Camp Nelson National Monument, formerly the Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park, is a national monument, historical museum and park located in southern Jessamine County, Kentucky, United States, south of Lexington, Kentucky. The American Civil War era camp was established in 1863 as a depot for the Union Army during the Civil War. It became a recruiting ground for new soldiers from Eastern Tennessee and enslaved people, many of whom had fled their living conditions to be soldiers.Strecker p. 39.
On October 26, 2018, President Donald Trump proclaimed the site as Camp Nelson National Monument, the 418th unit of the National Park Service (NPS) system. The Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves' Kentucky Heritage Land Conservation Fund funded the forested portion overlooking Hickman Creek.
The American Battlefield Trust and its partners joined forces in 2018 to help preserve more than 380 acres of Camp Nelson.
History Early years Camp Nelson was established as a supply depot for Union advances into Tennessee. It was named for Major General William "Bull" Nelson, who had recently been murdered. It was placed near Hickman Bridge, the only bridge across the Kentucky River upriver from the state capital (Frankfort, Kentucky). The site was selected to protect the bridge, to have a base of operations in central Kentucky, and to prepare to secure the Cumberland Gap and eastern Tennessee. The camp was also used to train new soldiers for the Union army. The Kentucky River and Hickman Creek steep palisades contributed to the selection of the site. Only the northern side needed fortifications against Confederate attack since three sides have 400–500 feet almost vertical steep cliffs .Sears pp. 21–23.
Camp Nelson may have been the choice for a central Kentucky depot, but it had disadvantages. When Union Major General Ambrose Burnside attacked the Cumberland Gap and Knoxville, Tennessee, Camp Nelson's distance from the Gap and Knoxville, combined with lack of railroads and the weather, hampered the Union advance.Sears p. 28.
Its drawbacks as a well situated supply depot led General William Tecumseh Sherman to prioritize Camp Nelson to take a major role in training 10,000 black soldiers who volunteered there for the U.S. Colored Troops. He advocated this role in response to overall Union commander Ulysses S. Grant who visited Camp Nelson in January 1864. Grant had observed the inadequacies in the overland supply routes employed and leaned toward abandoning it entirely.Sears lxii Despite Grant's misgivings, Camp Nelson continued supplying major battles in 1864 such as Saltville VA I and Saltville VA II, as well as Atlanta for which the site provided 10,000 horses.
Recognizing that the Camp Nelson supply depot and the nearby Hickman Bridge were valuable targets for Confederate raider General John Hunt Morgan, Union forces geared up for attacks in July 1863 and June 1864. The most serious threat was mid-June 1864, whereupon Brig. General Speed S. Fry called upon volunteers from among civilian employees. Six hundred were armed and performed guard duty at the northern fortifications around the clock for 6 days. Major C. E. Compton said that due to these civilians, “the depot was saved from capture and destruction.”
Black History: troops, impressed workers, refugees, and emancipation Kentucky was one of four slaveholding states not joining the 11 other slaveholding southern states in forming the Confederate States of America which was in a rebellion rooted in decades of disputes over slavery. Kentucky blacks, enslaved and not, men and women, majorly contributed to the Union war effort in Kentucky initially as laborers, but ultimately as soldiers in infantry, artillery, and cavalry.
Because Kentucky was a slaveholding state, but not one in rebellion, those escaping could not be included as contrabands as defined by the Confiscation Act of 1861. This law applied to the Confederacy only and declared that if enslaved people are considered property, then the military has the right to not only deny the access to the owner but also to impress these individuals into work. Nonetheless, the Union Army in the state began impressing thousands of enslaved men, initially only the disloyal or those who had already fled into Union camps. In the case of disloyal or unknown slave holders, wages and subsistence were paid to the enslaved person. Loyal slaveholders were compensated.
Specific to Camp Nelson August 1863, Brig. General Jeremiah Boyle, authorized Commander Speed S. Fry to impress enslaved males, ages 16–45 within 14 counties of Central Kentucky, up to one-third of the enslaver's workforce. Just as the military contracted to buy food and livestock, likewise it contracted with slave owning Union loyalists to procure enslaved men to labor at Camp Nelson. An example is agent George Denny who impressed Gabriel Burdett from nearby farm of Hiram Burdett. Compensation of $30 per month for each impressed worker went to slave owners. By 1864, some like Gabriel Burdett would eventually enlist in the U.S. Colored Troops.
Consequentially, an estimated 3,000 impressed workers were stationed at Camp Nelson in 1863 performing labor-intensive tasks critical to the camp's founding and defense. Starting with fortifying the strategic Hickman Bridge in May, 1863, they aided in the construction of railroads, the northern fortifications and forts, and the 300 buildings.
President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 freed the enslaved only in the rebellious 11 states in the Confederacy. The War Department then publicly authorized the recruitment and training of African Americans in these states. Though a slave holding state, Kentucky was not in rebellion, so the proclamation and the military authorization did not apply.
