Season 1
1. Slavery and Law in Civil War Kentucky with Cameron Sauers
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Transcript
0:0 Steve Phan: Welcome to the park podcast, Echoes of Camp Nelson: Uncovering the Stories of the Civil War Era, at Camp Nelson National Monument. My name is Steve Phan, and I serve as the Chief of Interpretation, Education, and Visitor Services. This is our very first episode of the podcast and we’re thrilled to launch a new digital series to connect visitors to the national significance of Camp Nelson during the Civil War Era and our development as the 418th unit of the National Park Service. The podcast will feature unique and interesting stories, interviews with subject matter experts, and an assortment of other topics.
The podcast launches with the 4th Annual Winter Lecture Series. The interview provides an overview of the Winter Lecture Series presentation delivered by special guests at the park. 2025 marks the 4th Annual Winter Lecture Series and the 160th Anniversary of Camp Nelson.
Free At Last. In the aftermath of the final expulsion of African American refugees from Camp Nelson on November 23, 1864, the U.S. Army and War Department authorized the establishment of the Home for Colored Refugees at Camp Nelson. The Home will be constructed and developed rapidly in early 1865, and the federal government also changes policy which allows African-American freedom seekers to seek refuge at U.S. bases, camps, and military installations.
On March 3, 1865, Congress approved, in quotes, “A Resolution to Encourage Enlistments and to Promote the Efficiency of the Military Forces of the United States.” This resolution emancipates the wives and children of U.S.C.T soldiers in Kentucky and across the nation. However, slavery remained legal and protected in Kentucky until ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865, 8 months after the end of the Civil War. Why? Let’s find out.
Our speaker today is Cameron Sauers, a dual title PhD student in the departments of history and African-American and Africa Diasporic studies at Pennsylvania State University, where he currently holds the Raymond H. Robinson Fellowship in American History. Cameron has received the McCabe Scholarship in Civil War History from the Richards Civil War Era Center, and his ongoing dissertation project on child welfare policy in the early American Republic has been supported by the Dickerson Family Fund and the College of Liberal Arts. Prior to his work at Penn State, Cameron completed a Master’s degree in history at the University of Kentucky as the Lipman Fellow just up the street from here at… in Lexington, from us at Camp Nelson National Monument. Uh, so Cameron’s presentation, “The Local Authorities Keep up the Old Machinery of Slavery”: Slavery and the Law in which… in Civil War Kentucky, which explored the legal culture of Slavery in Civil War Kentucky, uh, through an analysis of civil and criminal court cases, as well as pardon petitions sent to the Kentucky Civil War governors. This talk explored the pro-slavery dimensions of pro-slavery Unionism, harsh state-wide policing, excuse me, of challenges to slavery are revealed as a central feature in the political landscape of Civil War Kentucky. The more that Kentuckians struggled to preserve slavery, they reveal the depths of challenges to the system launched by enslaved peoples and the presence of the U.S. Army.
But understanding how Kentucky’s civil, legal system rooted in the subordination of people of color continued to function amidst Civil War, uh, Cameron’s presentation reveals the central importance of policing and legal rebuke in the maintenance of pro-slavery Unionism.
So Cameron, it’s great to have you here today, my friend.
4:07 Cameron Sauers: Thank you, Steve. It’s wonderful to be here.
Steve Phan: So how does it feel to be back in the Bluegrass after, uh, it’s been about, what?, almost two years since you’ve been back, right?
Cameron Sauers: Yeah, yeah, it’s absolutely wonderful. It’s been great to see Lexington and, and, check in on all the great developments that are happening here at Camp Nelson.
Steve Phan: So before we discuss the topic that you delivered at the park today, I’d like to share with our listeners the roots of our connection. I've known Cameron since he was a freshman at Gettysburg College, when you were on your way to do your first National Park Service internship at Harper’s Ferry National Historical park and I actually shared with our visitors who attended the program in person today a photograph of Cameron and I together at Fort Stevens, uh, in Washington, D.C., for the Civil War Institute’s summer conference in June of 2018. Uh, as I mentioned, Cameron earned his masters degree at the University of Kentucky, uh, and it’s really exciting that our paths crossed again in Lexington and the Central Bluegrass.
I am incredibly proud of Cameron and his pursuit of his history career. I truly believe he is one of the brightest young scholars of the 19th century and the Civil War Era. And this is, uh, this is not the last time you’ll hear of his work and scholarship. So, again, it’s great to have you here, my friend. Let’s talk about this presentation you did, this work that you’ve been doing. What inspired you to pursue, uh, this specific topic, uhm, that is, I think, a lot of, even Civil War scholars, including Kentucky Civil War scholars, don’t know the depths of institutionalized slavery in this state?
