Nashville Contraband Camp - A Story of Hope and Failure

#OTD1864 On February 4, 1864, Adj. Gen. Lorenzo Thomas issued Order No. 2 establishing a contraband camp in Nashville under the control of Capt. Ralph Hunt, 1st Regiment Kentucky volunteers. 

Previously, there had been no organized system for providing for people escaping from slavery - colloquially referred to as "contraband." According to a report by Edward D. Townsend, Adjutant General of the US Army, “some were collected at Decherd [TN], some at Stevenson [AL], and about every army depot a crowd of blacks were congregated. The policy of the Governor [Andrew Johnson] and of army officers was to repress their coming into our lines. As we enlisted the able-bodied men [in the US Colored Troops], the women and children required care, and contrabands came upon our hands.”

During this time, some men from Williamson County were enlisting into the US Colored Troops in Stevenson. In the fall and early winter of 1863, ten Williamson County men enlisted into the 12th, 13th, and 17th US Colored Infantries there. 

Townsend’s report continued, “Major [George Luther] Stearns procured a deserted chapel a mile from the city [Nashville], into which he put a few women and children, soldiers’ families, for whom no other provisions could be made. Rations were drawn for them, and as fast as possible they were hired out. This was a mere makeshift.”

On December 19, 1863, the Secretary of War directed Thomas to “receive destitute women and children at Stevenson and Nashville and supply their necessities. … On January 26 [1864] about a hundred infirm men and women and children were sent by rail from Stevenson to [Nashville]. They were dumped at the Chattanooga depot and left for hours between the tracks.”

Chattanooga Depot, Nashville, Tennessee

Accession Number: 1979:0022:0002

Maker: George N. Barnard (1819-1902)

Title: Chattanooga Depot, Nashville, Tennessee

Date: ca. 1865

George Eastman House Collection

In response, on February 4, 1864, General Lorenzo Thomas issued Order No. 2, establishing a contraband camp in Nashville under the control of Capt. Ralph Hunt, 1st Regiment Kentucky volunteers. Capt. Hunt was at the time in charge of the convalescent camp. According to Townsend’s report, “While the location, &c., of a contraband camp were being discussed … It was the intention to have the camp properly located somewhere near Gallatin, and to have here [Nashville] only a camp of reception and distribution, but Captain [Hunt] established the permanent camp here.” The Tennessee GIS Civil War mapping project has determined that the camp was located "south of Broad Street" (Broadway) and "nearly opposite the Cumberland Hospital."

Ground Plan of Nashville Contraband Camp, in Cities Under the Gun: Images of Occupied Nashville and Chattanooga by James A. Hoobler

Under the Order, the Quartermaster’s Department was to furnish supplies necessary to “shelter and protect the negroes destined to be located in the Camp. If practical, the contrabands will be quartered in log houses, to be constructed by the negroes themselves; but in the interim, tents will be furnished for their accommodation. A detail of privates from USCT regiments was ordered to report to Capt. Hunt to assist his efforts. They were to “visit the plantations, farms, wood-yards, and other places where negroes may be employed, for the purpose of inquiring into their conditions, and to see that the engagements between them and their employers are promptly and faithfully carried out on both sides.” 

The Order also stipulated regulations for the “government of freedmen in the Department of the Cumberland:”

1. “All male negroes coming within our lines, who after examination, shall be found capable of bearing arms, will be mustered into companies and regiments of Colored Troops in the process of organization. All others, including men incapable of bearing arms, women, and children, … will be required to perform such labor as … wood-choppers, teamster, or in any way that their labor can be made available.”

2. All civilians of known loyalty, having possession of plantations, farms, wood-yards, or otherwise engaged, may … hire such negroes (including a fair proportion of children) as they may desire … In all such cases, the employers will enter into a written engagement to pay, feed, and treat humanely, all the negroes turned over to them, and none shall be hired for a less term than one year, commencing on the 1st day of January, 1864.” The cost of clothing could be deducted from pay.

3. The “respective Generals of Districts may designate such abandoned or confiscated plantations or farms as they may deem most suitable, to be worked by the negroes … taking care that in all cases, the negroes shall be self-sustaining, and not a burden upon the Government.”

4. “The wages to be paid for labor shall be as follows:

• For all able-bodied males over 15 years of age, not less than $7/month

• For all able-bodied females over 15 years of age, not less than $5/month

• For children between 12-15, half the above (i.e., $3.50 or $2.50/month)

• Children under 14 years shall not be used as field hands, and families must be allowed to stay together.

• The employer must furnish medicine and medical advice at his own expense.

