East Meets West

 

The embarkation of the 9th Corps at Aquia Creek Landing, Virginia, in February 1863. The unit traveled to Newport News, Virginia, and would be sent to Kentucky later in the spring.

Library of Congress

New Department and New Army

We expect to go west, perhaps to Kentucky or Tennessee, nothing would please us better...Now if you want to trace my track in this move get the largest map of the United States you can find...The whole distance is between 900 and 1000 miles.
- Private Frederick Pettit, 100th Pennsylvania Infantry, Ninth Corps, March 22 and 27, 1863

On March 16, 1863, Major General Ambrose E. Burnside was appointed to command the reorganized Department of the Ohio, which consisted of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Kentucky. Burnside assumed command on March 25th and established his headquarters in Cincinnati. Burnside’s objectives were:

1. “To assume the offensive, by moving the mass of…[his] forces into East Tennessee."

2. "To seize and fortify the different gaps in the mountains which separate Kentucky from East Tennessee."

3. "To concentrate…[his] forces at some point in Central Kentucky, say Lebanon, Danville, or Richmond, from which point they can operate against an invading force, to meet or cut it off before it can reach any supplies, and while its men are short of provisions and its animals suffering for want of forage."

The new department commander did not travel west alone; two divisions of the Ninth Corps were sent from Virginia to take part in the offensive. The Ninth Corps had been organized in early 1862 and under Burnside’s command, had participated in operations along the North Carolina coast and fought at Second Manassas, South Mountain, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. In late March 1863, this veteran unit traveled by steamboat from around Newport News, Virginia, to Baltimore, where they began a railroad journey to Cincinnati. The corps arrived by the end of month, moving hundreds of miles in only a few days.

The transfer of the Ninth Corps highlights one of the new technological features of military operations pioneered during the Civil War – the use of railroad systems to rapidly move military forces between different areas of operation. Prior to this conflict, large armies moving overland had to utilize foot or animal power. This would have meant that the journey taken by the Ninth Corps from Virginia to Ohio would have taken weeks, rather than days – not to mention it would have required a lot more physical effort on the part of the soldiers. Steamboats served in a similar capacity on the water, increasing the speed and efficiency of troops movements along the country’s coast and rivers.

The Ninth Corps soon moved south from Cincinnati into Central Kentucky, once again by railroad. Burnside’s old unit would be one of two corps in the new Army of the Ohio. The other corps, the Twenty-third Corps, was only organized in April 1863 and consisted of all troops in Kentucky not assigned to the Ninth Corps.

In preparation for the invasion of East Tennessee, Burnside asked a search committee to identify a location that would allow the Army of the Ohio to consolidate troops and supplies in central Kentucky. Located along the Lexington-Danville Turnpike and adjacent to the Kentucky River, the chosen site was situated along major lines of transportation and near the cities of Nicholasville, Lexington, and Richmond. The new military base was established on April 29, 1863, and it would be named Camp Nelson in honor of General William "Bull" Nelson on June 12^th.

 

Three 7th Rhode Island Infantry officers in Lexington, Kentucky, in the fall of 1863. From left to right are Captain Gustavus Bates, Captain George A. Wilbur, and Lieutenant Peleg E. Peckham.

Sojourn in Kentucky

The line occupied by the troops was being constantly disturbed by the necessity of moving troops from point to point, to meet the frequent attacks of the enemy’s cavalry, and of guerrillas.
- Major General Ambrose E. Burnside

It would be some time before the campaign into East Tennessee commenced, so over the course of April and May, the regiments of the Ninth Corps, as well as Twenty-third, were scattered throughout Kentucky, garrisoning this critical Border State, and ensuring peace and security. Although large Confederate forces were mostly gone from Kentucky by the spring of 1863, US troops sometimes skirmished with enemy cavalry raiders and guerillas. In general, however, this was a relatively quiet tour of duty for the men as they camped at and marched between various points in the state, including Lexington, Paris, Mt. Sterling, Stanford, Middleburg, and Camp Dick Robinson, an early military base which was located only a few miles south of Camp Nelson.

In mid-April, Private George A. Hitchcock of the 21st Massachusetts Infantry compared his unit’s service in Kentucky with their earlier experiences in Virginia: “The charming country, the mild spring weather and our distance from any rebel force make it all seem like holiday soldiering while the consciousness of the unseen danger of lurking guerrillas furnish just enough excitement for stimulus.” As Camp Nelson was only just being established and still in the early phases of development at that time, the few US forces present at the site were assigned to guarding the critical Hickman Bridge over the Kentucky River.

