On the 29th of November, at daylight, the Confederates assaulted Fort Saunders, on the west of the town, an almost impregnable point in its outer defences. The attacking force consisted of three brigades of McLaw’s division. The attack was delivered upon the northwest angle of the fort, probably its strongest point. It was necessary for the storming party, after climbing a high hill, to pass a difficult abattis, and to make its way through a labyrinth of telegraph wires stretched between the stumps of the original forest trees which had been felled. Having overcome these obstacles, a deep ditch was reached, beyond which rose the parapet of the fort to the height of more than twenty feet. When the broken, disordered and bleeding mass of Confederates reached the verge of the ditch there was no hesitation. In the face of a deadly musket fire and of a continuous discharge of hand grenades, they hurled themselves into the ditch and scrambled upon hands and knees up the steep and slippery embankment. Three times they succeeded in planting their battle-flags upon the parapet, and once they entered the fort, but only to be killed or captured after a desperate struggle. The assault failed. Three hundred Confederates were captured, and from five to seven hundred dead and wounded lay before the abattis, among the broken wires and in the ditch. This attack upon Fort Saunders was one of the most gallant and desperate encounters of the whole war, and if it had occurred upon a more conspicuous field would have been ranked with Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. General Longstreet now concluded to molest Burnside no more, and leisurely retired to Virginia. Grant sent twenty thousand men to reinforce Burnside, but Longstreet had already withdrawn. [Illustration: BATTLE OF FORT SAUNDERS.] Immediately after the war Knoxville began to increase rapidly in population. The loyalty of East Tennessee won much favor for it at the North, and many desirable additions to the population of Knoxville came from that section. It is probable that no city in the South contains so large a proportion of citizens of Northern and Western birth. Of foreign-born citizens there are comparatively few, the tides of immigration having flowed always north of Mason and Dixon’s line. Knoxville is therefore a thoroughly American city, of forty thousand population, free from sectional sentiment, progressive, but withal conservative, and proud of its deserved reputation as a center of education and of culture. Its free schools, handsomely and commodiously housed, are most liberally supported, while the State University is the pride of the intelligent people of Tennessee. The State Deaf and Dumb School and a branch of the Asylum for the Insane are located there, and Knoxville College for the education of negroes is one of the best of its kind.