The Emancipation Proclamation set off a great migration of black people from plantation slavery to refuge within the lines of the Union army. Tens of thousands of African Americans made their way past slave patrols and Confederate armies to presumed freedom. While the January 1, 1863 Proclamation made them “Forever Free,” it did not provide shelter, food, or health care for slavery’s refugees. It was left to military commanders, whose primary job was to win battlefield victories, to provide for the care of the freed slaves.1
In Kentucky, Camp Nelson was an important refugee center. It was also a crucial military supply depot. The needs of the refugees were subordinated to military necessity. In fact, to gain entrance to the camp, the male member of a family seeking freedom had to enlist in the United States army. In exchange, the man’s wife and children were provided with protection from slave catchers, they were given food and a place to live. Five hundred former slaves lived in the camp by November 1864.2
Kentucky was a neutral Border State at the beginning of the Civil War. The movement into the state by Confederate troops in 1861 pushed it onto the Union side of the conflict. Men from Kentucky enlisted on both sides in the war. Because Kentucky never joined the Confederacy, slavery was not abolished in the state by the Emancipation Proclamation. Slaves could only become free by enlisting in the Union army.
On October 29, 1864 the commander of Camp Nelson notified his subordinates that “preparatory to the Regiments moving you will turn out of Camp all Negro women and children.” On November 22, 1864 the expulsions began at the order of Brigadier General Speed S. Fry.3
The order to turn out the refugees was not unopposed by white soldiers. Captain Theron Hall, who knew some of the former slaves personally, wrote at the time that “remembering that these people had followed their husbands and fathers to Camp” and that the “fathers” had enlisted and “were then in the Army fighting for that freedom of which it was by this act [of expulsion] to deprive their families,” he decided that he could not stand by. 4
Captain Hall feared that, cast out from the protection of the fort, the women and children would be re-enslaved. He wrote that he “firmly” believed that “the wife and children of the colored soldier were entitled to protection” by the government for the freedom for which the black soldier “was imperiling his life.” Hall said that given the threat to the lives and freedom of the expelled blacks, “I felt it my duty to interfere.”5
Captain Theron Hall
The army captain called the expulsion order an “outrage.” He wrote that the “weather at the time was intensely cold, summary expulsion…would occasion untold suffering.” When the captain arrived at camp, most of the freed slaves had already been forced out. Captain Hall wrote to colleagues and superiors to try to reverse the order. He felt that urgent action was needed because he said that the scattered freed people were “literally starving to death.”6
Hall sought out the expelled blacks and found them “sitting by the roadside and wandering about the fields.” He reported that “some have died and all are in a starving condition.” Another Union officer at Lexington Kentucky confirmed Hall’s assessment when he telegraphed that “Colored women and Children…are coming here where there is no shelter for them. They are suffering…” 7
Captain Hall’s defiance of General Fry won a reversal of the order by Fry’s superior. Major General Burbage directed Camp Nelson to readmit the former slaves and he placed Captain Hall in charge of seeing to their welfare. The displaced families began to return to Camp Nelson. This should have been the end of the story but a few days later Captain Hall telegraphed Major General Burbage that he had shown Fry his orders to take charge of protecting the refugees, but that “Fry does not seem disposed to recognize me at all.” Hall reported that in spite of Burbage’s orders to the contrary, “The guards have positive order not to admit the colored women into Camp. They are turned back at all points along the fortifications.”8
Fortunately, one of President Lincoln’s closest military advisors, Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas, was in Lexington, Kentucky. The tireless Hall went there and was able to speak to him personally. Thomas sent a damning order to Fry the same day:
I understand that you have sent helpless women and children [out of] your lines and that you refuse to receive those who present themselves. It is ordered that you receive all who come and that you take back all you have sent out.9
General Lorenzo Thomas was a military advisor to President Lincoln. In 1863 and 1864 he visited armies in the field to insure that the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves was enforced and to inaugurate the recruitment of black troops.
While the crisis was still unresolved, a reporter for the New York Herald filed a story that said that Camp Nelson “has recently been the scene of a system of deliberate cruelty…frail women and delicate children have been driven from their homes by United States soldiers, and are now…literally starving…”10
The reporter described the cruelty of the expulsions; “Armed soldiers attack humble huts inhabited by poor negroes…order the inmates on pain of instant death, and complete their valorous achievements by demolishing dwellings. The men who did this were United States soldiers.” The article tallied the toll “To-day these children of misery are exposed to the pitiless storm. Four are already in their graves; one was frozen to death.”11
Camp Nelson had barracks for white soldiers, and tents and huts, like those on the left, for black refugees.