With the Ninth Corps consisting of regiments from Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, most of the soldiers had never been to Kentucky before 1863 and many of these men recorded their thoughts of the state. From Lexington, Private Frederick Pettit of the 100th Pennsylvania Infantry wrote home, “The surface of the surrounding country is rolling and undulating but there are no high hills. It is situated in one of the richest farming districts of Kentucky. The farmers and farms are the richest I ever saw. The famous Kentucky horses and cattle are here fully developed. The horses are the most beautiful I ever saw, the cattle are equal to any I have seen.”

When it came to the state’s residents, impressions were also favorable. Captain Charles Walcott of the 21st Massachusetts Infantry reported, “Rather to our surprise, there seemed to be not only no feeling of hostility towards us on the part of the people, but the majority of the inhabitants were evidently very glad to see us.” Pettit expressed similar feelings in a letter from Camp Dick Robinson, though he acknowledged that a portion of the population seemed to support the Confederacy. “The people in this part of the state are mostly loyal and have suffered very much on account of their loyalty,” Pettit asserted, “They hail us with delight as the defenders of their homes. Still there are some who are inveterate enemies and will do all in their power to injure us.”

White Kentuckians were not the only ones to welcome the new Federal forces to the state. Near Mt. Sterling, Private Hitchcock noted, “Our camp has swarmed all day with negro slaves mostly women and children bringing in pies and cakes for sale. Sunday is their great holiday and the Union soldiers are their great attraction. All seem to be in the happiest frame of mind.” The Emancipation Proclamation may have taken effect at the beginning of 1863, but as a loyal slave state, Kentucky was excluded and slavery remained legal and entrenched. These enslaved women and children visiting the Massachusetts soldiers would have to wait well over a year before the US Army would begin providing any type of refuge from bondage, and they would have to wait even longer for emancipation. Overall, it seemed that the Ninth Corps troops had a pleasant time during their first few months in Kentucky, but they knew that this sojourn would not last and hard campaigning was in their future.

 

US Army Engineer's Camp located north of the main earthworks at Camp Nelson during the Civil War.

National Archives and Records Administration

Unexpected Delay

You will immediately dispatch 8,000 men to General Grant at Vicksburg. - Henry W. Halleck, General-in-Chief of the US Armies, to General Ambrose Burnside, June 3, 1863

General Burnside planned to assemble the Army of the Ohio and launch his offensive into East Tennessee in the early summer, but military needs in another theater of the war ruined his plans. General Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee was currently besieging Vicksburg, one of the last remaining Confederate strongholds on the Mississippi River, and he called for reinforcements. In early June, the War Department in Washington ordered Burnside to provide that assistance, and the two veteran divisions of the Ninth Corps found themselves once again on the move across the country. First heading by rail to Louisville and then Cairo, Illinois, the regiments embarked on troop transports and sailed south down the Mississippi to the area of Vicksburg. Once again, the Ninth Corps’ movement had been swift, as they joined Grant’s army only 10 days after Burnside was ordered to send them.

With much of his army away in Mississippi, Burnside had to delay his campaign into Tennessee until those men returned. Burnside’s offensive was stalled, but at Camp Nelson, the work of building the new military base began in earnest. Over the course of the summer of 1863, expanses of Kentucky farmland started to transform into a fortified supply depot – a military city.

 

US Army Brigadier General Thomas Welsh during the Civil War.

LancasterHistory, General Thomas Welsh Family Papers

Service on the Mississippi

My command is so much enfeebled by sickness, brought on by the arduous duties of the past two months, that I would respectfully recommend that they be encamped on some healthy location that they may recuperate their exhausted energies.
- Brigadier General Thomas Welsh, August 12, 1863

Upon reaching the vicinity of Vicksburg, the Ninth Corps joined the US forces holding the siege lines surrounding the Confederate stronghold. The troops were not under fire, but they had to spend long shifts in the trenches and earthworks that prevented the enemy from breaking out of the city. On July 4, 1863, the siege of Vicksburg finally ended with the Confederate garrison surrendering to General Grant’s army. But there would be no rest for the Ninth Corps.

A Confederate force that had been maneuvering to relieve Vicksburg had advanced close to the city in the final days of the siege. Units of the Ninth Corps had actually been stationed in an exterior line to defend against any attack from this new threat. After the surrender, Grant sent a large portion of his army, including the Ninth Corps, to engage and push back the Confederates. The Federals marched hard in stifling hot summer weather in pursuit of the enemy, who retreated to Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, about 45 miles east of Vicksburg. The US forces initiated a siege of Jackson, fighting some minor engagements with the Confederates, but the operation was brief. On July 16, the Confederates abandoned Jackson and withdrew from the area, allowing Grant’s army to consolidate control of the region for the remainder of the war.