5:50 Cameron Sauers: Yeah, absolutely. This came out of, kind of, two roads that intersected in my interests. One is all of the scholarship that exists about how emancipation happened during the Civil War, the long processes. And I’m interested in following the call of some other scholars, like, uhm, my master's advisor, uh, Amy Taylor, to, uh, slow down our history of emancipation and to really pay attention, uhm, to the way it develops, almost on a day-to-day basis.
And so I’d been thinking a lot about how the process of emancipation happened. Uhm, and I was doing some research and there wasn’t a whole lot of direction to it. Uhm, and in conversation with a friend, uh, came, uh, sent me the documents from the, the trial of a young African-American woman in Louisville, named Caroline, who was accused of murdering the young child of her employer. Uhm, and as I investigated Caroline’s case as a, as a free black woman, uhm, though the court is undecided on whether or not she’s actually free, uhm, I got really engaged in trying to understand, uhm, how black Kentuckians interacted with the law in the Civil War Era, uhm, and it revealed a whole set of documents and events to me, uh, about the struggle to maintain slavery on the… for some individuals, uhm, and the struggle for liberation for others.
7:14 Steve Phan: So you start with Caroline’s story, and, can you share with listeners why it started with that?
Cameron Sauers: Yeah. So, so Caroline is en…, she is enslaved at the start of the Civil War in Tennessee. Uh, her enslaver joins, uhm, a Confederate army. So when, in 1862, the Union Army under the command of Don Carolos Buell goes into Tennessee, Caroline encounters them and she is, at that point, through Union policy, considered contraband, which means, uhm, that enslaved people whose enslavers are fighting on behalf of the Confederacy can be kind of, can be seized by federal military officials as part of part of the rules of war.
Uhm, and so Caroline comes to Louisville with the Army and she finds employment with the Levi family of Louisville, Anne and Willis, and they have a young child named Blanche. Uhm, at the same time, her husband has also come north with her. The details about her husband are, are very few and only in one document. Uhm, but that Levi’s brother who owned an adjoining piece of property had also hired, uh, hires out, uhm, Caroline’s husband while Caroline works for Anne and Willis Levi.
Uhm, when Willis is about to leave on a boat, uhm, a trip, he’s a boat pilot, uhm, he tries Caroline for some actions she’d recently undertaken, including dirtying the family’s fence, and that she had been spending too much time with her husband and not enough time, uh, working for the family. And, uh, I was really struck by this description of, of Caroline and her husband living as “contraband”, in quotation marks, in a mix that felt neither fully like freedom but was also certainly not enslavement either.
As I read the case files and continued to go through them, it becomes that Caroline is suspected of the poisoning of Blanche, their… the youngest child, who is about a year old. Uhm, and the court documents refer to Caroline in a number of ways. Uhm, some are just racial descriptions. One document files… is filed under the heading of Commonwealth v. Caroline, comma, a slave, which to me, really struck me. And then another document, uhm, refers to Caroline as a contraband. And what survives doesn’t ever say that the matter was settled, and I don’t think the court considered it a problem. But it ignited a fascination with me in trying to understand how slavery played out under the law of a border state like Kentucky.
9:37 Steve Phan: And Cameron, we talk so much about language and history, right, and I think starting with Caroline is critically important because I think a lot of Civil War buffs and historians and enthusiasts, they might hear the word Contraband of War, ‘cause it’s so important and it’s used to describe a lot of… a large portion of African-Americans, uh, that were enslaved during the Civil War. And it’s interesting because Caroline is not from Kentucky, but she comes into Kentucky. So in many ways, she is a contraband but, uh, at places like Camp Nelson, we don’t use the word contraband because Kentucky is not in rebellion against the United States. Even at, uh, Camp Nelson, where the Army will impress enslaved people to build fortifications and roads, that is the word that the Army uses, is impressment, because slavery is still legal here, as you mentioned. Contraband of war is property that is seized from the enemy, right? And so, I think… I thought it was brilliant to use Caroline to kind of show the complexities and how confusing this can be.
You shared with the presentation, with the viewers today, or the attendees, the number of different sources you used. I know you talked about the, the Kentucky governors… war governors project. Let’s start with that, and then, uh, other places where you found, uh, incredible primary search, uh, primary resource documents.
Cameron Sauers: Yeah, so, uhm, the documents, uh, of Caroline’s case came to me through the Civil War Governors of Kentucky project, uhm, which is a program of the Kentucky Historical Society. And what the project does is its digitized and transcribed, and continues to do so, uhm, thousands upon thousands of pages and letters and documents sent to and from Kentucky’s governors during the Civil War Era. There’s a couple of them. And so that was a key source, a significant amount of my material comes from there. And it’s… it’s truly an incredible archive that they have created. And it’s freely accessible online, which was really important for me because I actually did… wrote this presentation while I was in Pennsylvania, and not here in Kentucky.
