April 29 

 

          On this day in 1862, William Leonard Conner became the sole Confederate casualty in a brief, but intense skirmish at a remote outpost near the Cumberland Gap in Tennessee. A 32-year old farmer from Jackson County, Conner left behind his wife, Anna, and their five young children–all under the age of thirteen–when he enlisted in Company F, 29th North Carolina Infantry on August 31, 1861. His regiment, commanded by Robert Vance, the elder brother of the state’s soon-to-be governor Zebulon Vance, was composed entirely of mountain men. For nearly a year, the 29th North Carolina endured the isolation and hardship of mountain warfare in east Tennessee, as it tried to prevent Union military incursions through the Cumberland Gap. On April 29, 1862, a Union force under General George W. Morgan advanced on the gap, driving in the regiment’s pickets and probing Confederate defenses. Vance recalled, “A very hot fire was opened” on the defenders, “and was promptly replied to by my men.” The Confederate line held and the Union reconnaissance force withdrew. Amid the smoke and fury, only one soldier fell. “During the fire at this point,” Vance reported, Private Conner “was severely wounded in the leg. No other casualties to the command.” For the regiment, it was a minor victory; for Conner it meant the end of the war. His leg wound was so severe that medical authorities disabled him from any further military service. He returned home to his family, probably to Anna’s relief. They had three more children together and moved to Sevierville, Tennessee, after the war, where Conner quietly disappeared from the historical record after 1880. 

 

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​Skirmishing occurred for the control of the Cumberland Gap

 

Sources: 

Weymouth T. Jordan, comp., North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, 6:281; 1860 U.S. Census: Jackson County; The State Journal [Raleigh], May 17, 1862