Remembering Nashville

[18thVirginia]

The neighborhood of Nashville is a famous stock-raising country, and has a high reputation for blood-horses, jackasses, mules, cattle, sheep, hogs, and Cashmere goats. The leading business of the city is in dry goods, hardware, drugs, and groceries. Book publishing is carried on more extensively than in any other Western town, and the publishing house of the Southern Methodist Conference is one of the largest book manufactories in the United States. The manufactures are lees important than the commercial interests. There are three flour mills, eight or ten planing mills, and eight or ten machine shops. The value of the taxable property here is $15,000,000. Seven miles from the city is the State Lunatic Asylum, and twelve miles east is the Hermitage, the celebrated residence of Andrew Jackson. The municipal government is vested in a mayor, eight aldermen, and sixteen councilmen. The first permanent settlement was made in 1778-'80; the town was incorporated in 1784, received its charter in 1806, and was made the State capital in 1812. Nashville is 280 miles northeast of Memphis, 206 miles southwest of Lexington in Kentucky, and 684 miles from Washington city.

Harper's Weekly, March 8, 1862. https://civilwargazette.wordpress.com/2006/12/12/nashville-tennessee-in-1862/

 

[18thVirginia]

Nashville, View of City, (Barnard LoC)

 

[18thVirginia]

First Presbyterian Church, used as part of Hospital No. 8, capacity 206 beds.

Presbyterian Church during Civil War, used as a hospital. Hospital #8, capacity 41 beds.

 

[18thVirginia]

Union Fortifications Around Nashville

 

[18thVirginia]

An interesting story that goes with a photo of the Hospital for Infected Prostitutes above.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...-nashvilles-frail-sisterhood-7766757/?no-ist=

Also this one, The Nashville Experiment.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/the-nashville-experiment/?_r=0

 

[18thVirginia]

General George H. Thomas

 

[18thVirginia]

General John Hood

 

[TerryB]

From the Diary of John Berrien Lindsley, Nashville resident:

"15 Thur. Brisk musketry and artillery firing; waked me up about 2 A.M. At daylight soldiers filed into position behind the breastworks. A brigade of five regiments occupied our grounds. 142 Indiana immediately in front of our house. Sent Mrs. L. and children to Pa's.

"First day of the Battle of Nashville. At my house the heavy roar of artillery on the centre was heard all day.
"On the left skirmishing, off and on, through the day. … federal batteries occupied Love's and Foster's Hills.
"By night quiet. Soldiers slept in the trenches. Mild – damp, muddy.

http://www.midtneyewitnesses.com/eyewitness-book-series/nashville/civilian

Lindsley was a historian. http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924032778700#page/n9/mode/2up

 

[18thVirginia]

Thanks, TerryB.

 

[TerryB]

I once read a newspaper article from 1864 in which the paper printed a letter from a Union army hospital patient. He wrote that the good food that was meant for the patients was being sold out the back door while the patients had a thin soup to live on. I wish I could remember which hospital. I also found an article that listed by number and location all the Federal hospitals in Nashville. I've even seen copies of death certs in CSRs for Confederates who died in hospital here prior to the Union capture of the city.

 

[TerryB]

Here's a link to my article on Fort Negley. http://civilwartalk.com/threads/fort-negley-and-the-siege-of-nashville.15090/#post-177319

 

[BelleBlackburn]

Wow, @18thVirginia, you are up on your Nashville info. I think what made Nashville important was several things. One was that it was the busiest river port in the south besides New Orleans and a lot of Confederate supplies went through here. They were producing cannons, muskets, saddles, etc, whatever was needed in Nashville. So when Nashville was surrendered without a fight in February 1862 all that manufacturing for the confederacy stopped. Then Nashville became the country's first experience with military occupation, which did not go well. Andrew Johnson was appointed military governor and was loathed. Johnson, Lincoln and some other guy were continually squabbling about how to manage things. There are a lot of people here who know far more about the battles of Nashville and Franklin but they were pretty much the death knell for the confederacy. As far as it affecting me, I did not move here until college and have learned what I know since then. There are historic markers around town but most people that are not historians are not familiar with what happened here.