The Commanders of Military Districts were authorized to lease abandoned plantations to loyal citizens. [Read more about the abandoned plantations in Williamson County that came under this authority here]

[The Nashville Daily Union Nashville, Tennessee, 11 Feb 1864, Page 1]

One week after the Order establishing the contraband camp in Nashville, the local newspaper reported with “much gratification” that the “order gives assurance that the colored people who have sought freedom and protection within the Federal lines in Middle Tennessee [would] not be permitted to suffer from want and destitution.”

Unfortunately, this optimism was ill-placed. Capt. Hunt took little interest in the Contraband Camp and remained most of the time at his office on Cherry Street where he kept a commissary store. The store was built from bricks seized from the camp and constructed by mechanics and laborers from the camp. It appears that the store may have been for Hunt’s personal use in addition to purportedly supplying the camp and local freedmen. Hunt took from a government harness maker a harness worth $40 for his personal use, along with five horses, one of which he shipped north. 

Captain Hunt left his post at the end of May 1864 - scarcely four months after the order to create the camp. On June 2, 1864, Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, ordered special Commissioners Thomas B. Hood (a physician) & S. W. Bostwick (an attorney)  to investigate and report on the condition of the “colored refugees at Nashville” and other sites in the region. When the Commissioners visited the camp in Nashville, they found it to be “wholly destitute of anything tending to the reasonable comfort of its most unfortunate inmates.” 

Following Hunt’s departure from the Camp, there appears to have been no one in charge until June 23, 1864, when Col. Barnard of the 101st US Colored Infantry took control. At that time, the camp was “almost entirely destitute of shelter for the colored refugees.” Per Hood & Bostwick’s report, Barnard described how when he took charge of the camp, “It was not in good condition.” The quartermaster testified that “it was very poorly provided with shelter, on account of the bad condition and bad quality of the tents … These tents were but little protection against the rain, and as a consequence, the inmates were much exposed.” 

Sometime in July 1864, Captain Wills, the quartermaster in charge, had begun “the building of barracks of boards for the inmates of the camp.” The Commissioners described that “when we left there in October several of those buildings were in process of erection, but none were completed during our stay in Nashville. … In our judgment, the real cause of this delay was his want of interest in his work, and in consequence, those whom by this order he was required thus to provide for were caused to suffer, and many of them to sicken and die.”

Col. Barnard of the 101st USCI, ca 1864 Photo courtesy of Glove Park History

Col. Barnard of the 101st US Colored Infantry, the successor to Captain Hunt, was not held blameless. The Commissioners pointed to the testimony of Pvt. Michael L. Deaver, 31st Ohio Volunteers. He served as the commissary for the camp and described how he had to guess at the amounts of food to issue to the Camp and that, “None of the officers at the camp give me any direction as to the manner of quantity of my issue of supplies. … I am free to say that from five months’ close observation, the supplies authorized and allowed these refugees is not sufficient in quantity for their comfortable, healthful subsistence. … I am quite conversant with the general management of the camp by the officers having the charge. I see but little change in the general economy of the camp from its organization until now. The refugees live in old, regimental tents wholly unfit for use, and which afford the tenants very little, if any, protection from the weather; in consequence of which a great deal of suffering, sickness, and death have resulted to the inmates of the camp. … Very many of the refugees who come into our camp from time to time are the wives and families of colored men who have been enlisted in our army as soldiers. …”

Officers of the 101st USCI https://gloverparkhistory.com/estates-and-farms/normanstone/col-robert-w-barnard/

The Commissioners concluded that, “it would be difficult to imagine a more deplorably destitute condition of things than we found here to exist. The want of shelter … was too patent not to be marked by the most casual observer. … there were no trees in the camp, no shelter from the extreme heat of the summer sun in that latitude, but these miserable tents. … were crowded beyond their capacity … very many [of the refugees] were sick, and died from neglect on the part of those whose duty it was to provide and care for them. We are free to say we have never witnessed an aggregate of wretchedness and misery equal to that we were here called to look upon; and we would fail in reporting the whole truth should we omit to say that this condition of things is chargeable mainly to the delinquency of Captain Hunt, Colonel Barnard, Captain Wills, and Dr. Jenks. … none of them had any sympathy with the subject of their charge.”

Likewise, in October 1864, Townsend reported that “the terms of General Thomas' order as to the erection of huts and the detail of inspecting lieutenants were never complied with.” By late December 1864, just weeks after the Battle of Nashville, Hood & Bostwick’s report was submitted to the US Senate. Within months the War was over, and the responsibility for providing for those who required assistance was transferred to the Freedmen’s Bureau.