The Battle of Rogersville, 1863: Surprise at Big Creek in Hawkins County

Appalachian History Series – The Battle of Rogersville, 1863: Surprise at Big Creek in Hawkins County

Before daylight on November 6, 1863, the Union camp near Rogersville sat in the wet darkness of upper East Tennessee. Men of the 7th Ohio Cavalry, the 2nd Tennessee Mounted Infantry, and Battery M of the 2nd Illinois Light Artillery had been posted in Hawkins County to hold a line near Big Creek and watch the roads that led toward Kingsport, Bull’s Gap, Morristown, and the Holston Valley.

The position looked useful on a map. Rogersville was a courthouse town with roads, supplies, and access to the military corridor that mattered so much in East Tennessee. But usefulness did not always mean safety. The Union force under Colonel Israel Garrard was separated from other Federal troops, exposed to Confederate movement from the northeast, and sitting in country where loyalties were divided from farm to farm.

By sunrise, the camp was no longer quiet. Confederate cavalry under Brigadier General William E. “Grumble” Jones had moved fast from the Kingsport side. Colonel Henry L. Giltner’s brigade and other mounted troops pressed toward Big Creek while Jones worked to close the trap. Union pickets were driven in. Cavalrymen scrambled for horses. Infantry tried to form. Artillerymen rushed to save their guns. Within hours, the Federal outpost at Rogersville had been shattered.

The fight would be remembered under several names: the Battle of Rogersville, the Battle of Big Creek, the Action near Rogersville, and the Surprise at Big Creek. Whatever name is used, the meaning was the same. A small Appalachian crossroads fight had opened a dangerous hole in the Union line during the Knoxville Campaign.

Rogersville and the War for East Tennessee

Rogersville was not just another mountain town. It was the county seat of Hawkins County, one of the oldest counties in Tennessee, and it stood in a region where roads and rivers made military movement possible. Armies operating in East Tennessee had to think constantly about Knoxville, Cumberland Gap, Bull’s Gap, Greeneville, Kingsport, Bristol, the Holston River, and the railroad lines that connected Tennessee and Virginia.

East Tennessee also mattered because of its people. The region had strong Unionist communities, but Confederate support remained powerful in many towns and families. Hawkins County, like much of upper East Tennessee, lived with that division daily. Soldiers did not enter a neutral landscape. They entered a country of neighbors, scouts, guides, informants, prisoners, grudges, and fears.

By the fall of 1863, Union Major General Ambrose Burnside had pushed into East Tennessee from Kentucky and had taken Knoxville. For many East Tennessee Unionists, Burnside’s arrival seemed to promise deliverance after years of Confederate control, arrests, bridge burnings, enlistments, and hard war. But Confederate forces had not vanished. After the Battle of Blue Springs in October, Confederate troops pulled back toward upper East Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, but they remained close enough to strike.

That was the setting for Rogersville. The Union wanted to hold the upper country and protect the approaches to Bull’s Gap and Knoxville. The Confederates wanted to disrupt Burnside’s hold on East Tennessee, capture isolated Federal forces, and regain space before larger operations unfolded around Knoxville.

Garrard’s Outpost at Big Creek

Colonel Israel Garrard of the 7th Ohio Cavalry commanded the Federal force around Rogersville. His men were part of the Union cavalry screen in East Tennessee, but their post was vulnerable. The force included the 7th Ohio Cavalry, the 2nd Tennessee Mounted Infantry, and guns from Battery M, 2nd Illinois Light Artillery.

The 2nd Tennessee was especially important to the human story of Rogersville. Many of its men were East Tennessee Unionists. Some had joined the Union army after difficult journeys through mountain country. For them, the war was not only a national struggle over Union and slavery. It was also a local struggle over home, loyalty, and survival. To be captured in East Tennessee could mean a long march into prison, and for many men that road led to Richmond, Belle Isle, Libby Prison, and Andersonville.

The Federal post near Big Creek depended on warning, discipline, and quick movement. If Confederate cavalry appeared in strength, Garrard needed time to withdraw or form a defense. But the camp’s scattered nature, the divided command, and the rough local terrain made the position dangerous. Confederate commanders understood that an isolated outpost could be struck before help arrived.

The Official Records preserve the dry military language of what followed. Garrard’s report, Major Daniel A. Carpenter’s report, and Confederate reports by Jones and his subordinates show how quickly the position collapsed once the attack began. Later summaries sometimes differ in numbers, but they agree on the central point. Rogersville was a Confederate success built on speed, surprise, and coordination.