@TerryB - I read your Negley article in the past but need to brush up on it again. Do you know if they ever went to houses and demanded their slaves? Or did they just pick up who they could find? I thought any free or slave walking down the street was game but am thinking people could go to Negley and reclaim slaves.

 

[18thVirginia]

This sketch of the camps on the side of the hill at Fort Negley was done by an unknown Union soldier.

 

[TerryB]

Wow, @18thVirginia, you are up on your Nashville info. I think what made Nashville important was several things. One was that it was the busiest river port in the south besides New Orleans and a lot of Confederate supplies went through here. They were producing cannons, muskets, saddles, etc, whatever was needed in Nashville. So when Nashville was surrendered without a fight in February 1862 all that manufacturing for the confederacy stopped. Then Nashville became the country's first experience with military occupation, which did not go well. Andrew Johnson was appointed military governor and was loathed. Johnson, Lincoln and some other guy were continually squabbling about how to manage things. There are a lot of people here who know far more about the battles of Nashville and Franklin but they were pretty much the death knell for the confederacy. As far as it affecting me, I did not move here until college and have learned what I know since then. There are historic markers around town but most people that are not historians are not familiar with what happened here.

@TerryB - I read your Negley article in the past but need to brush up on it again. Do you know if they ever went to houses and demanded their slaves? Or did they just pick up who they could find? I thought any free or slave walking down the street was game but am thinking people could go to Negley and reclaim slaves.

Both slaves and free blacks were pressed into service. One source I read said that might happen at some bar or other type of place where people congregated. I'm not sure they needed to go to homes and press slaves into service. They certainly did, for other reasons, press all the horses and mules they could get their hands on. Stories of widows having their horses pressed into service with no recourse are a part of the newspaper accounts.

 

[TerryB]

Nashville was also a hotbed of espionage and black market activity. Detectives routinely infiltrated Confederate spy rings, and there was a lively trade in loyalty oath blanks that all one had to do was sign. That way his/her conscience was clear because they never actually swore a loyalty oath to any Federal official. Failure to take the oath meant being escorted outside the lines and dumped.

 

[Northern Light]

View attachment 56766

Nashville Tennesee Confederate Boy Soldier (Morris Gallery of the Cumberland, Nashville, Tenn)

What mother could send that dear little fellow into a war? It makes me cry to think of that!

 

[18thVirginia]

@TerryB - I read your Negley article in the past but need to brush up on it again. Do you know if they ever went to houses and demanded their slaves? Or did they just pick up who they could find? I thought any free or slave walking down the street was game but am thinking people could go to Negley and reclaim slaves.[/QUOTE]

From what I've read, Belle, after awhile the slave owners were not allowed to come to the contraband camp at St. Cloud and reclaim escaped slaves. Soldiers began to resist returning them to the slave owners and even officers could be arrested for returning slaves to their owners. Some sources say that most of the laborers were escaped slaves, but many freed people were caught--even in church--and taken to the Fort Negley site, where some 2,000 of them worked as stone masons, dug the underground storehouses, blasted the rock, where the women and children served as teamsters, where women cooked, did laundry, cooked for their families and the Union army.

Captain James S. Morton, the engineer in charge of building Fort Negley said, "To the credit of the colored population be it said, they worked manfully and cheerfully, with hardly an exception, and yet lay out upon the works at night under armed guard, without blankets and eating only army rations. They worked in squads military-like companies, each gang choosing their own officers; one was often amused to hear the Negro captains call out: 'You boys over there, let them picks fall easy, or they might hurt somebody."

James S. Morton

Although cautious at first, the freedmen began to accept working for the Union military and when Forrest attempted to attack the city, they requested arms to defend Fort Negley and when denied them, formed a line with their picks and axes as a demonstration. Many of these laborers would be recruited into military service.

The area where they had remained in the St. Cloud Hill contraband camp even after the completion of Fort Negley would become the black neighborhood of Edgehill in Nashville.

 

[18thVirginia]

Fort Negley

 

[alexjack]

Great photos 18thVirginia. Thanks for posting.

 

[18thVirginia]

Glad you like them.