The East Tennessee bridge burnings were a series of guerrilla operations carried out during the American Civil War by Union sympathizers in Confederate-held East Tennessee in 1861. The operations, planned by Carter County minister William B. Carter (1820–1902) and authorized by President Abraham Lincoln, called for the destruction of nine strategic railroad bridges, followed by an invasion of the area by Union Army forces then in southeastern Kentucky. The conspirators managed to destroy five of the nine targeted bridges, but the Union Army failed to move, and would not invade East Tennessee until 1863, nearly two years after the incident.