BGuthrie Photos: TN -- Nashville -- Fort Negley

TN -- Nashville -- Fort Negley:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. FTNEG_070131_010.JPG: Fort Negley: Atop St. Cloud Hill, Fort Negley was built in late 1862 as part of a complex system of defensive fortifications designed to protect the Union garrison in Nashville from Confederate attack during the Civil War. Using the labor of slaves and free blacks, the army built the largest inland masonry fortification in North America, comprised of more than 60,000 cubic feet of stone. Fort Negley was never directly challenged throughout the war, including the 1864 Battle of Nashville. In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program, recreated the fort. The stone arch entrance here in the plaza and the decaying dry-stack limestone walls you see atop the hill are all WPA construction. Today, the ruins of Fort Negley remain as an open-air museum and a testament to Nashville's historic past. The site is recognized on the National Register of Historic Places for its significance as both a Civil War fort and a WPA project.
2. FTNEG_070131_013.JPG: The Road To War: Antebellum Nashville: Nashville emerged in the 1840s as a center of economic power in the upper South. A series of macadamized turnpikes constructed in the 1830s combined with increased steamboat traffic on the Cumberland River made the state's newly named capital a hub for commercial trade in the region. Educational institutions, artistic accomplishments, and architectural achievement brought new cultural refinements to the city in the 1850s. The new state capital building (1859) complemented Nashville's reputation as the "Athens of the South." By 1860, railroads connected the city with a host of destinations. On the eve of the Civil War, over 3,800 slaves and free blacks lived in the city along with a white population of 15,000. In February of 1861, Tennesseans voted against secession. However, following the firing on Fort Sumter and President Lincoln's call for 75,000 men to suppress the rebellion in April, Tennessee voted to leave the Union in June of 1861.
3. FTNEG_070131_017.JPG: The Civil War: Between 1861 and 1865, the Civil War claimed the lives of over 625,000 Americans. Few communities, North or South, were left untouched by the conflict's hardship and loss, including Nashville. Tentatively pro-Union before the war, the city was the capital of the last Southern state to leave the Union in June of 1861. By war's end, 100,000 Tennesseans fought in the Confederate army. Another 50,000 men fought for the Union Army, 21,000 of them former slaves who served among the ranks of the United States Colored Troops.
4. FTNEG_070131_020.JPG: War in the West: Union strategy called for military action to divide the South into two distinctive theatres of war, the East and the West. Unlike the Eastern Theatre of northern Virginia -- barely one hundred miles between the Confederate capital at Richmond and Washington -- the West stretched from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River and from the Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico. Nashville was viewed by the Union as a critical location for garrisoning troops and munitions to supply the army. The city's rail, water, and road corridors could transport men and materials as Federal troops advanced into the Deep South. Nashville was surrendered to the Union in February 1862 without the firing of a shot. Most of the major campaigns and engagements by the Union army in the West, including Stones River, Tullahoma, the battles for Chattanooga and Atlanta, and William T. Sherman's "March to the Sea", were supplied from Nashville. The period of Federal occupation of the city lasted until 1867.
5. FTNEG_070131_026.JPG: Nashville Surrendered: When the Confederate garrison at Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River was captured by Union forces on February 15, 1862, the gateway to Nashville was opened. Hope created by earlier reports of a Southern victory quickly turned to fear as news of the surrender spread around the city. Within hours, a Confederate army encamped across the river at Edgefield retreated through town toward Murfreesboro, unable to defend the city against a certain Union assault. Many prominent Confederate supporters fled as well, including members of the Tennessee legislature and Governor Isham Harris with the state's archival records in tow. The exodus was known as "the Great Panic." Though the majority of the population remained, the flight of Confederate supporters continued for days. Finally, on the morning of February 25, the Union gunboat Cairo, followed by several troop-laden transports, arrived at the Cumberland River wharf below Front Street (First Avenue). At 11am, Mayor R.B. Cheatham officially surrendered the city to Union Major General Don Carlos Buell. Nashville was the first Confederate state capital captured and would remain under Union control until the end of the war.
6. FTNEG_070131_036.JPG: Union Major General Don Carlos Buell, commander of the Army of the Ohio, accepted Nashville's surrender in February 1862. After winning the indecisive battle against the Army of Tennessee at Perryville, Kentucky, in early October, he was relieve of command after failing to follow up his victory. He resigned from the Union army in 1864.
7. FTNEG_070131_045.JPG: Andrew Johnson, governor of Tennessee from 1853 to 1857, was appointed military governor of the state in March 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln after the fall of Nashville. At Johnson's urging, the Union Army began constructing fortifications around the city. Elected vice president in 1864, he became the 17th president of the United States when Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865.
