaten Federal positions.
Mossy Creek was therefore a hinge battle. It stood between the famous repulse at Knoxville and the January movements around Dandridge and Fair Garden. It belongs to that hard winter season when East Tennessee’s roads, farms, mills, and creek crossings became military problems.
Mossy Creek After The War
After the Civil War, Mossy Creek returned to the slower work of community life. The town grew. Glenmore Mansion rose after the war. Businesses expanded. The seminary developed into Carson-Newman University. In 1901, Mossy Creek, Carsonville, and Frame Addition were incorporated together as Jefferson City.
The battlefield did not remain open and untouched. Much of the old field became neighborhoods, roads, campus ground, and town space. The creek itself changed with the coming of Cherokee Dam and the reshaping of the landscape. Yet pieces of memory remain. Historical markers describe the action. Branner Cemetery and local sites hold stories connected to the soldiers. The East Tennessee Crossing Byway points visitors toward the old field and notes stones from a Civil War era bridge near Mossy Creek.
That is often how Appalachian Civil War memory survives. Not always as a preserved battlefield with long open views, but as a layered landscape where a college campus, a cemetery, a road, a creek, and a marker all sit on ground that once shook with artillery.
Why Mossy Creek Matters
Mossy Creek matters because it shows the Civil War in East Tennessee as it really was. It was not only grand strategy from Richmond, Washington, Chattanooga, or Knoxville. It was also a war of ridges, roads, mills, railroad stations, creek crossings, and winter camps.
The battle brought together several pieces of that story. Longstreet’s failed Knoxville campaign pushed Confederate forces into upper East Tennessee. Federal cavalry and infantry tried to hold them in check. Local roads toward Dandridge, Morristown, Talbott’s Station, and the Chucky became lines of movement and danger. East Tennessee Unionists fought near home. Men from across the Midwest and Upper South bled in a town that many people today know as Jefferson City.
On December 29, 1863, Mossy Creek became the place where a Federal gamble nearly opened a weakness, where Martin’s Confederate cavalry tried to take advantage, and where artillery, infantry, and a returning cavalry brigade turned the field back in Sturgis’s favor.
It was a small battle only when measured against the largest battles of the war. For East Tennessee, it was part of something bigger. Mossy Creek helped decide who would hold the forward line after Knoxville, and it kept the winter campaign alive along the same roads where civilians were trying to survive another season of war.
Today, the creek runs through a changed town. The name Mossy Creek still lingers, attached to local history, old maps, and community memory. Beneath modern Jefferson City, the old battlefield remains part of the story of Appalachian Tennessee, where a winter fight along a creek carried consequences far beyond its size.
Sources & Further Reading
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. XXXI, Part I: Reports. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1890. https://archive.org/details/cu31924077699852
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. XXXI, Part II: Reports. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1890. https://archive.org/details/cu31924077700270
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. XXXI, Part III: Correspondence, Orders, and Returns. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1890. https://archive.org/details/cu31924077699845
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. XXXII, Part I: Reports. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891. https://archive.org/details/warofrebellion012602rootrich
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. XXXII, Part II: Correspondence, Orders, and Returns. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891. https://archive.org/details/cu31924077699837
United States War Department. Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891 to 1895. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3701sm.gcw0099000
National Archives. “Civil War: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.” Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/alic/reference/military/civil-war-armies-records
National Park Service. “Mossy Creek.” Civil War Battle Detail, American Battlefield Protection Program. Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battles-detail.htm?battleCode=tn027
National Park Service. “Tennessee Civil War Battles.” Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/tennessee.htm
National Park Service. Update to the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on the Nation’s Civil War Battlefields: State of Tennessee. Washington, DC: National Park Service, 2009. https://npshistory.com/publications/battlefield/cwsac/updates/tn.pdf
King, Spurgeon. “Battle of Mossy Creek.” Tennessee Encyclopedia. Tennessee Historical Society. Last modified March 1, 2018. https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/battle-of-mossy-creek/
