Echoes of Reconstruction: Reconstructing a Black Refugee Camp Destroyed by a Union Commander
Emerging Civil War is pleased to welcome back Patrick Young, author of The Reconstruction Era blog.
Last month I wrote about the mass expulsion of Black refugees from a Union camp and the horrible harm inflicted on the expelled families. This month, I wanted to discuss what happened after the Camp Nelson expulsions.
The November 1864 expulsions of the wives and children of black soldiers from Camp Nelson in Kentucky had tragic consequences. Of the 400 or more refugees expelled, 102 died of hunger and exposure. Captain Theron Hall, who had tried to stop the expulsions, was arrested by the camp commander, Brigadier General Speed Fry. When Captain Hall convinced Fry’s superiors that the policy was killing black refugees, it was finally reversed.1
Captain Hall, who had risked his career and freedom to try to save the lives of the refugees, was appointed to organize the shelter and protection of the refugees. On December 14, just two weeks after being released from arrest, Captain Hall had already begun the work of establishing a secure refugee camp. “The buildings are already commenced,” he announced. In addition to a place for the families to sleep, he provided for a school so that the women and children could be “prepared for freedom.” He appealed to supporters of the end of slavery to send food and clothing, as well as books and teachers. If the camp was a success, he wrote, “it is the death blow to slavery in Kentucky.”2
Captain Hall had been “subjected…to much abuse,” he wrote, because of his stand for the refugees, but, he said, in the end General Fry’s outrages had worked in the favor of the surviving refugees. “Had it not been for the inhuman treatment of these poor people,” he wrote, “we should have had a longer struggle.”3
Humanitarian concerns were not the only factors motivating the army to back Captain Hall’s reforms. General Lorenzo Thomas, wrote that because “the families of Colored Soldiers are suffering for the want of proper shelter…many of the soldiers…complain that their families are not provided for.” This agitation by Black soldiers was, he wrote, “preventing the enlistment of others, fearing that their wives and children will not be cared for during the winter.”4
A report by War Department commissioners to Secretary of War Stanton made the same point more forcefully, saying that “a very large number of these refugees have claims upon the government” because their men were in the army. The commissioners said that the United States Colored Troops “had a right to expect that their families would not be permitted by the government to suffer while they were periling all in defense and support of that government… They go now in aid in defense of a government that has never done anything for them.” 5
Unlike white soldiers from the North, whose families back home were protected and aided by local and state governments, the families of black troops from Kentucky lived among violent white guerillas who sought to punish women and children for the enlistment of black soldiers in the Union cause. The wives and children of the soldiers, if excluded from Camp Nelson, were subjected, the report said, to “odious oppression.”6
The testimony of some of these women was set down in affidavits. One woman said that after her husband enlisted in the army, her owner “treated me more cruelly than ever whipping me frequently…and insulting me on every occasion.” When her husband was killed in the army, she said, “my master whipped me severely saying my husband had gone into the army to fight against white folks” and that in revenge he would “take it out of my back.” In a scene of pure horror, she said that her owner “tore all of my clothes off until I was entirely naked, bent me down, placed my head between my knees, then whipped me most unmercifully.”7
The missionary John Fee’s monthly letters to the United States Christian Commission read like modern-day human rights reports. For example, he described the number of new arrivals at the camp, noting that 27 arrived on one day alone in February, 1865. He reported interviewing the refugees and said that of 753 women, 150 said that they were “cruelly treated” by the local white people because their husbands had enlisted. Three of the women were “horribly lacerated” by their old owners. Among the black men who enlisted, he reported, 60% showed scars from beatings and other abuse under slavery.8
The refugee camp was soon formally named the “Home for Colored Refugees.” Captain Hall worked together with Rev. John Fee of the Christian Commission to try to bring his vision of a safe harbor for refugees to fruition. Fee welcomed this partnership. He had made earlier efforts to bring literacy to the refugees, but he had been marginalized by the camp commander, General Fry. Now, he wrote his colleagues, “provision will be made for a magnificent school…The building thus far is the finest in the Camp.” In many of the improvised camps set up during the war, after food and shelter, education was the great demand petitioned for by escaped enslaved people. Fee set about securing teachers to come from the North to teach the former slaves.9
As a soldier, Captain Hall decided to accommodate the families in large military-style barracks. The missionary Rev. Fee urged a different approach. He believed that massing women and children by the hundreds in large buildings would undermine each woman’s role in caring for her children and raising them. Worries about the spread of disease and the sheer noise and disorder of so many children in a dormitory was particularly troubling. He also resisted the plan to feed the families at a collective mess as though they were soldiers as undermining the self-sufficiency of the former slaves. He suggested, instead, that the women be given small cabins with several acres to farm to support themselves and their children. Fee warned that large dormitories for the families would only breed “noise feuds disease and disgust.” 10
In the end, a mixed camp of large dormitories and small cabins and huts was developed. The dormitories became dangerous places when contagious diseases arrived with new waves of refugees. Mini-epidemics would sweep through the dormitories leaving dozens sick or dying. Every week brought the deaths of a dozen or more refugees.11
The 97 duplex cottages that housed nearly 200 families were a more healthy alternative. Materials were also furnished to some families to build their own huts. According to a report from the time:
These huts are of various sizes and descriptions, built in nearly every instance by the negro women. The majority of them are of small logs…notched together at the corners…with the usual “filling and daubing” of log cabin architecture. A few have been made with boards of varying lengths, breadth, and thickness…Each hut is separated from the others by a space of from 10 to 30 feet, and in all but a single instance is furnished with an open fire-place. The cooking here is done by the families.12
The focus of Hall and Fee on educating the refugees was tested when Fee recruited a black teacher for the school. Not only was her very presence contested, but Fee’s insistence that she be treated equal in all matter aroused racial hatreds. Many Northerners who wanted to emancipate blacks still did not want them as equal citizens with themselves.13
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Resources:
You can watch Camp Nelson’s archeologist Stephen McBride interviewed by C-SPAN.
Here is a booklet by Dr. McBride on the archeology of the Camp.
Read Part I of this series on Camp Nelson.
Sources:
- Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History by Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) p 146 Telegram from Major General Burbage to Brig. Gen. Fry Dec. 2, 1864; Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction by Jim Downs published by Oxford University Press, 2012.
2. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History by Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) p. 147 Letter of Capt. Hall to Elnathan Davis December 14, 1864
3. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History by Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) p. 147 Letter of Capt. Hall to Elnathan Davis December 14, 1864
4. 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 p. 149 Orders No. 29 Lorenzo Thomas December 15, 1864.
5. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History by Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) p. 157-160 Report of the Commissioner of Investigation of Colored Refugees in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama to Edwin Stanton December 28, 1864
6. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History by Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) p. 157-160 Report of the Commissioner of Investigation of Colored Refugees in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama to Edwin Stanton December 28, 1864
7. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History by Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) p. 187-188 Affidavit of Patsy Leach March 25, 1865.
8. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History by Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) p 170-171
9. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History by Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) p. 161-162 Letter from Fee January 2, 1865.
10. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History by Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) p. 171
11. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History by Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) p lii; for treatment of medical conditions of black refugees consult Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction by Jim Downs published by Oxford University Press (2012).
12. Seizing Freedom: Archeology of Escaped Slaves at Camp Nelson, Kentucky by Stephen and Kim McBride Undated with no Publisher.
13. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History by Richard D. Sears published by University Press of Kentucky (2002) p lvi