Jones Moves from Kingsport

Brigadier General William E. Jones was a hard riding Confederate cavalry commander known as “Grumble” Jones. In early November 1863, he received orders to strike Garrard’s force. Major General Robert Ransom wanted the movement carried out quickly. The weather and the Holston River mattered. If rain swelled the river, Confederate movement could become difficult or dangerous.

Jones moved from the Kingsport direction toward Rogersville. The plan depended on getting around the Federal position and cutting off escape. Giltner’s brigade pressed from one direction while Jones’s main effort worked to complete the encirclement. If everything came together, Garrard would be trapped between Confederate columns before he could pull his force back toward safety.

Civil War cavalry actions often turned on minutes. A delayed column, a warning from a picket, a muddy road, a swollen creek, or a commander’s hesitation could decide the outcome. At Rogersville, the Confederates moved fast enough to keep the pressure on and slow enough in places to allow some Federal warning. That warning did not save the Union camp.

Major Carpenter later remembered the confusion when news came that the Confederates were crossing near Kingsport. The danger was understood, but not quickly enough. By dawn, Confederate horsemen were already pushing into the Federal front and rear.

The Surprise at Big Creek

The morning attack struck the Union force hard. Garrard moved with the 7th Ohio Cavalry to find out what was happening and ran into Confederate troops who had already completed much of their movement. The Ohio cavalry was driven back. Reports and later campaign histories describe a broken, confused fight in which Federal units tried to form under growing pressure.

The guns of Battery M became a central target. Artillery gave the Union force its strongest defensive power, but guns were difficult to save once cavalry had closed in and roads were threatened. Battery horses, limbers, caissons, and guns needed time and order. Rogersville offered neither.

Major Carpenter of the 2nd Tennessee tried to organize a defense. His men were ordered to tie their horses and form a line. For mounted infantry, that meant turning from mobility to desperate resistance. Once Confederate columns pressed close and escape routes narrowed, the Tennessee Unionists faced the worst part of the fight.

Garrard and part of the 7th Ohio cut their way out. Others were not so fortunate. Many of Carpenter’s men were captured. Battery M lost guns, equipment, horses, and men. The Union outpost dissolved into fugitives, prisoners, abandoned wagons, captured artillery, and scattered survivors making for Morristown and other Federal positions.

Garrard’s own first report was blunt. He told his superiors that he had been attacked and totally defeated. That sentence, preserved in the Official Records and the Tennessee State Library and Archives Civil War Sourcebook, still carries the shock of the day. It was not the language of a commander trying to dress up a setback. It was a battlefield report written after a sudden disaster.

The Men Who Were Taken

The casualty figures for Rogersville vary slightly depending on the source. The National Park Service lists the Union loss as 5 killed, 12 wounded, and 650 missing, for a total of 667. Some other summaries and tabular returns give slightly different totals. Confederate claims also tend to run higher, with Jones and later marker traditions reporting hundreds of prisoners along with wagons, horses, ambulances, and supplies.

The exact number matters, but the human meaning matters more. “Missing” in a battle report often meant captured. At Rogersville, capture was only the beginning of suffering.

John L. Ransom, a Union soldier later known for his Andersonville diary, was captured near Rogersville on November 6, 1863. In his published account, he wrote that he was acting as brigade quartermaster sergeant when the Confederates struck. He described a divided brigade, a large quantity of clothing waiting to be issued, a wet night, the river rising, pickets driven in at daybreak, and prisoners hurried south after the surrender.

Ransom’s account should be read carefully, like all memory and prisoner narratives, but it gives Rogersville an eyewitness human voice. The fight did not end when the firing stopped. Captured men were marched toward Bristol, loaded into cars, and taken to Richmond. Some went to Belle Isle. Officers could be held at Libby Prison. Later, many prisoners from East Tennessee and other captured commands would be sent deeper into the Confederate prison system.

Federal pension records show the same long shadow. The Malvina Ingle pension report, connected to Henry Ingle of Battery M, 2nd Illinois Light Artillery, describes men captured at Rogersville and taken toward Richmond. The file is complicated and even uncertain in places, as pension records often are, but that uncertainty is part of the history. Families spent years trying to prove enlistment, capture, imprisonment, death, and dependency. A few hours of fighting in Hawkins County became years of paperwork, grief, and unanswered questions.

East Tennessee Unionists and the Cost of Capture

The 2nd Tennessee Mounted Infantry bore a terrible share of the loss. These men were not strangers to the mountains. Many came from Unionist communities in East Tennessee and neighboring Appalachian counties. When they were captured, families across the region felt the blow.

