Camp Nelson National Monument: More Than An Army Outpost

 By Kim Kobersmith

As the Civil War raged in the mid-1860s, a bucolic pocket of Kentucky stood out as a beacon of freedom for enslaved men and women, though it proved elusive as the nation struggled over what was morally right.

“It used to be five hundred miles to get to Canada from Lexington, but now it is only 18 miles! Camp Nelson is now our Canada,” wrote one Black man who escaped slavery and enlisted in the United States Colored Troops at Camp Nelson, eventually earning a rank of sergeant.

More than 10,000 enlisted in the USCT at Camp Nelson during its three years of operation. Today, Camp Nelson National Monument interprets this important facet of Civil War history by preserving the largest surviving recruitment center for the troops.

But the military stories of the camp only share a fraction of the important events that took place there. Kentucky was a border state, and even though the camp was a Union facility, leaders and residents spanned the gamut of opinions on slavery. Some were slave owners, others ardent abolitionists.

As an enlistment center where soldiers were granted emancipation, Camp Nelson enticed enslaved men and their families to risk their lives to seek freedom at the camp. The perilous status of the women and children illuminated complex racial issues that threatened the beleaguered nation.

“Kentucky had all these forces pulling people in different directions during the Civil War,” said Sarah Stapleton, a Camp Nelson ranger, on a tour of the monument. “Camp Nelson was a microcosm of the state.”

Walking the five miles of pastoral trails at the gently rolling monument, those conflicts feel very far away. The wind whispers through the grass, the birds sing in the fencerows. The 300 U.S. Army buildings constructed in the 1860s were dismantled at the 1866 military decommissioning of the camp. The only remaining structure from that time is the Oliver Perry home, currently closed for renovations, which served as officers’ quarters during the war. Interpretive displays at the visitor center and museum and daily ranger-guided tours of the site share the complicated history with visitors.

Forced Labor

While the Emancipation Proclamation, signed in January 1863, freed those enslaved in rebellious states, it did not apply to those remaining in the Union. In fact, the Union Army took advantage of this by impressing more than 1,600 enslaved Kentuckians into building roads and fortifications. Operations at Camp Nelson heavily relied on this labor; Commander Brigadier General Speed S. Frey stated, “Had it not been for the impressed hands, the depots and fortifications would have been very far short of completion.”

Remnants of the Northern Stone Wall that served as rifle pits to protect the eastern approaches to Camp Nelson along Hickman Creek. The earthen and stone walls were constructed by enslaved African Americans impressed by the US Army/NPS file

By June 1864, those workers were needed as soldiers. A pathway to freedom opened to them: escaping their slaveowners and joining the military. Records estimate more than 50 percent of enslaved young men in Kentucky emancipated themselves by enlisting in the army.

One of those was Peter Bruner, who was enslaved in Kentucky and had to endure frequent beatings. He tried to escape numerous times before finally reaching Camp Nelson in July of 1864. He later recalled his flight in his autobiography: “After I had left Richmond, I came upon sixteen colored fellows who were on their way to Camp Nelson and of course I did not get lonesome…Just a half hour before sundown we arrived at Camp Nelson and had come forty-one miles in that day. The officers asked me what I wanted there, and I told them that I came there to fight the rebels and that I wanted a gun.”

While able-bodied men who could fight were granted freedom, their parents, wives, and children were not. Afraid of repercussions if they remained with their slave masters, the men often brought their families with them. Their status was legally tenuous; they were essentially runaway slaves and refugees.

On The Run

Getting to Camp Nelson was not an easy journey. The monument’s museum tells the story of Frances Johnson. During their second escape attempt, from about 30 miles away from the camp, she and her three children were all recaptured. Johnson managed to flee through the woods and made it to Camp Nelson but was forced to leave her children behind. There are no records indicating whether she ever saw them again.

On my visit, Stapleton showed on a site map and through historic pictures the first known refugee camp of these relatives of soldiers. The area was surrounded on three sides by large buildings, nestled in a depression. There, the families constructed huts and tried to make a living.

Refugees lived in collection of tents and cabins/NPS archives

The Fee Chapel, built in 1912, is the only remaining building in the former refugee home area of the park/Kim Kobersmith

While there are no remaining Civil War-era structures indicating much of Camp Nelson’s history, the landscape has remained largely undisturbed, preserving a rich archaeological record. “Everything is underground,” explained Steve Phan, chief of interpretation, education, and visitor services.