The Ninth Corps had suffered heavily during its participation in the Vicksburg Campaign, but because of disease and exposure, not battle casualties. By early August 1863, the Ninth Corps had returned to General Burnside’s department in Ohio and Kentucky, but many of the soldiers were sick and exhausted. “The strength of the corps is very materially weakened by the campaign,” Major General John G. Parke, a division commander in the Ninth Corps, wrote to Burnside. The other division commander, Brigadier General Thomas Welsh, himself contracted malaria while serving in Mississippi, succumbing to the illness in Cincinnati on August 14. Parke exclaimed, “the sudden death of General Welsh is a very severe shock to us all.”

The returned Ninth Corps was concentrated at Cincinnati before being moved south into Kentucky. Burnside officially welcomed the Ninth Corps back to his department and heaped praise on the veterans for their feats in Mississippi: “The inscriptions, ‘Vicksburg’ and ‘Jackson,’ they bring with them on their banners, bear testimony to their valor and to the faithfulness with which they have fulfilled their mission and sustained the high reputation of a name already prominent in the annals of patriotism.” Burnside was glad to have his old troops back, but he understood that they were in no state to engage in another campaign anytime soon. The men of the Ninth Corps would need a period of rest before resuming field operations. But Burnside could not postpone his planned campaign to liberate East Tennessee any longer, so he turned to the Twenty-third Corps to spearhead the march into the Volunteer State.

 

The Hickman Covered Bridge, constructed in 1838, spanned the Kentucky River along the Lexington-Danville Turnpike. The US Army secured the crossing with artillery batteries and infantrymen. The wooden span was replaced by a steel bridge in the 1930s. The original stone abutments remain today.

Camp Nelson Photographic Collection, 1864, University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.

Eve of the Campaign

I arrived at Hickman’s Bridge yesterday.
- General Ambrose Burnside, August 12, 1863

The Twenty-third Corps was relatively new and untested, with its regiments scattered throughout Kentucky during the spring and summer of 1863 to guard against any Confederate threats. In July 1863, various units had been involved in defending the state and pursuing a Confederate raiding force commanded by General John Hunt Morgan. By late July and early August, Burnside started to assemble the corps in the area of Camp Nelson in preparation for the invasion of East Tennessee. Although nowhere near as large as it would become, Camp Nelson had begun to grow into an elaborate military base by the late summer of 1863. The landscape was filled with tents for soldiers and quartermaster staff, corrals for horses and mules, and hospitals for the sick and wounded – all of which was protected by a formidable series of natural and manmade fortifications.

Pvt. William G. Bentley of the 104^th Ohio Infantry described Camp Nelson in a letter home on July 29: “17 miles in circumference with 3 miles of earth works on the north side, the other sides are surrounded by the [Kentucky] river. The banks make splendid breastworks, they are 200 ft. high [actually over 400 feet] in many places and nearly perpendicular.” Bentley often referred to Camp Nelson as Hickman Bridge, in reference to the important covered bridge that crossed the Kentucky River at the southern end of the camp. This bridge was the only one that crossed the waterway upriver from Frankfort, meaning it was crucial for US operations in Central Kentucky and areas south of the river. Another Ohio private, Harrison E. Randall, was surprised by how rapidly Camp Nelson was evolving into a massive military installation. “They are fortifying it there was no buildings or camp and now they have it strongly fortifyed,” Randall explained in late July, “3 goverment steam mills circular saw a waggon shop a blacksmith shop and several other buildings convalescent camp and taken it all in all it is growing very fast.” A week later, Bentley observed the concentration of troops in and around Camp Nelson, writing “I don’t know the exact force at Hickman but there is certainly more than is necessary in this part of the state. I think that they will nearly all leave it before long and hope we will be among them.” Bentley’s guess soon proved correct and his wish was fulfilled – his regiment would be among Burnside’s forces advancing into East Tennessee.

Throughout the first few weeks of August 1863, the Army of the Ohio massed soldiers, supplies, forage, and animals at Camp Nelson for the commencement of the East Tennessee campaign. Burnside assigned the Twenty-third Corps the bulk of the hard marching and fighting that was to come, while the Ninth Corps was given only light duties, mainly guarding the army’s extended communications line and supply route from Camp Nelson south through Kentucky toward Knoxville. “I think that we are bound for Knoxville, if so, we will have a good long march, over 200 miles, but I don’t dread it at all if I have my health,” Bentley wrote home. In reference to the large Unionist population that the US forces aimed to liberate from Confederate occupation, Bentley continued, “I have wanted to go to Tenn. for a long time and we are going to the best part of the state.”

On August 16, the long-awaited campaign into East Tennessee finally begun when Burnside and the Army of the Ohio departed from Camp Nelson.

Click here to learn about the first phase of the Knoxville Campaign.