The prisoner story links Rogersville to places far beyond Hawkins County. Belle Isle in Richmond, Libby Prison, and Andersonville became part of the same chain of memory. Men who were captured near Big Creek in November 1863 later died of disease, exposure, starvation, or prison conditions. Others survived but came home weakened. Some never came home at all.

Local and genealogical sources from East Tennessee and Scott County preserve names that can disappear inside larger campaign histories. Men of the 2nd Tennessee who were captured at Rogersville later appear in cemetery records, pension files, family histories, and prisoner lists. Their stories remind us that Rogersville was not only a cavalry success or a tactical failure. It was a family disaster for many Appalachian Unionist households.

The Civil War in East Tennessee was often intimate and cruel. A man could be captured near a town he knew. A local informant could guide an army. A neighbor could celebrate or mourn depending on which flag his family followed. Rogersville belonged to that kind of war.

What the Confederates Gained

For Jones and the Confederates, Rogersville was a sharp success. They captured prisoners, artillery, wagons, horses, ambulances, and supplies. The attack disrupted the Union screen in upper East Tennessee and exposed the vulnerability of Burnside’s extended positions.

Tennessee Civil War Trails summaries emphasize that the action opened Bull’s Gap to Confederate exploitation. Burnside reacted by ordering Union forces around Greeneville to fall back and protect the gap. That response shows why Rogersville mattered beyond the casualty list. A small defeat could force a wider adjustment in the campaign.

Still, Jones did not drive recklessly forward after the victory. He remained near Rogersville rather than risk being trapped farther down the railroad corridor between Rogersville and Bull’s Gap. That decision limited the Confederate gain, but it did not erase the blow. For a brief moment, the Confederate cavalry had shown that Burnside’s East Tennessee hold was not secure everywhere.

Within the larger Knoxville Campaign, Rogersville was one piece of a fast changing situation. Longstreet would soon move against Burnside. Knoxville, Campbell’s Station, Fort Sanders, and Bean’s Station would become better known. Yet the surprise at Big Creek helped shape the anxious days before the siege. It proved that the upper East Tennessee front could still produce sudden danger.

Rogersville After the Fight

For the town of Rogersville, the battle added another Civil War layer to an already old courthouse community. Soldiers moved through streets and roads that had long carried lawyers, merchants, drovers, travelers, and local families. Public buildings and private homes stood close to military events. The Hawkins County Courthouse and the town’s central streets became part of the memory of occupation and divided loyalty.

The battle also left physical and interpretive traces around Big Creek and the Rogersville area. Civil War Trails markers and local history work help visitors connect the modern landscape to the 1863 action. The battlefield is not preserved in the same way as larger national parks, but the terrain still matters. Rogersville, Big Creek, the Holston Valley, the Kingsport road, and the route toward Bull’s Gap help explain why the fight happened where it did.

A visitor who only sees Rogersville as a quiet historic town can miss how violent its Civil War moment was. The same county seat known for early Tennessee history, printing, roads, and courthouse life was also a place where hundreds of soldiers were captured in a morning. The past in Rogersville is layered, and the battle is one of its hardest layers.

Memory, Numbers, and the Problem of Sources

The Battle of Rogersville is a good example of why Civil War history has to be built from several kinds of sources. The Official Records give the essential military framework. Garrard, Carpenter, Jones, Giltner, and other officers explain what they believed happened, what they wanted their superiors to know, and sometimes what they wanted to excuse.

The National Park Service gives a concise battle listing and casualty summary. Tennessee Civil War Trails gives a clear public history interpretation tied to place. Earl J. Hess’s work on the Knoxville Campaign places Rogersville inside the broader military struggle between Burnside, Longstreet, and the Confederate forces trying to regain East Tennessee. Ransom’s diary gives the prisoner experience. Pension reports and cemetery records show what happened after the armies moved on.

These sources do not always agree perfectly. They differ in casualty totals, captured totals, unit labels, and emphasis. That is normal in Civil War research. A surprise action created confusion, and officers wrote from their own positions and interests. Later memory added another layer. The best approach is not to force every number into perfect agreement, but to show the pattern clearly.

The pattern at Rogersville is unmistakable. The Union outpost was surprised and routed. The 2nd Tennessee suffered heavily. Battery M lost guns and men. The Confederates captured hundreds of prisoners and valuable supplies. The Union command had to adjust its East Tennessee line. Many captured men entered a prison system from which they never returned.