I also used documents available from the Kentucky Historical Society, which maintains really wonderful digital collections. Uhm, and I used that to help get an insight into the personal lives and the diaries of some individuals. Uhm, but I’ve also grown to really include newspapers in this project. And not just newspapers in Kentucky. In fact, the title of my presentation comes from a newspaper that’s not in Kentucky, where it’s reporting on what’s happening in the state. And so that for me was an example of, of the way that this became a challenge on the minds of Civil War Americans. That it wasn't just about, it wasn’t just Kentuckians trying to understand Kentucky. But it became to me, through…through newspapers, I came to understand that it was a question, I think, very much about the meaning of the war and what transformations it would enact. So newspapers have become an important source
12:39 Steve Phan: And that was a Pennsylvania newspaper, is that correct?
Cameron Sauers: Yeah, I think it was a newspaper in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where I… I have family that lives in that area. So I was, kind of, you know, at first, like “oh!”, I’ll look and see what’s in this article, ‘cause there is so much about Kentucky in Civil War Era newspapers. And when I found that they described, uhm, the imprisonment of African Americans in Louisville in 1862, uhm, in 1863 that it describes that the machinery, the legal machinery of slavery, uhm, has continued to function. And that for me was a moment where it gave, you know, of course my project the title, but it also gave a definition as to how I should understand the law that they recognized it as a machine that continued to function, and indeed, my research shows that it very well did.
Steve Phan: And I find that quite provocative, because, Pennsylvania, Lancaster, right? James Buchanon, John Reynolds, the general that was killed at Gettysburg, these Pennsylvanians that were overwhelmingly pro union in a state that abolished slavery is looking to see what’s happening in Kentucky with the institution of slavery, and you made a great point to talk about… this is not starting in 1861 after Fort Sumpter, this has been building up. So let’s talk about the roots of this system of slavery in Kentucky prior to the Civil War.
13:54 Cameron Sauers: Yeah, Kentucky like, the United States, it becomes Kentucky’s, you know, from the first settlers, that enslaved people are brought alongside them, and Kentucky continues to have a flourishing number of enslaved people. At the outbreak of the Civil War, there is over 200 thousand enslaved people in Kentucky, which is, at that time, about a fifth of the state’s population, which is really considerable, when you think that one out of every five Kentuckians is enslaved at the start of the Civil War. And Kentucky’s position… it had always been a border state in the sense that it was a boundary between the solid South, where the institution of slavery is really on firm footing and finds its most hearted supporters, and a state like Ohio, which is a free state, and in Ohio there is a number of abolitionists working.
And so, the boundary between Ohio and Kentucky becomes this, uhm, it becomes this maybe I.. you could say one of the first battlefields of the Civil War as enslaved people see Ohio as a haven of freedom, and they attempt to make the escapes there. Most famously, there’s the case of Margaret Garner, a fugitive enslaved woman who tries to cross the frozen Ohio river in an attempt to elude slave captures, and Garner eventually kills her two year old daughter rather than allow her to be reenslaved, which becomes the basis of a Tony Morrison Novel.
And thinking about those moments that are dramatic, and there’s other instances of fugitive enslaved people, seeking to self-liberate, being recaptured in Ohio and they’re brought to Kentucky. Many of them are brought to Louisville. Henry Bibb, who writes an incredibly moving memoir about his experience, offers a really detailed description of his flight from Kentucky into Ohio and being returned and imprisoned in Louisville before he’s sold and uhm, sent to the deep South
16:00 Steve Phan: On nearly a daily basis, Cameron, we meet visitors that come to the park for the very first time, at the front desk, on the grounds, and one of the comments we often hear, or questions, or points, is “Kentucky was a confederate state, right?” And then we have great opportunity to share that this was a pro-Union, pro-slavery state, it was a border state. Explain to our listeners: What is pro-slavery Unionism?
Cameron Sauers: Pro-slavery Unionism, to me, is the most fascinating political idea at the start of the American Civil War, and Kentucky is a particularly rich place to understand pro-slavery Unionism for the duration of the war, and not just 1860, 1861, where, you know, states like Maryland and Delaware, which are handling things separately, Kentucky remains a pro-slavery Union state through the entire duration of the Civil War and, as you mentioned in the introduction, almost to the very end of the year 1865, and at the core of pro-slavery Unionism and how Kentucky navigates the succession crisis and the outbreak of the Civil War, is their belief that the best way to preserve the institution of slavery, for them, as Kentuckians, is to remain loyal to the Union, and that the federal government would not infringe upon the legal rights of Kentuckians to own enslaved people.
