In the 1700-1800’s, the Wilderness Road through Laurel County was the interstate highway of its day. Figures who were to make an impression on our history such as Daniel Boone, George Rogers Clark, and many others, traveled this vital north-south road. During the Civil War, the man who made perhaps the biggest impact of them all (at least on Laurel County) was the general whom, in civilian life anyway, would have won an award for “Least Likely to Succeed” from those who knew him: Ulysses S. Grant.
When he graduated from West Point, he was next to last in the class ranking. In civilian life he was also largely a failure. He tried several business ventures, including a tannery business with his father each of which in turn failed. In the military, there were many rumors regarding his drinking as well.
Thomas D. Clark wrote in his History of Laurel County that General Grant was placed in command of Union forces west of the Appalachians where he encountered the acute problem of supplying the Union army in the Knoxville area. Late in December, 1863, he went by rail from Nashville to Knoxville, but was halted at that place by the Confederate forces of General James Longstreet.
On January 4th, 1864, Grant and a small party set off in near-zero weather to ride to Cumberland Gap and then over the Wilderness Road to Lexington. Later he wrote in his personal memoirs: “The road over Cumberland Gap, and back of it was strewn with debris of broken wagons and dead animals, much as found on my first trip to Chattanooga over Waldron’s Ridge. The road has been cut to as great a depth as clay could be by mules and wagons, and in that condition frozen; so that the ride of six days from Strawberry Plains [just east of present-day Knoxville] to Lexington over these holes and knobs in the road was a very cheerless one, and very disagreeable” (Clark).
Along the way from Cumberland Cap to Camp Wildcat, General Grant said that he found the people intensely loyal to the Union. They gathered around him in the evenings to see him, often mistaking his companion, the gray-haired Dr. Edward B. Kittoe, for the General. This gave Grant the chance to slip into a boarding house unobserved. Too, he heard their remarks about the General; at that time he was forty-one years of age, and bundled up for traveling he looked like a rag-bag (Clark).
Grant said that the remarks he overheard, “were apt to be more complimentary of the cause than to the appearance of the supposed general owing to his being muffled and also owing to the travel-worn condition we were all in after a hard day’s ride.” Grant passed through London on January 9th and pushed on through Pittman’s Crossroads (the present community of Pittsburg) to Hazel Patch, where he took the road to Big Hill and then on to Lexington (Clark).
The arduous ride over the frozen Wilderness Road, lined as it was all the way with the carcasses of mules and the debris of broken wagons and scattered military supplies, was a trying, but convincing, experience that it could not be used efficiently to supply Burnside’s troops in Knoxville (Clark).
Author’s note: One of the places where General Grant stayed overnight, the Jones Tavern, recently burned to the ground. It was located at the base of the Big Hill on U.S. 421, where there still stands a historical marker explaining the significance of the site. The site of the tavern is located at the bottom of the hill next to the marker.
Source: Thomas D. Clark. A History of Laurel County. Laurel County Historical Society, 1989. Pages 220-222.