Why the Battle of Rogersville Matters

The Battle of Rogersville matters because it shows how the Civil War in Appalachia often worked. It was not always decided by huge armies on famous fields. Sometimes it turned on a camp near a creek, a road from Kingsport, a courthouse town, a rising river, a missing warning, and a column of cavalry arriving at the right hour.

It also matters because of who paid the price. The captured men were not just entries in a casualty table. They were Ohio cavalrymen, Illinois artillerymen, and East Tennessee Unionists. Some had joined the Union army because the war had reached their own neighborhoods. Many were captured close to home and then carried far away into Confederate prisons.

Rogersville also reminds us that the Knoxville Campaign was more than Knoxville. The struggle for East Tennessee stretched across mountain roads, river crossings, railroad gaps, county seats, and small communities. Hawkins County stood inside that struggle. Big Creek became one of the places where the larger war suddenly narrowed into one desperate morning.

Today, the battle deserves to be remembered not because it was large, but because it was revealing. It shows the vulnerability of isolated outposts, the effectiveness of Confederate cavalry when speed and surprise came together, the divided loyalties of upper East Tennessee, and the long suffering that followed capture.

At Rogersville, the shooting ended quickly. The consequences did not.

Sources & Further Reading

U.S. 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. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1890. https://babel.hathitrust.org

Tennessee State Library and Archives. “November 6, 1863: Action near Rogersville.” Tennessee Civil War Sourcebook. Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives. https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/cwsb/1863-11-Article-57-Page76.pdf

National Park Service. “Tennessee Civil War Battles.” Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System. Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/tennessee.htm

Tennessee Civil War Trails. “Battle of Rogersville.” Tennessee Department of Tourist Development. Accessed June 18, 2026. https://classic.tnvacation.com/civil-war/place/2094/battle-of-rogersville/

Ransom, John L. Andersonville Diary, Escape, and List of the Dead. Auburn, NY: John L. Ransom, 1881. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/71609/71609-h/71609-h.htm

Ransom, John L. Andersonville Diary, Escape, and List of the Dead. Auburn, NY: John L. Ransom, 1883. HathiTrust Digital Library. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003104810

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/

O’Connell, Daniel F. “The Knoxville Campaign.” Essential Civil War Curriculum. Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech. Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/the-knoxville-campaign.html

United States Senate. Malvina Ingle. Senate Report No. 556, 44th Cong., 2nd sess. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1877. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/SERIALSET-01732_00_00-023-0556-0000/pdf/SERIALSET-01732_00_00-023-0556-0000.pdf

Reece, J. N. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Illinois. Vol. 6. Springfield, IL: Journal Company, Printers and Binders, 1901. https://libsysdigi.library.illinois.edu/oca/Books2008-12/reportofadjutant/reportofadjutant06illi1/reportofadjutant06illi1.pdf

National Park Service. “2nd Regiment, Illinois Light Artillery.” Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System. Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UIL0002RAL

Illinois GenWeb. “2nd Illinois Light Artillery Regiment History.” Accessed June 18, 2026. https://illinoisgenweb.org/civilwar/history/a-002-lt.html

Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association. “Rogersville.” Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.tcwpa.org/battle-site/rogersville/

Historical Marker Database. “The Battle of Big Creek.” Accessed June 18, 2026. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=114918

Emerging Civil War. “Civil War Trails: Rogersville, Tennessee.” June 12, 2020. https://emergingcivilwar.com/2020/06/12/civil-war-trails-rogersville-tennessee/

Emerging Civil War. “ECW Weekender: Rogersville, Tennessee.” September 6, 2019. https://emergingcivilwar.com/2019/09/06/ecw-weekender-rogersville-tennessee/

Goodspeed Publishing Company. History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present. Nashville: Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1887. https://archive.org

Price, Henry R. Old Rogersville: An Illustrated History of Rogersville, Tennessee. Rogersville, TN: H. R. Price, 1982. https://www.worldcat.org

Price, Henry R. Hawkins County: A Pictorial History. Virginia Beach, VA: Donning Company, 1992. https://www.worldcat.org

Grant, Mary Alice. “Internal Dissent: East Tennessee’s Civil War, 1849–1865.” Master’s thesis, East Tennessee State University, 2008. https://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3314&context=etd

Confederate Veteran. “Battle of Rogersville,” by G. D. Ewing. Confederate Veteran 30, no. 10, October 1922. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=confedvet

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.html

Author Note: The Battle of Rogersville is one of those East Tennessee Civil War stories where a small action opened into a much larger human tragedy. I wrote this article to bring together the official reports, prisoner memories, public history sources, and family-level consequences of the surprise at Big Creek.

https://doi.org/10.59350/6sf1w-j5f38