And so that’s the position that is taken from the very beginning, and it seems through the first year or two of the war, Kentuckians have been vindicated. But, as the battlefields come to Kentucky and there’s the presence of Union and Confederate armies in the state, it really forces the question about the meaning of the Civil War and the Eastern theatre, the contraband quote legislation, that’s really that confiscation acts passed by Congress show that if enslaved people are being used as, kind of, weapons of war as laborers by the confederate army, the US Government would consider them, you know, the materials of war and would seize them.
And Kentucky, uhm, then, right, Kentuckians respond most forcefully I think to the Emancipation Proclamation. That is when President Lincoln first issues the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in the Fall of 1862. It’s a sign to Kentuckians that pro-slavery Unionism is going to be an ever narrower tightrope, that to maintain loyalty to the Union would require abandoning slavery, while on the otherhand, to maintain the system of slavery might require abandoning the Union. And it’s a tension that’s never fully resolved, but it’s one that many white Kentuckians who both own enslaved people and do not feel a deep loyalty to the Union, but they also feel a deep loyalty to the institution of slavery.
18:52 Steve Phan: And it’s… you talked about how deeply embedded it was, not just culturally but legally as well. Obviously slavery was protected by the constitution, but it was also protected by state law, so let’s talk about that Cameron, I mean it was so deep and I think you spoke about it in so much detail and you supplemented with specific cases and individuals. Let's talk more about that.
Cameron Sauers: Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the things that this project revealed to me is just how enmeshed slavery is with all facets of law. It’s not just constitutional, high law like we picture, but it’s also things like contract law, and property law, and even the law that governs ordinary social interactions and social boundaries. So, I showed visitors in the presentation today excerpts from Kentucky’s revised state statutes in the year 1852, which has a chapter dedicated to “Slavery, Freed Persons, and Persons of Color”, is the title of the chapter, and it offers a range of definitions, from how a individual could be considered enslaved, the rules that governed free people of color and their movement, they are strongly policed as well, and as well uhm, instances of crimes that could be committed on behalf of for enslaved people, and for enslaved people there’s a whole host of capital crimes, so crimes where if they were convicted of it, that they would be executed for, but as well as crimes that, if white individuals were convicted of, it was a sign that they had committed a transgression against the system of slavery.
So one of the ones that stood out to me was so there was a young illiterate boy, he’s aged 16, in 1861, named James Bingham, who is charged with a crime because he was playing marbles with an enslaved man on a Saturday evening. They were working for the same employer. And for me, that was really remarkable because Bingham then turns and writes to Governor McGauffin, asking for a pardon, that he didn’t know it was a crime. And indeed, I don’t think there’s a specific provision against playing marbles, but it was about that it represented a crossing of boundaries, that Bingham, as a young white man, was not supposed to be engaging in something like this. Uhm, more commonly, the most common crime I saw prosecuted was the charge of selling alcohol to enslaved people. It was a very strictly enforced policy.
Steve Phan: But why was that, Cameron?
Cameron Sauers: Yeah, I think it goes back to a sense of wanting to have control, that both free and enslaved people, their entire lives are policed under the system of slavery, including, too, when and where they could worship or who could preach, where they could live, right, if they were free. And so, I think it becomes about being able to be in control and fears about what a drunken enslaved person could do. It also, I think, demarcates a social boundary in the sense that consuming alcohol could be a leisurely activity and the laws were quite clear that it would be a crime to distribute any sort of alcohol to enslaved people, which, you know, we know Kentucky is the heart of bourbon country, but this offers a really interesting insight into that, that it was… alcohol was not accessible for a significant number of Kentuckians.
22:38 Steve Phan: So last year we had our dear friend, Dr. Chuck Waschool from the Kentucky Historical Society, and he came to talk about governor Thomas Bramlett and his role with black enlistment, his handling of the state as the governor in the last two years of the Civil War, and I shared with our attendees that when he was inaugurated, he makes this speech about “This day we’ll be resisting confiscation”, and then also, ironically, two of the men that Bramlett enslaved journeyed to Camp Nelson and self-emancipated by joining the US Army, so let’s talk about that major, evolutionary transformation, Cameron, starting in 1864 what place, like Camp Nelson, and African American soldiers themselves and their impact on legal slavery in Kentucky.
Cameron Sauers: Absolutely. I subscribe to a school of thought, that, central to the destruction of slavery is the actions of enslaved people themselves who pursue self-liberation and Kentucky and a site like Camp Nelson offers us really prime examples of how that happened. As you mentioned, that case, the Breckenridge family.
23:48 Steve Phan: Share more about that.