Tennessee Department of Tourist Development. “Battle of Mossy Creek.” Tennessee Vacation Civil War Trails. Accessed June 18, 2026. https://classic.tnvacation.com/civil-war/place/217/battle-of-mossy-creek/
Tennessee Department of Tourist Development. “Mossy Creek Engagement.” Tennessee Vacation Civil War Trails. Accessed June 18, 2026. https://classic.tnvacation.com/civil-war/place/4369/mossy-creek-engagement/
Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association. “Mossy Creek.” Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.tcwpa.org/battle-site/mossy-creek/
Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association. “Mossy Creek Skirmish.” Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.tcwpa.org/battle-site/mossy-creek-skirmish/
East Tennessee Crossing Byway. “Battle of Mossy Creek, December 29, 1863.” Accessed June 18, 2026. https://easttennesseecrossingbyway.com/battle-of-mossy-creek-december-29-1863/
City of Jefferson City, Tennessee. “Our History.” Accessed June 18, 2026. https://jeffcitytn.com/government/history.php
The Historical Marker Database. “Battle of Mossy Creek.” Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=28311
The Historical Marker Database. “Mossy Creek Engagement.” Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=70659
Bowling Green State University Libraries. “Civil War Newspaper Index.” Center for Archival Collections. Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.bgsu.edu/library/cac/collections/newspapers/civil-war-newspaper-index.html
Evansville Daily Journal. “Orders: Cavalry Corps, Army of the Ohio, Mossy Creek, Tennessee, December 29, 1863.” February 2, 1864. Hoosier State Chronicles, Indiana State Library. https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=EVDJ18640202.1.2
Dyer, Frederick H. A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion. Des Moines, IA: Dyer Publishing Company, 1908. https://archive.org/details/08697590.3359.emory.edu
National Park Service. “18th Battery, Indiana Light Artillery.” Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System. Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UIN0018YAL
National Park Service. “118th Regiment, Ohio Infantry.” Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System. Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UOH0118RI
Indiana Governor’s History. “Colonel Eli Lilly.” Lilly Archives, January 2008. https://www.in.gov/governorhistory/mitchdaniels/files/Press/lillybio.pdf
Indiana National Guard. “A Look Back at the Civil War: Eli Lilly.” Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.in.gov/indiana-national-guard/files/A-Look-Back-at-the-Civil-War_Eli-Lilly.pdf
Jarrell, Michelle C. “Colonel Eli Lilly: The Right Man for the Job.” Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History 29, no. 1, Winter 2017. https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA488658319&issn=1040788X&it=r&linkaccess=abs&p=AONE&sid=googleScholar&sw=w&v=2.1
Indiana Historical Society. “You Are There: Eli Lilly at the Beginning.” Accessed June 18, 2026. https://indianahistory.org/stories/you-are-there-eli-lilly-at-the-beginning/
Hess, Earl J. The Knoxville Campaign: Burnside and Longstreet in East Tennessee. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012. https://utpress.org/title/the-knoxville-campaign-4/
Lowe, Ed. A Fine Opportunity Lost: Longstreet’s East Tennessee Campaign, November 1863 to April 1864. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2023. https://www.savasbeatie.com/copy-of-a-fine-opportunity-lost-longstreets-east-tennessee-campaign-november-1863-april-1864-1/
O’Connell, Daniel F. “The Knoxville Campaign.” Essential Civil War Curriculum. Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, December 2014. https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/the-knoxville-campaign.html
O’Connell, Daniel F. “The Knoxville Campaign: Resources.” Essential Civil War Curriculum. Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, December 2014. https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/assets/files/pdf/ECWC%20TOPIC%20Knoxville%20Campaign%20Resources.pdf
Longstreet, James. From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1896. https://archive.org/details/frommanassastoap00long
Cox, Jacob D. Military Reminiscences of the Civil War. Vol. 2, November 1863 to June 1865. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1900. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6962
Smith, David C. Lilly in the Valley: Civil War at Mossy Creek. Self-published by the author, 1986. https://www.eldersbookstore.com/product/18869/Lilly-in-the-Valley-Civil-War-At-Mossy-Creek
Smith, David C. Campaign to Nowhere: The Results of General Longstreet’s Move into Upper East Tennessee. Strawberry Plains Press, 1999. https://civilwartalk.com/threads/compaign-to-nowhere.7022/
Author Note: This article follows the battlefield through the reports, roads, and local memory that still shape Jefferson City. I have leaned first on the Official Records, then on preservation and local sources to separate the fight from later retellings.