Existing comment:
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. |