8. FTNEG_070131_048.JPG: Captain James St. Clair Morton, born in Philadelphia, was a West Point graduate, a member of the Corps of Engineers, and a noted theorist on coastal masonry fortifications. Promoted to chief engineer of the Union Army of the Ohio, in August 1862 he was ordered to design and build fortifications around Nashville, the largest of which was Fort Negley. [The signs here are pretty cool. You get the outline of the fort as well as a hole indicating where you're located.]
9. FTNEG_070131_053.JPG: The Nashville City Cemetery: Located just below, at the base of St. Cloud Hill, the Nashville City Cemetery became a burial ground for thousands of soldiers, Union and Confederate, who died during the war. Opened in 1822, the original four-acre tract grew to twenty-seven acres with 11,000 burials including free blacks and slaves by the mid-1850s. Such prominent Nashvillians as the city's founder, James Robertson, and Henry and Septima Middleton Rutledge, both children of signers of the Declaration of Independence, are buried in the cemetery. Under contract from the army, caretaker W.R. Cornelius buried the remains of over 15,000 Union and Confederate soldiers in the City Cemetery. Cornelius kept detailed records of name, rank, and company, marking each grave with a wooden headstone. As the war dragged on, the headstones gradually disappeared. In 1867, the Union dead were removed to the National Cemetery on Gallatin Pike. Many of the Confederate dead were reburied at Mt. Olivet Cemetery on Lebanon Pike.
10. FTNEG_070131_059.JPG: Samuel R. Lowery was a free black minister in Nashville prior to the war. In 1856, he fled north after the debate over slavery in the presidential election that year spurred race riots in the city. He returned to Nashville during Union occupation and served as a chaplain and teacher for the United States Colored Artillery regiments.
11. FTNEG_070131_060.JPG: Building Fort Negley: The centerpiece of the Federal fortification effort in Nashville was Fort Negley, named for Brigadier General James S. Negley, the Union Post Commander. Captain James S. Morton, chief engineer, began work in August 1862. The primary construction of the stone, iron, wood, and earthen fortification took more than four months at a cost of over $90,000. When initially completed in December of 1862, Fort Negley covered 180,000 square feet, over four acres, of St. Cloud Hill and was recognized as the largest inland masonry fortification in North America. Modifications and improvements continued until the end of the war at a total cost over $110,000. African American Labor: To build Fort Negley, Captain Morton found little success requisitioning Negroes from local pro-Union slaveholders. Instead, the army was forced to impress black laborers both free and slave. As one Union soldier remembered, men were apprehended in "barber shops, kitchens, and even churches," and made to work on St. Cloud Hill. They felled trees, hauled rock and earth, and cut and laid the fort's limestone foundation. Eventually, 2,768 men were officially enrolled as laborers at Fort Negley. The living conditions of these workers were hard. According to one Union officer, they "had no tents, and slept in the open air" along the Fort Negley hillside. By the time the fortifications around Nashville were completed, between 600 and 800 of Morton's Negro laborers had died. Of those that remained, only 310 received pay for their work.
12. FTNEG_070131_064.JPG: Sally Port
13. FTNEG_070131_071.JPG: Sally Port: Here, below the north main works, was the only entrance into Fort Negley. Known as the sally port, the passageway was protected by a wooden guardhouse. The structure also served as a "keep" (a reinforced position) in case the east outer works were overrun.