Cameron Sauers: Yeah, there is a document available through the Library of Congress, and I actually accessed it through Princeton University’s own project on their University’s history, which the Breckenridges had some connections there, that they, Robert Breckridge I believe, made note of a document that some of the family’s enslaved people had gone to Camp Nelson, and as I was just going through the research, and finding sources, and trying to understand what all of it means, to see the constant references to Camp Nelson or to the federal army, it was really clear that Kentuckians who are pro-slavery see this as an intrusion of the federal government, but enslaved people see it as the government kind of fulfilling the promise of what the war could be.
And so, for, in that case as you mention, the Bramletts, there is one account by Ellen Wallace, who has a remarkable diary of the Civil War era, that is transcribed and available through the Kentucky Historical Society so listeners can go and detail it, she writes in November of 1862, before Camp Nelson has even opened, about the constant escapes to the federal Army. But when Camp Nelson opens, she makes an immediate account then that more and more enslaved people are fleeing to Camp Nelson, uhm, and as she writes very simply, to get into federal lines and be safe from pursuit. That is the boundary, to be here at Camp Nelson represents a freedom that before was only even tenuous as far North as Ohio.
25:36 Steve Phan: I think one of the most interesting things that you shared was the account of that Pro-Unionist who was extremely upset with black enlistment–including the loss of his own property, an enslaved person who joined the military–because he kept on talking about the constitution and property rights. Let’s talk more about that, Cameron.
Cameron Sauers: Yeah, so this case you’re referring to is a fascinating one. And I did talk about it at length because, uhm, in part, this individual–his name is S. P. Cope, is what he’s found in the archive as how he identifies himself– he is consistently writing to Governor Bramlette about this instance. So what happened was, uhm, Cope is in his house when four, armed USCT soldiers, complete with muskets and bayonets, arrived at his house and demanded his enslaved person. And that enslaved man is then enlisted into the U.S. military service.
Cope complains to the federal government, er… Cope complains to Bramlette for intervention, saying he has been made to pay the penalty of rebellion, uhm, this is directly… This is Cope’s language here. I have, quote, “been made to pay the penalty of rebellion by having my right of property violated, the feelings of my wife outraged, my children alarmed by the forcible, insolent, and offensive intrusion upon my premises to drag away my possession, my only remaining servant.”
In another letter to the governor, uh, Cope writes that, “I staked my all in the cause of the Union of our fathers and now I will give all, if need be, to preserve it, but as a citizen of a free country, and as the birthright of a loyal Kentuckian, I claim that my right of property shall be sacred.” And so, for him, this is very much a case of, of property. It makes little difference to Cope that it’s an enslaved person and not some other piece of property. Uhm, and that was really jarring, because, I think, in a lot of people’s minds, and perhaps my own, we understand that, uhm, the war becomes a war of emancipation as it continues on.
But for an individual like Cope, his loyalty to Union is really challenged. Here in this letter, he says, “I’m ready to stake my all for the Union cause,” but he’s also quite irate that some of his, what he percei… his property right, has been trampled in this. And it’s, uhm, it’s a tension there between how war and emancipation as a part of that war is conducted and the rights of the individuals. And for pro-slavery, Unionist Kentuckians, it’s about, they emphasize, their rights as individuals over an ultimate outcome of the war.
28:44 Steve Phan: Cameron, we describe that here at Camp Nelson as “Conditional Unionism.” Would you affirm that or what are your thoughts on that?
Cameron Sauers: Absolutely! I think “Conditional Unionism” is a great way of describing it. I, in my talk, I tried to emphasize pro-slavery Unionism, because what I wanted to do, uhm, was center that the political decisions being made throughout the war are about the system of slavery and there being transformed by the actions of enslaved people. Uhm, and the condition of that Unionism, as Camp Nelson rightly notes, it is conditional about the system of slavery.
And for me, it’s a linguistic choice. We talked earlier in the case of Caroline about how that language matters so much. And I think, I think we’re in really strong agreement there that it’s important to emphasize that that Unionism is not a guaranteed promise, right? Abraham Lincoln knows that he could lose Kentucky at any moment. And to lose Kentucky to succession or, whether formalized succession or just political disloyalty, would be a really drastic blow to the Union cause.
Steve Phan: And this is gonna impact what happens to Kentucky after… obviously after the Civil War, we get into, you know, we call it the era of Reconstruction, even though Kentucky is not officially reconstructed because the state was never in rebellion. But, Cameron, this makes me think about the impact of emancipation on pro-Unionists, uh, and the ones that were also unconditional Unionists as well. I think one of the best examples we have, and we’ve had Brad Asher come and speak about, General Stephen G. Burbridge, who is a native Kentuckian, he also enslaved people before the Civil War. I believe he was a very, uh, he is a pro-slavery Unionist.
