Previously protected as a state heritage site, Camp Nelson was established as Kentucky’s first National Monument in 2018. Twenty miles south of Lexington, the Monument preserves the location where tens of thousands of enslaved people emancipated themselves. Here’s the entrance from the highway which was the main road even prior to the Civil War.
The camp was established in early 1863 as a supply depot in preparation for the U.S. Army’s campaign into eastern Tennessee and through the Cumberland Gap (more images from the Cumberland Gap in future posts.) The Depot Trail at the Monument explains the huge amount of supplies of beans, coffee, horses, wagons, etc. that supported union troops that was conveyed through Camp Nelson. The bakery made nearly 7 tons of bread a day, though most of that was consumed by the soldiers and staff at the camp itself.
So who built the camp? A great portion of the fortification, warehouses, and barracks were built by paying Kentucky slaveholders to use their enslaved peoples. How’s that possible when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1, 1863? The Proclamation freed people enslaved in states that rebelled against the United States, and Kentucky was not a rebel state so slavery was legal there. In the image below are the remains of one fort on the perimeter of the camp which was built primarily by 3,000 slaves while their owners were paid for their labor.
The army began to use the camp to train black men who escaped from Confederate states to join the army. Again this did not apply to enslaved blacks in Kentucky. However, Kentucky was not meeting its quota of supplying white men as soldiers, so in March 1864 the governor signed an order that Kentucky slaveholders could voluntarily agree to let their slaves join the army—and get paid $300 for each one who did. Nevertheless without their slavemaster’s consent, many Kentucky slaves escaped to the camp to join the army. The army then permitted vigilante squads into the camp to seize these fugitives. The ensuing violence led General Lorenzo Thomas to order that all black males could enter the camp to become soldiers, and eventually over 10,000 enslaved men obtained their freedom this way.
However, this emancipation only applied to the men who enlisted in the U.S. Colored regiments. Women, children, and those not eligible to serve could not be freed. These people were called refugees, and had no certain legal status and were still considered runaway slaves. The refugees were allowed to live in a shanty village that grew within the camp. Also, many white families from unionist Eastern Tennessee became refugees in the camp as the men enlisted in the Union Army and formed white Tennessee Union regiments. Only one structure from the Civil War era remains. The Oliver Perry house was built in the 1840s, and the Army converted the house to officer quarters when the camp was established, and returned it to the family after the War.
Kentucky slaveowners pressured the Army to end the refugee status of their slaves, and in late November 1864 Commander Speed Fry ordered soldiers to forcibly remove the refugees from the camp—many the wives and children of union soldiers—and to burn down the refugee camp. Soon over 100 of the expelled refugees died of exposure and disease. Camp Nelson Chief Quartermaster Hall and a neighboring abolitionist minister began a campaign of protest. On November 28, the New York Tribune ran a front page story writing: “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.” Fry’s supervisor ordered the policy of expulsion be reversed, and Secretary of War Stanton ordered that all refugees, regardless of ties to the Union Army be given permanent protection in the camp.
The Union Army was moving further south into Confederate territory and General Grant wanted to close Camp Nelson. However, General Sherman said the training grounds and refugee protection was still important and the camp remained open. Former soldier barracks started being converted into quarters for the refugees. None of the barracks remain, but the Kentucky Heritage society rebuilt one for use as a visitor center which is now closed because of Covid-19.
By December 1964, the army called much of the area the Home for Colored Refugees, and built a mess hall, dormitory, school, and teachers quarters. In March 1865, Congress passed legislation freeing the wives and children of U.S. Colored Troops. By the time of the ratification of the 13th Amendment in December 1865 prohibiting slavery throughout the county, over 10,000 black soldiers had already earned their freedom through enlistment at Camp Nelson.