Archaeology is crucial to understanding the lives of African American women and children, whose experiences were mostly left out of official records. One of the six surveys completed at the Camp Nelson site was of this first Black refugee camp. It revealed that even though refugees received no federal moneys, the structures were relatively substantial, with wooden walls, chinking, and glass windows.

In the museum display, fragments of porcelain dolls indicate the presence of children and the necessity of play even in the midst of war. A tremendous quantity of buttons, which often popped off clothing when rubbed across a washboard, suggests the women here washed laundry to support themselves. And a thick layer of ash soil records the tragic end of this camp-within-a-camp.

Seeking Freedom

Camp Nelson was not a hospitable place for the refugees. At least seven times they were expelled from the camp and had to fend for themselves[KR1] [KK2] .

Private Joseph Miller of the 124th United States Colored Infantry, when told his family would have to leave the camp, later recalled he told his commander that, “my wife and children had no place to go, and I told him that I was a Soldier of the United States. He told me that it did not make a difference; he had orders to take all out of camp…”

The final expulsion was in November 1864, during a brutal winter storm. After the women and children left, military leaders ordered the demolition and burning of their huts and belongings. Of the 400 who left the camp, 102 died from illness and exposure.

This tragedy caught the attention of the nation and changed the course of policy. As of January 1865, Camp Nelson was ordered to officially welcome refugees from enslavement, and in March of that year the U.S. Congress emancipated family members of those in military service.

The new refugee chapter took place on a small parcel of today’s national monument, tucked across the highway from the main acreage. It is mostly empty land today, but it played a significant role in the lives of the formerly enslaved. The government-sponsored Home for Colored Refugees opened just months after the final expulsion from the unofficial refugee camp. It was initially comprised of a communal mess hall, a school, barracks for single women and the sick, and 98 family row cottages. As the number of residents swelled to more than 3,000, housing ran short. Tents and self-built huts, reminiscent of the first refugee camp, were added.

The first refugee site was in the midst of the camp and surrounded by buildings, as shown on this map in the museum/Kim Kobersmith

Even after slavery ended in Kentucky in December 1865, with the national ratification of the 13th Amendment, the former refugee families were still vulnerable. The Freedman’s Bureau was tasked with closing the Home for Colored Refugees in 1866.

Many USCT soldiers remained in service along the Texas border until 1867, leaving many families with nowhere else to go. Additionally, Kentucky leaders didn’t want the refugee site to become a Black community. Local abolitionists Rev. John G. and Matilda Fee had to buy the site, break it into parcels, and then sell them to the former refugees who wanted to stay. About 25 households formed this new community, called Ariel.

Life still wasn’t easy for the former soldiers and their families. Rev. Gabriel Burdett, who enlisted at Camp Nelson in the 114th U.S. Colored Infantry, was a leader and minister in the community. In 1877, he left Kentucky as part of the Exoduster movement with a group that included Ariel residents. They established a community in Kansas, now preserved at Nicodemus National Historical Site. Historians estimate 5,000 African Americans left Kentucky at this time.

“There was a great migration after the Civil War for African Americans to get out of Kentucky,” explained Phan, the monument’s chief of interpretation, education, and visitor services. “They experienced violence and arrest, and it was hard to find work.”

The tragic end of the first refugee camp motivated a federal policy to emancipate the wives and children of enlisted soldiers/Kim Kobersmith

But the Camp Nelson community persevered, at least for a while. The town (now called Hall) grew to 40 households in 1900, but the population gradually diminished due to Prohibition (many residents worked in a nearby distillery), the Depression, and World War II. A small clapboard building, the Fee Memorial Church, built in 1912, is the only structure still standing on this section of the national monument property.

One outgrowth of the refugee home was a school, Ariel Academy, that opened in 1868 to educate African Americans. While its name changed several times, this center for Black education had a 50-year educational legacy that fulfilled its mission into the 1920s.

Camp Nelson became a national monument in 2018, a testament to Black Kentuckians’ long fight for liberty.

“This history is incredibly relevant,” said Phan. “The USCT soldiers were fighting for civil rights and citizenship, and the legacies of the Civil War are still being contested now.”