But as the war evolves, so does his thinking about this conflict. And he becomes an ardent, unconditional Unionist to the point where when he becomes the military governor, or the commander, of the district of Kentucky, a lot of conservative Kentuckians want him in command because he is a native Unionist and they believe that he will protect their interests, specifically slavery. When Burbridge starts enlisting African-American men, or at least enforcing black enlistment and going after guerrillas, the state turns against him and they want him out of here. And then now he’s known as this butcher of Kentucky, right? And you know, obviously, we had Derrick Lindlow… Lindow come and talk about the rise of guerrilla warfare and things like that.
So let’s talk about this legal history of slavery and its impact on, literally, we can talk about within days of the war being over, months, and then years. Let’s talk about, uhm, the outcome of this or the impact that will impact… the impact that will have consequences, especially for black Kentuckians, for literally generations.
31:30 Cameron Sauers: Yeah, the… considering, just focusing on Kentucky through 1865 really challenged my own view of how the Civil War ends. As you mentioned in your introduction of me, I went to Gettysburg College, so I spent a lot of time on the eastern theater battlefields. And we often write Appomattox as the end of the war and Reconstruction begins. The 13th Amendment is happening. Uhm, except as you rightfully note, Kentucky is exempt from that. And they’re… they’re not going to be reconstructed in the way that South Carolina is. Uhm, and so for Kentuckians, it takes a different tenor.
For me, the most fascinating individual who comes into Kentucky is, uh, Major General John Palmer, who is sent to Kentucky by President Lincoln. And Palmer writes a fascinating memoir. Uhm, he publishes it, uh, you know, and he calls it “The Story of Earnest Life.” And Palmer, he did not lie about how he perceived himself or what he thought. He described himself as “determined to drive the last nail in the coffin of slavery”, even if it cost him his command. He is very clear.
Uhm, one of the orders that he issues, to me, which I included, is General Order 13 that ends the usage of private places of confinement. Which, it seems innocuous, “private place of confinement.” But what Palmer is referring to are slave pens, which are jails used by, uhm, traders of enslaved people to hold their human property. Sometimes enslaved people would be placed in municipal jails, uhm, but there was also a widespread number of private prisons used to hold enslaved people. And so Palmer, that’s one his first, uh, that’s one of his actions that, to me, is really significant. It shows the multiple layers of work that are going to need to be done to bring emancipation into Kentucky.
Uhm, he gives a speech on July 4th, you know, a nationally significant day, where he declares to a gathering of African-Americans in Louisville, “My countrymen, you are substantially free.” Uhm, the declaration doesn't really have authority, even if in spirit it’s in the right place, uhm, because in August of 1865, a man named George Johnston is elected to the Jefferson County Circuit Court. Johnston’s described in an account as an ardent well-wisher of the Confederates. And as Circuit Judge of the Jefferson County Court, uhm, he files multiple indictments against Palmer for his role in having helped fugitive enslaved peoples escape.
Uhm, and so for me to see, August of 1865, the prosecution of that crime, and that it was still considered a crime, and that, in fact, it might have been one of Johnston’s key campaign points, to me said, we really…. Said to me the necessity of helping explain Kentucky’s path to emancipation.
Steve Phan: And to add a li… more context to our listens here, even after Appomattox, the army was still enlisting men in Kentucky, especially at Camp Nelson. 119th and 124th U.S. Colored Infantries were being recruited into May and even early June of 1865. And it was because slavery was still legal, and the best avenue for enli… emancipation for soldiers and their families was military service.
Cameron Sauers: There is, oh, Steve, to…
Steve Phan Please add!
35:09 Cameron Sauers: Sorry to interrupt… a wonderful account from a man named William Jones, who is enslaved in Scott County, who explicitly states that he, uhm, his decision to enlist was because of the federal government’s March declaration, uhm, that the wives and children of men serving in the U.S. military would be free. And so that to me was significant, uhm….
Steve Phan: And Cameron, the language tells us exactly what this resolution was. And let me read it again to viewers. This is the official title, “ The March 3rd, 1865, Rev… Resolution to Encourage Enlistments and to Promote the Efficiency of the Military Forces of the United States.” And, I don’t believe that it’s too ironic that in the coming weeks and months, recruiters and officers are like, “Wow, more and more are enlisting.” I wonder why? Because they could take care of their families who are now being freed themselves. I think the tragic, in many ways, you mentioned, I’m talking about this tragedy of, uh, slavery may be over by 1865, the end of 1865, even though we know Kentucky doesn’t ratify the 13th Amendment until 1976, uh, but you share, uh, specific cases of racial violence directed at African Americans from the Klan members, these white terror groups, former Confederates, uh, talk more about that, Cameron.
Cameron Sauer: Yeah, so I think a place to start is actually from, uhm, an individual responsible for a lot of recruitment, James Sanks Brisbin, uhm…
Steve Phan: Formerly commander of the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry.
