Knoxville National Cemetery was established by Major General Ambrose Burnside, whose Union forces had liberated Knoxville in September 1863 at the height of the Civil War. Burnside assigned the task of layout out the cemetery to his assistant quartermaster, Captain E.B. Chamberlain. The cemetery's first burials were Union dead exhumed and moved from Cumberland Gap and other parts of the region. Chamberlain's plan was so effective, that the cemetery was one of the few in the nation that required no alterations upon being designated a national cemetery at the end of the war.