[Footnote:
Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. ii. p. 608.] There being therefore
no troops in East Tennessee to oppose its occupation, Burnside's
advance-guard entered Knoxville on the 3d of September. Part of the
Twenty-third Corps had been sent toward London on the 2d, and upon
their approach the enemy burned the great railroad bridge at that
place. A light-draught steamboat was building at Kingston, and this
was captured and preserved. [Footnote: _Id_., pt. iii. p. 333.] It
played a useful part subsequently in the transportation of supplies
when the wagon-trains were broken down and the troops were reduced
nearly to starvation. No sooner was Burnside in Knoxville than he
put portions of his army in motion for Cumberland Gap, sixty miles
northward. He had already put Colonel John F. DeCourcey (Sixteenth
Ohio Infantry) in command of new troops arriving in Kentucky, and
ordered him to advance against the fortifications of the gap on the
north side. General Shackelford was sent with his cavalry from
Knoxville, but when Burnside learned that DeCourcey and he were not
strong enough to take the place, he left Knoxville in person with
Colonel Samuel Gilbert's brigade of infantry and made the sixty-mile
march in fifty-two hours.
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