Cameron Sauers: …who, on April 14, 1865, of all days, wrote to Governor Bramlette, saying that slavery is at an end and rather than deny it or withhold the proper legislation, Kentucky needs to start considering what this… what it would look like during Reconstruction. Uhm, he says, “Brisbin is clear, it is the intention and policy of this government to make every black person in it free”, and, he says, “the sooner Kentucky makes up her mind to accept the new order of things, the better it will be for her.”
This is a really dramatic thing, except in 1865, in that summer, a gathering of free people… gather and they write and protest that things have… that any promise of freedom seems very dim at this moment. Uhm, a group of men wrote to President Andrew Johnson in June of 1865 that, calling the attention, the letter starts, “We would call your attention to the fact that Kentucky is the only spot within the bounds of these United States where the people of color have no rights, either in law or in fact. And were it not the strong arm of military power no longer to curb her (meaning Kentucky’s laws), the jails and workhouses would groan with the numbers of our people within their walls.”
And they ask President Johnson to make sure that martial law, military law, which is how the federal government has to intervene in Kentucky, he says, The men asked President Johnson to let them know if he’s going to revoke it, so that they have time to, quote, “fly to other states where law and Christian sentiment will protect us and our little ones from violence and wrong.” And it might seem like that’s just a rhetorical tool, to talk about violence and wrong. But there is, in fact, a heavy amount of violence that’s happening.
In 1871, in Frankfort, a convention of freed people, uhm, gather and protest and write and record a number of incidents, over 100, they describe fit a pattern of, quote, “organized bands of desperate and lawless men, composed of soldiers of the late Rebel armies committing acts of violence.” And, I think the number is in the 130s. And this convention records that and documents their struggle for justice, which is difficult because in the years after the war, Kentuckians, now free in December of 1865, the 13th Amendment is ratified to become national law, but there still had not been a revision of Kentucky’s legal codes.
And so, uhm, people of color were prevented from testifying against white persons in court, from using public facilities, or lacking the right to vote, you know, which goes along with the right to have taxation and representation, and they’re very clear about these are the policies that should be changed. But it just shows that what’s been explained is the legal disability of slavery, uhm, in the words of a wonderful book recently by Giuliana Perrone, uhm, does not immediately disappear after the Civil War. It’s a process that takes years and explains the continued actions of reformers and congressional Republicans to enact that law, but they find in Kentuckians strong resistance in many places.
40:12 Steve Phan: And I think it’s incredibly important that you mention African Americans in Kentucky in 1865, the summer of ‘65, were like, “We need military protection or this is not gonna work out for us.” And, I think, it’s important as well, Cameron, let’s talk about this, kind of, you know, kind of tie the bow at the end. Emancipation is not the same thing as equality.
Cameron Sauers: Absolutely.
Steve Phan: So let’s talk about, as you mentioned, the apparatus of slavery may have been, I guess, broken down legally in December of 1865, but not the mindset of many Kentuckians and the culture. And then, you mention Black Codes as well, right? This is ongoing. So let’s… let’s talk about that real quick.
Cameron Sauers: Yeah, there is, right,… to think about… there is emancipation, there is abolition, there is the legal abolition, which is more specifically about laws, and it takes years, and in some cases does not happen. I note that a recent book by Dylan Penningroth has demonstrated that in contract law textbooks still used by law students here, are cases central to the history of slavery but do not mention to these students studying contract law that they’re about slavery. That slavery became so enmeshed within the American legal system that it was impossible to fully extricate them from each other. And that is a really remarkable moment, that this is a scholar writing in the 2020s who recognizes the long history. But alongside that, right, is the recognition that, uhm, people of color here in Kentucky–enslaved, formerly enslaved, freed– continue to advocate for change and make demands upon the government for reform. And I think their struggle, right, to return to the famous words of Abraham Lincoln, about a government half slave and half freed, Kentuckians were intensely divided about that issue throughout the Civil War and well into the years of Reconstruction.
Steve Phan: And it impacts the memory of the Civil War in Kentucky.
Cameron Sauers: Absolutely.
Steve Phan: So let’s end it with that, Cameron. Let’s talk about this Confederate memory that was adopted, I believe if you…, and I believe professor Anne Marshall really argues this provocatively, it happens during the Civil War and it really happens with Black enlistment and the beginning of the end of the institution of slavery.
