In early September, while four Union brigades executed a masterly deception upstream from Chattanooga, the bulk of Rosecrans’s army crossed the Tennessee unopposed at four sites far south of the city. Rosecrans divided his army into three columns and then began a wide-front advance on Chattanooga while US Major General Ambrose E. Burnside took Knoxville, one hundred miles to the north.

Much of East Tennessee was settled by small farmers who had little in common with the slaveholding planters in the rest of the state. They were pro-Union even though Confederate forces occupied the region early in the war. President Abraham Lincoln wanted to strengthen Federal control in East Tennessee. In late August US Major General Ambrose E. Burnside marched from Kentucky with 24,000 soldiers of the Army of the Ohio to secure the East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad from Knoxville to beyond Abingdon, Virginia. The Confederates retreated up the railroad to Zollicoffer Station on the South Fork of the Holston River. The citizens of Knoxville welcomed Burnside’s vanguard on September 3. Federal troopers forced the surrender of Cumberland Gap on September 9. Burnside’s rapidly moving columns followed the railroad to Carter’s Depot where the Confederates held the crossing of the Watauga River. US Colonel John W. Foster led his 1,500-man cavalry brigade on a roundabout ride to burn the railroad bridges above Bristol on September 19. Foster completed his mission, returned by way of Blountville, and tried to attack Zollicoffer Station from the rear. A Confederate brigade at Beaver Creek stopped him on September 20. On September 22 Foster tried again and was hit by a force under CS Colonel James Carter. For several hours artillery dueled across the town and set fire to a dozen buildings. Foster’s troopers pushed the Confederates out of Blountville but could not penetrate the gap to the south. Foster rode to rejoin Burnside’s troops, who had been recalled to Knoxville following the news of the defeat of the Federal army at Chickamauga. The Confederates reoccupied the region as far as Blue Springs.