14. FTNEG_070131_074.JPG: Fortress Nashville: Within months of Union occupation, Nashville was transformed from a Confederate capital into a supply base and troop garrison for Federal operations in the entire Western Theatre. Buildings were requisitioned for barracks. Churches became hospitals. New jails were constructed to hold prisoners of war. Union quartermaster James Donelson erected three large supply warehouses and build a third levee on the Cumberland River landing. During one month in 1863, 213 steamboats dispatched 62,666 tons of cargo to support the Union occupation. In August of 1862, Major General Don Carlos Buell, under orders from Military Governor Andrew Johnson, directed Captain James St. Clair Morton, the Army of the Ohio's chief engineer, to construct fortifications around the city to defend against Confederate attack. Between 1862 and 1864, the Union army built a series of forts from the old city reservoir above the Cumberland River east of town to Hydes Ferry at the Cumberland to the west. In addition to Fort Negley, other major fortifications were Blockhouse Casino (present City Reservoir), Fort Morton (Rose Park), Fort Houston (Music Row Roundabout), and Fort Gillem (Fisk University). Twenty-one minor installations were constructed as well. When the final modifications were complete in late 1864, Nashville was the most heavily fortified city in North America outside Washington, DC. Forts: By the Civil War, fortifications had evolved into an important component of the American military. Though forts were built mainly to defend against coastal attacks, during the Civil War they were used to support the inexperience of raw recruits. Since the Revolution, Americans had viewed large standing armies as a threat to civil authority. Thus, in the 19th century the United States to create a large professional military force on the scale of European powers like Great Britain -- only 16,000 men in 1861. If attacked, theorists recognized the volunteer militiamen needed to expand the ranks of the army would need the extensive protection provided by permanent or field works, like forts. The fortification system constructed to defend Nashville was representative of that principle. Dennis Hart Mahan, a military educator at West Point from 1830 to 1871, produced "Treatise on Field Fortifications" in 1836. The book was widely read and its theories employed by American military commanders before, during, and after the Civil War. Union Captain James S. Morton was a student of Mahan at West Point, finishing second in the Class of 1851.
15. FTNEG_070131_078.JPG: A map showing where the various forts were around Nashville during the Civil War.
16. FTNEG_070131_091.JPG: Guns of Fort Negley: Technological advances in weaponry, especially artillery, had a major impact on casualty rates during the Civil War. At Fort Negley, several types of artillery developed in the 1840s, 1860, and during the war were used to defend the city from Confederate attack. They included smoothbore, rifled, and siege cannons. In November 1862, an inventory by John H. Ferguson of the fort's artillery pieces consisted of one 64-pound gun and one 48-pounder positioned on the north main works, and four 32-pound smoothbore cannons located along the south main works and the east and west inner works. Two underground powder magazines supported these gun emplacements. On each of the fort's eight redans, like the redan where you are standing, field cannons, possibly Napoleons, from Houghtailing's Battery C, 1st Regiment Light Artillery (Illinois) were placed en barbette (elevated gun positions) and could provide both direct and cross fire. By 1864, the artillery at Fort Negley was upgraded. One of the most powerful pieces was the iron-forged 30-pound Parrott Gun developed in 1860 by Robert D. Parrott, an 1824 graduate of the United State Military Academy, at his West Point Foundry in New York. Parrott guns had rifled bores, five grooves running the length of the inside of the barrel with a right-hand twist that spun the projectile in a spiral motion, allowing a shell to travel farther and strike the target with more force and accuracy. The Parrott Gun was eleven feet long and weighed 4,200 pounds. Too heavy to move quickly in the field, they were used primarily in Union fortifications or against entrenched Confederate positions. A thirty-pound shell could travel up to three miles.
17. FTNEG_070131_094.JPG: Diary of John Hill Ferguson: Sergeant John Hill Ferguson, a 31-year-old immigrant from Scotland, enlisted in Company G of the 10th Illinois Infantry Regiment in the late fall of 1861. In early 1862, he began keeping a diary on his personal experiences. For six months, beginning in November of 1862, Ferguson was posted in Nashville. His regiment bivouacked on several occasions below the north main works at Fort Negley. Like other soldiers, he spent a portion of his day reading local papers that carried reports of the war in the East, looking for news of Union victories. On his off-duty days, he ventured around town and wrote about his encounters. Army life, however, was difficult. Most of his experiences in Nashville including drilling, guard duty, and the dangers faced by foraging details out into the countryside where, according to Ferguson, "gurillas were in strong force." Finally, in August of 1863, his regiment was ordered to Chattanooga as part of the Atlanta Campaign. On several occasions, Ferguson writes about the "degraded women" along Smokey Row, the brothel district in Nashville. During the war, prostitution was legalized and regulated by the Union army.