Upon enlistment African Americans were emancipated from slavery in exchange for service in the Union Army. Kentucky recruited and trained more than 23,000 of the approximate 200,000 U.S. Colored Troops (USCT), making it the second-largest contributor of any state. Camp Nelson was the largest site in Kentucky with more than 10,000 recruits. Eight regiments were founded at Camp Nelson and five others were stationed there during the war.
With the goal of enlistment of Kentucky blacks into the Union Army, Lincoln authorized a special census in 1863 which showed 1,650 freemen and 40,000 enslaved males of military age. Given this figure and using the justification that whites were not fulfilling the state's draft quota, pro-slavery Governor Thomas E. Bramlette reluctantly agreed in March 1864 that African-American men in Kentucky were allowed to join the US Army with consent of their owners who received $300.
By April, enslaved men, despite the stipulation of owner consent, fled to enlist. The military, when uncertain of the consent, routinely sent men back to their owners. This situation led to a wave of violence as the military allowed squads hired to seize runaways from Camp Nelson. Chief Quartermaster Captain Theron E. Hall reported the site had become a “hunting ground for fugitives.” The army's help led to brutality. Owners severed ears and flayed men alive as they were bound to trees.
Due to the wave of violence, by June 1864 owners’ consent was no longer required, as ordered by Union Army Adj. Gen. Lorenzo Thomas. Among groups of African-American recruits, the largest arrived between June and October 1864, with 322 men enlisting on a single day on July 25. In May, 1864, the first large group arrived, 250 recruits from Danville, a distance of 16 miles. These groups and others en route to Camp Nelson were subject to harassment and violence. For example, the Danville group “was assailed with stones and the content of revolvers,” reported Thomas Butler, superintendent of the United States Sanitary Commission.
Peter Bruner's attempt to enlist was initially thwarted when he was captured by men unknown to him and jailed in nearby Nicholasville with 24 others seeking USCT enlistment at Camp Nelson.
Rev. John Gregg Fee of the American Missionary Association (AMA) observed that “three of five recruits bore on their bodies marks of cruelty.” Despite this, army surgeons upon examining recruits found the vast majority to be healthy and very fit to serve.
Families of soldiers and others fleeing slavery seeking refuge at Union camps such as Camp Nelson were referred to as refugees. Unlike the soldiers, the refugees were initially not eligible for emancipation. The army did not have a clear policy for refugees, but they were allowed to establish a shanty village at Camp Nelson.
However, seven eviction orders were issued between July and November 1864, all intended to rid the camp of refugee families. Ordered to leave, the women and children habitually returned because they had nowhere else to go.
Since these orders were ineffective, on November 22–25, 1864, District Commander Speed S. Fry, native of nearby Danville, KY, under pressure from slave-owners, resorted to violence. He ordered soldiers to force out under threat of death 400 women and children onto wagons and escort them out of the camp. Fry ordered soldiers to torch the refugee huts. Temperatures that day were well below freezing. The refugees suffered 102 deaths due to exposure and disease.
Camp Nelson Chief Quartermaster Theron E. Hall and Reverend John Gregg Fee of the American Missionary Association led a public outcry to newspapers, high ranking Washington officials, and the northern public. Hall gathered testimony from USCT soldiers on the battered conditions of their families and submitted them to Brig. General Stephen G. Burbridge, commander of the District of Kentucky. Burbridge ordered Fry to immediately cease expulsions, allow the families to return, and provide quarters. Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War, followed up with an order that a permanent shelter be established for all refugees, regardless of any family ties to USCT troops.
The New York Tribune published a front page account on Nov. 28, 1864 entitled Cruel Treatment of the Wives and Children of U.S. Colored Soldiers. “At this moment, over four hundred helpless human beings....having been driven from their homes by United States soldiers, are now lying in barns and mule sheds, wandering through the woods....literally starving, for no other crime than their husbands and fathers having thrown aside the manacles of Slavery to shoulder Union muskets.”
By December 1864, the military reversed its policies, and authorized the construction of the Home for Colored Refugees. Included were 16 by 16 foot duplex cottages for families, a mess hall, barracks, a school, teachers’ quarters and a dormitory.
Spurred by these events, on March 3, 1865, a Congressional Act was passed that freed the wives and children of the U.S. Colored Troops. This blow to slavery caused the population of the Home to peak at 3,060 by July 1865. This surpassed capacity, and added were 60 army supplied large wall tents as well makeshift housing constructed by the refugees, similar to before the expulsion. An obelisk at the refugee cemetery north of the Interpretive Center honors the memory of about 300 of the refugees who died at Camp Nelson. Some of those perished as a result of the expulsion of November 1864.
The two story school was staffed by the AMA and the Western Freedman's Aid Commission. Two African Americans were included, E. Belle Jackson and Reverend Gabriel Burdett who was also a USCT soldier and assisted Fee in ministry work. The AMA's position on total racial equality was tested at Camp Nelson when Fee hired Jackson. The AMA-salaried white teachers refused to eat in the same dining room with her and walked out in protest.
Also included were two barracks that became the refugee hospital. Infectious disease was prevalent and some 1300 refugees died at Camp Nelson.