Cameron Sauers: Absolutely. Kentuckians, uhm… and this is Kentuckians in Dr. Marshall’s book, is a wonderful study of how that happens. That the war becomes such a divisive and, for some Kentuckians, alienating experience that they ultimately find more to resonate with them in the memory of the Civil War that’s crafted by former Confederates. These are… some of these individuals here in Kentucky might have been staunch Unionists during the war, but as you note, uhm, they feel alienated from the government because the promise of pro-slavery Unionism, that the conditional Unionism as you describe it–for our loyalty to the Union, we are allowed to maintain the system of slavery– is undone. And they don’t feel like the government held up its side of the bargain. And so it alienates them. It creates this memory of Confederate Kentucky. Even though there is also a history, which I think deserves commemoration and is commemorated here at Camp Nelson, of people seeking freedom and liberation at sites like Camp Nelson but across the state, uhm, looking for a different narrative of memory and one that I think offers us much to consider.
Steve Phan: Thank you, Cameron, and I think your presentation was one of the most well researched. And I think, for our listeners, listening to the podcast of course, to the people that attended the program, to our staff that attended the program, we talk a lot about the process of emancipation here at Camp Nelson. And we haven’t talked too much about the legal aspect of the state laws that you did so provocatively today, and that’s what I think shows you how, when we talk about the “institution,” this is what institution means. It is literally woven in every aspect of life and culture, but also law and governance as well.
And I appreciate your time, Cameron. Any final thoughts, uhm, about your presentation or the work you’re going to be doing moving forward?
Cameron Sauers: I think what this presentation helped me understand, in putting this together and getting to engage with the staff here at Camp Nelson and the visitors to the park today who were treated to two wonderful talks–or a wonderful talk and then mine…
Steve Phan: Yeah, yours was alright… haha
Cameron Sauers: … that we have so much yet we can learn about Kentuckians. We might know when legislation is passed and when acts happen, but there is still so much to always learn about how ordinary people experience this great trial in American history, the Trial by Fire in the title of the Eric Foner book. And I think, for me, in writing this, it reflected the privilege and the responsibilities to be able to share and relate these histories in a way that I hope was engaging and compelling to listeners to this podcast and to visitors, to show that we are all part of the making and remaking of memory, of history, and of law. And visitors to Camp Nelson and the site here are supposed to offer us much to consider for our own times and how we understand the past.
Steve Phan: Thank you, Cameron, I appreciate it. My final takeaway for all of our listeners is: I hope by listening to this presentation and, hopefully, visiting the park, hearing other of our subject matter experts who grace us with their presence here, is I want you to, if possible, consider the process of emancipation, your definition of slavery and freedom during the Civil War. What does freedom mean? What does this process of emancipation look like? And as Cameron demonstrated or shared with us, it’s incredibly complicated. It’s legal, it’s social, it’s cultural, it’s military, it’s literally everything in between.
I think it’s appropriate to end with a U.S.C.T soldier themselves…
Cameron Sauers: Mhmm
Steve Phan: … and, for those that send me an email and I reply, this is in my signature. And this is from Sergeant H. J. Maxwell of Battery A, 2nd U.S. Colored Light Artillery, and think about the date here, right, Cameron, August 7 through 10 in 1865, there was proceedings of the state convention of colored men of the state of Tennessee. And you mentioned some of these conventions that was being organized by African Americans at the end of the Civil War. And according to Sergeant Maxwell, there were many black Kentuckians that left the state and joined units all over the country, including Tennessee, what does freedom mean to him? What does freedom mean for a lot of U.S.C.T. soldiers? What does military service mean? And this is what he said in this… at this convention, “We want two more boxes besides the cartridge box. The ballot box and the jury box. We shall gain them. The government of this nation will not prove false to its plighted faith. It proclaimed freedom and we shall have that in fact.” And for Sergeant Maxwell and his comrades and so many others, military service and freedom meant the rights of citizenship… the rights of citizenship.
So, again, I want to thank my friend Cameron who is working on his PhD right now at Pennsylvania State University and has been a long time friend and colleague. And I believe that is a very appropriate and powerful conclusion to the first episode of the park podcast, “Echoes of Camp Nelson: Uncovering the Stories of the Civil War Era,” at Camp Nelson National Monument. I want to thank my friend, Cameron Sauers, for joining us. And there’s going to be many more episodes coming up as well, from other Winter Lecture Series presenters, but also stories that you’ll hear from park staff as well. And it’s going to be very exciting. I want to thank our producer, our sound person, our director, Grayson Briggs, who made this possible. She’s the one who really spurred the development of, Echoes of Camp Nelson: Uncovering the Stories of the Civil War Era, here at Camp Nelson National Monument. Please go to our website at www.nps.gov/cane and you can hear more, you can see our calendar of events, including the 160th Anniversary special events that are coming this year. Thank you for joining us and cheers to another year of Monumental Moments at Camp Nelson National Monument. Goodbye.
In this debut episode of the Echoes of Camp Nelson Podcast, Ranger Steve speaks with Cameron Sauers about slavery, emancipation, and the legal culture of Civil War Kentucky.