US Soldiers' Home

 

The US Sanitary Commission's Soldiers' Home at Camp Nelson during the Civil War.

"U.S. Sanitary Commission, Soldier's Home," Camp Nelson Photographic Collection, 1864, University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.

Rest, Recovery, Recruitment, and Refuge

The Brave Men, Living and Dead, Who Struggled Here

The US Army established the first Soldiers’ Home or Military Asylum in 1851 after the Mexican War. General Winfield Scott secured funding to establish a hospital and retirement home for wounded and disabled veterans on 225 acres in Washington D.C. Captain Theron E. Hall, who served as the chief quartermaster at Camp Nelson, oversaw the construction of three Soldiers’ Homes for the Army of the Potomac in the Eastern Theater earlier in the Civil War. He proposed the construction of a similar structure at Camp Nelson that could feed and comfortably lodge the hundreds of men that passed through the camp and that was operated by the US Sanitary Commission.

Completed in March 1864, the home’s massive structure consisted of two wards connected by an expansive dining hall. The dining hall could hold up to 300 people, while the wards had a maximum occupancy of 500 people. The Home was constructed on sloped grounds, providing the space to add a second floor under the front of each ward. Under the first ward was an office, sleeping room, sanitary supply room, and storeroom for the home. Under the second ward was a bathing room containing four private bathtubs supplied by double pipes, with hot and cold water, as well as a spacious baggage room. Behind the dining hall were several buildings that contained a laundry room, wash house (capacity: 100), kitchen (cooking power for 500), commissary, and large pantry. In the front of the Soldiers’ Home was a large courtyard which was decorated by a fountain, sodded ground, and tree-lined pathways, all encased by a fence made of cedar posts and planks.

 

US Sanitary Commission at Gettysburg General Hospital, August 1863.

Library of Congress

Recruitment

In May 1864, the US Army began enlisting African American men into the United States Colored Troops [USCT] at Camp Nelson. Thomas D. Butler, Head of the Sanitary Commission, reported:

On the 23rd of May, 1864, about 250 abled body and fine looking men assembled from Boyle County Kentucky at the office of the deputy Provost Marshall, all thirsting for freedom. When this body of colored recruits started from Danville for camp Nelson, some of the citizens and students of the educational and moral center assailed them with stones and the contents of revolvers… Reporting to Colonel A.H. Clarke, commandant of the post, he refused to accept them, stating that he had no authority for so doing.

USCT recruitment and enrollment was a complicated process in Kentucky. State officials and local citizens openly opposed Black enlistment, creating confusion for US Army officers at Camp Nelson. For example, weary recruits were repeatedly denied access to the many vacant hospital tents on the base. After much chaos, they were ultimately sent to the U.S. Sanitary Commission’s Soldier’s Home. Here they were taken “to [its] spacious wash house, and with the assistance of several employees, dressed their wounds and bruises to the best of [their] ability. And then through the entire buildings open for their use.”

Despite opposition, hostility, and violence, Black recruits arrived daily seeking to enlist in the US Army. Over 1,500 Black recruits journeyed to Camp Nelson to enlist by June 1864. The surge of recruits resulted in the Home being operated and staffed all day. According to a report, “The labor necessary for the care of such numbers kept [the Home’s] kitchen busy day and night, and [their] dining hall filled from before sunrise till long after sunset.” While awaiting enlistment, recruits were informally drilled by non-commissioned officers and peers.

The Soldiers' Home lacked the facilities to feed and house thousands of new recruits. As a result, the army dispersed the men into other encampments around the base, and assigned them fatigue duty, especially strengthening Camp Nelson's earthworks. With this dire situation the military finally began to take over, housing men in other areas of Camp Nelson and utilizing them to strengthen the earthworks from dawn till dusk.The Soldiers Home reverted to its original purpose of providing food and lodging for people passing through the base. One of the new arrivals was Sergeant Elijah P. Marrs, Co. L, 12th US Colored Heavy Artillery, who was charged with delivering 750 African American refugees from Bowling Green Kentucky to the “City of Refuge” at Camp Nelson. After delivering these women and children to safety, Marrs wrote, “I formed my men in line and marched to the Soldiers’ Home, where we demanded our supper. The cook soon served us a supper in fine style, which made me feel happy temporarily. I had the first happy night’s rest I had enjoyed since leaving Bowling Green, as the case of the poor women and children were off my mind.”

 

"African American refugees coming into the Union lines near Culpeper Court House, Virginia." Sketch by Edwin Forbes

Library of Congress

City of Refuge

The refugees were in many instances compelled to leave their homes and all they possessed to save their lives, while the majority started for this “city of refuge” because their fathers, husbands and brothers were in the army, and no men were left to afford them protection and provide them assistance.
-US Sanitary Commission Report at Camp Nelson

The Soldiers' Home was still under construction on February 20, 1864, when the building was first used to shelter 40 white East Tennessee refugees en route to Cincinnati, OH. The Home did not serve as a permanent haven for refugees, both Black and White, but did shelter refugees who were willing and able to relocate to northern cities, especially East Tennessee civilians.

The Soldiers’ Home has few documented cases of housing refugees, but it did provide them with other forms of assistance. Once reaching Camp Nelson, Black recruits enlisting in the USCT often worried about the safety of their wives, children, and elderly parents, who remained enslaved. Agents were appointed at the Soldiers’ Home to write hundreds of letters relaying “stories of trouble at home [and] wrongs committed on their [families], in hope of procuring redress.” Dedicated agents and abolitionists, such as Abisha Schofield of the American Missionary Association, worked tirelessly to rectify these claims.

Closing

By the time the Soldiers’ Home was closed on July 25, 1866, it had “entertained 95,337 soldiers, and furnished them 286,656 meals, and 102,521 lodgings.” However, the Home's impact extended far beyond the soldiers it served. Thomas D. Butler, in his report to the sanitary commission, acknowledged that the official figures did not encompass the substantial number of soldiers' families and other individuals in need who also found solace and assistance within its walls. The Home's final act witnessed all of its equipment and some furnishing donated to "the camp of colored refugees," formed as the community Arial [Hall] at the Home for Colored Refugees after the Civil War. The Soldiers' Home, like Camp Nelson, evolved over the course of the Civil War. From its initial function to provide food and housing for people passing through the Camp, it later provided aid for white Unionists escaping Confederate occupation and African Americans fleeing enslavement.