18. FTNEG_070131_101.JPG: The Bastions: The system of turnpikes and railroads leading into Nashville from the south and southeast led Captain James Morton to assume an assault against Fort Negley would come along the Murfreesboro-Franklin Pike corridor. Thus, a bastion front was constructed as the first tier of defense along the fort's southeastern face. Constructed of dry-stack limestone and rough hewed timbers, the walls and roofs were covered with earth to dampen the shock from a direct artillery strike. The stacked limestone visible today was built in the late 1930s by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
19. FTNEG_070131_123.JPG: The Inner Works: From this position along the north mail works, the guns of Fort Negley commanded the ground south of the capitol building. Originally, a 64-pound cannon was placed here, supported by an underground powder magazine. To your left, a 48-pound cannon protected the area between Fort Negley and Fort Morton, a half-mile to the west. Stockade: Standing just behind you was the stockade. Designed as the last line of defense if the main works of the fort were overrun, the structure was eighty-six feet in length on each side, twelve feet high, and built from timbers. Elevated rifle turrets were placed at each corner. Small salient angles projected from all four exterior sides to allow enfilade fire along the outer stockade walls. Inside, located near the center of the stockade, were a telegraph station and two cisterns to hold water. Treetops were used as observation and signal towers. The structure was designed to hold up to one thousand men. Archeology: Archeology links the past with the present. At Fort Negley, archaeological excavations have revealed clues to the fort's original design and WPA reconstruction. In 1993, archeologists located remnants of the original Civil War stockade -- "builder's trench: Their study concluded that the masonry walls built during the war remain at varying depths under the 1930s restoration by the WPA. Here, at the north main works, the underground powder magazine was reconstructed to house a museum.
20. FTNEG_070131_164.JPG: The City Reservoir on the hill is where the Casino Blockhouse was
21. FTNEG_070131_172.JPG: A map of the battle of Nashville
22. FTNEG_070131_182.JPG: Peach Orchard Hill: At 2:45 in the afternoon on December 16, 1864, four Union brigades, including one United States Colored Troops regiment, assaulted Peach Orchard Hill in an attempt to dislodge the far right Confederate flank. In a series of attacks the USCT's 13th Tennessee Infantry Regiment advanced as close as the abatis protecting the Confederate log and earthen breastworks before falling back with heavy casualties. Five color bearers from the regiment lost their lives.
23. FTNEG_070131_191.JPG: Peach Orchard Hill is where the gunsite is centered
24. FTNEG_070131_224.JPG: Ravelin ditch
25. FTNEG_070131_260.JPG: Another sign designer here. The benches are shaped like redans.
Wikipedia Description: Fort Negley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fort Negley was a fortification built for the American Civil War, located approximately two miles (three km) south of downtown Nashville, Tennessee.

History:
Once Confederate forces were routed from Forts Henry and Donelson (on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, respectively), in February, 1862, Confederate commanders decided that any further effort in the defense of Nashville would be pointless, and they abandoned any attempt to keep Nashville behind their lines. It was almost immediately occupied by Union forces, who rapidly began preparations for its defense. One of the more elaborate fortifications erected was Fort Negley, a star-shaped limestone block structure atop a hill south of the city. The construction of the fort was overseen by Captain James St. Clair Morton. It was largely constructed using the labor of newly-freed blacks, who had flocked to Nashville once it was taken by Union forces with the understanding that their status as slaves was to be revoked were they to work for the Union. The fort was named for the Union Army commander, General James S. Negley.

Interestingly, when the Battle of Nashville finally came in December of 1864, it was largely fought on the heights even farther south of the city than Fort Negley, which despite its then-impressive appearance never played a leading military role. Shortly after the war the fort was abandoned and fell into ruin; however, its outline could be readily discerned for many years afterwards in the encroaching woods. During the Reconstruction period, the area was used as a meeting place for the Ku Klux Klan.

In the 1930s the Works Progress Administration made a major project of the restoration of Fort Negley. However, almost simultaneous with the completion of this project came United States entry into World War II. Neither the manpower, funds, or the interest was available at the time to reopen the fort as an historic or interpretative center. After the war, the fort was allowed to continue to languish, becoming the site of much drinking, vandalism, and minor crime; entry to its site was finally completely prohibited and the area reverted to forest. However, the surrounding grounds became the site of a municipal park, first as the site of baseball and softball fields for youth and adult leagues and later as the site of Herschel Greer Stadium, a minor league baseball stadium. The Cumberland Science Center, a continuation under a new name and in a new venue of the former Nashville Children's Museum (now called Adventure Science Center), was built on the slope opposite the ballpark. Most visitors to the stadium and the museum were only vaguely aware, at best, of what was on the wooded hilltop other than it was something which they were not allowed to access.

After many years of discussions and negotiations, historic preservationists were successful in getting sufficient funding in the early 2000s for another restoration project, and the fort was reopened to the public for the first time in decades on December 10, 2004. The project went ahead when it was shown that similar places in other cities resulted in more economic stimulation and hence more tax revenue from the resultant tourism than was spent on the maintenance and operation of such sites. The recent restoration was not an attempt to restore the fort completely to its Civil War condition but rather to stabilize the ruins and make them more accessible and visible by removing many of the largest trees and moving some of the blocks back to their original positions; what exists today is a combination of the original fortification and the WPA restoration. More work on the site is planned.
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