The personal statement of a black soldier, Joseph Miller, shows the way one family experienced this dark moment. Miller, his wife, and their four children lived at the Camp. Miller’s wife and children were given “express permission” by an officer to live in the camp while Joseph was in the army. At 8 PM on November 22 Miller’s wife was told that she and her children had to leave the camp before morning.12
Miller said that:
The morning was bitter cold….I was certain that it would kill my sick child to take him out in the cold. I told the man in charge of the guard that it would be the death of my boy. …He told me that it did not make any difference. He had orders… He told my wife and family that if they did not get up into the wagon…he would shoot the last one of them.
On being threatened my wife and children went into the wagon. …[H]aving had to leave much of our clothing when we left our master, my wife with her little ones was poorly clothed.13
Joseph Miller went in search of his family that night. He found them six miles away in a meeting house. He said that:
I found my wife and children shivering with cold and famished with hunger. They had not received a morsel of food during the whole day. My boy was dead.14
Miller walked six miles back to Camp Nelson so he would not be arrested as a deserter, leaving his family shivering. The next morning he walked back to them; “I dug a grave myself and buried my own child. I left my family in the Meeting house-where they still remain,” he testified on November 26.15
The United States Colored Troops barracks at Camp Nelson. Camp Nelson was a major base for Union operations in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. During the Civil War nearly 80,000 soldiers passed through it. Eight regiments of United States Colored Troops (USCT) were organized at the camp.
Miller was not able to get back to his family. For six months he had no news from them. Then he learned that a few weeks after he left them his son Joseph Jr. and his wife had died. A week later his daughter died. His remaining son Calvin died on January 2, 1865.16
General Fry’s order scattering the refugees had cost a Union soldier his entire family at the moment that they had believed that they were finally free.
Video: African American Women Refugees
Resources:
Camp Nelson is now a National Monument. Its website contains a history of the camp and includes extensive coverage of the refugees.
Richard Sears has published a collection of documents related to Camp Nelson that is available for free on Google Books.
Sources:
1. Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction by Jim Downs published by Oxford University Press, 2012.
2. Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction by Jim Downs published by Oxford University Press, 2012; Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) Introduction p. li.
3. Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction by Jim Downs published by Oxford University Press, 2012 p. 18; Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) Introduction p. li
4. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) pp. 134-135 Excerpt from Captain Theron Hall’s Report November 23-26, 1864
5. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) pp. 134-135 Excerpt from Captain Theron Hall’s Report November 23-26, 1864
6.Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) pp.. 134-135, 137 Excerpt from Captain Theron Hall’s Report November 23-26, 1864, Telegram from J Bates Dickson to Major General S. G. Burbage November 27, 1864
7. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) pp. 134-137 Captain T.E. Hall to Col. J,S, Brisbane November 27, 1864; J.B. Dickson to Major General S.G. Burbage
8. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) pp. 137-138, 141-142 Telegram by Maj. Gen Burbage to Brig. Gen. Fry November 27, 1864; Telegram from Capt. Charles Keyser to Capt. T.E. Hall November 27, 1864; Telegram from Capt. J.B. Dickson to Brig. Gen. Fry November 28, 1864; Telegram Capt. J.B. Dickson to Capt. T.E. Hall November 28, 1864; Telegram from Capt. Hall to Capt. Dickson November 29, 1864
9. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) p. 141-142.
10. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) p. 138-140 New York Tribune Nov. 28, 1864 “Cruel Treatment of the Wives and Children of U.S. Colored Soldiers”
11. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) pp. 138-140 New York Tribune Nov. 28, 1864 “Cruel Treatment of the Wives and Children of U.S. Colored Soldiers”
12. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) pp. 135-136 Affidavit of Joseph Miller November 26, 1864
13. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) pp. 135-136 Affidavit of Joseph Miller November 26, 1864
14. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) pp. 135-136 Affidavit of Joseph Miller November 26, 1864
15. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) pp. 135-136 Affidavit of Joseph Miller November 26, 1864
16. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002); Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History By Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) pp. 17-20.
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