This post is the second of two posts on the first newspaper-identified “slave stampede” in American history from Kentucky; see also 1847 Kenton and Boone County Stampedes: Part 1.

DATELINE: AUGUST 20, 1847, NEAR CASSOPOLIS, MI

Early on Friday morning, August 20, freedom seekers Perry Sanford, Reuben Stevens, and members of the Sandford family awoke to a loud knock and an eerily familiar voice. “We all recognized it as the voice of Jack Graves, the master of Sandford and the brother of my master,” Perry Sanford recalled. [1]

Sanford, Stevens, and the Sandfords were among 33 enslaved Kentuckians–men, women, and children–who had liberated themselves in two daring stampedes from Kenton and Boone Counties during the spring of 1847. After reaching southern Michigan, the freedom seekers opted to remain in Cass County, where they lived and worked on the farm of local abolitionists in relative security. Months later, however, Kentucky slaveholders traveled north and raided the farms of Michigan abolitionists, insisting that the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act authorized them to recapture freedom seekers, even in a free state like Michigan, as well as seek damages from Northern abolitionists like Shugart who assisted them. The freedom seekers and Michigan residents thwarted slaveholders’ hopes of reenslaving the freedom seekers, though enslavers finally won nominal damages some four years later. In the process, the two stampedes from Kentucky to Michigan exposed the ineffectiveness of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act and prompted disgruntled slaveholders to call for tougher federal fugitive slave legislation as part of the Compromise of 1850.

MAIN NARRATIVE

By 1847, Kentucky slaveholders were growing wise to the extensive communities of freedom seekers who chose to settle in southern Michigan. During the winter of 1846-1847, Kentucky slaveholders had dispatched a spy to Michigan. Identifying himself as Carpenter, the man posed as an abolitionist law student in order to gain the trust of local Underground Railroad operatives and identify the location of freedom seekers across southern Michigan. Armed with Carpenter’s information about “the number and exact location of the fugitives,” a group of Kentucky slave catchers traveled to Marshall, Michigan, in January 1847 in an attempt to recapture the Crosswhites, a family of freedom seekers who had escaped from Kentucky years earlier. [2] Local residents in Marshall intervened and rescued the Crosswhites, enraging Kentucky slaveholders. Two months later in March 1847, Kentucky’s legislature decried the “outrages committed upon the rights and citizens of the State of Kentucky… by the citizens of Michigan,” and demanded that Michigan amend its laws “for the purpose of enabling the citizens of Kentucky to reclaim their runaway and fugitive slaves to the State of Michigan.” [3]

Tensions between Kentucky and Michigan were already fraught when Thornton Timberlake, John and Milton Graves, and ten other Kentuckians arrived at Battle Creek, Michigan on August 1, 1847. Intent on recapturing at least some of the 33 freedom seekers, the Kentuckians began going door-to-door posing as washing machine salesmen. But Battle Creek abolitionist Erastus Hussey was not fooled. Within hours of their arrival, the Quaker abolitionist gathered other local residents and confronted the Kentuckians in their hotel. “The people would not allow any of the negroes there to be returned into slavery,” Hussey thundered. Moreover, Hussey warned “that those who contemplated seizing them for that purpose, were endangering themselves by longer remaining in the vicinity.” The Kentuckians took the hint and beat a hasty retreat from Battle Creek, heading south where they regrouped near the Michigan-Indiana border in Bristol, Indiana. However, Hussey feared that the Kentuckians would be back, likely heading for Cass County next; he dispatched letters warning Cass County abolitionists Stephen Bogue and Zachariah Shugart. But due to “the slowness of the mails,” the Kentuckians arrived before his letters. [4]

On the morning of Friday, August 20, the slave catchers fanned out across the farms of Cass County. The Kentuckians had “very accurately drawn maps upon which the houses which sheltered the fugitives were carefully designated,” which likely had been produced by the pretend-law student “Carpenter” months earlier. The Kentuckians planned to split up, capture freedom seekers living on different farms “as nearly simultaneously as possible,” then regroup and head south for Indiana before local residents could react. To carry out their captives back into bondage, the slaveholders brought with them an ominous looking tobacco wagon. [5]

Quaker abolitionists Stephen and Hannah Bogue (Underground Railroad Society of Cass County, Michigan)

Slave catchers first stopped at Josiah Osborn’s farm, where they surprised and manacled a family of five freedom seekers, “an old man, his wife, two sons and a daughter.” [6] Nearby on Stephen Bogue’s farm, Perry Sanford, Reuben Stevens, and the Sandford fought off Milt and John Graves. Joe Sandford beat them back with “heavy hickory clubs,” but eventually the Graves and the other slave catchers stormed the cabin, capturing Sandford and his family. Perry Sanford and Reuben Stevens managed to slip away, sprinting through a corn field to call for help. The two split up: Reuben Stevens made a beeline for the home of William “Bill” Jones, an outspoken Quaker abolitionist, while Sanford alerted Stephen Bogue. [7]

Quaker abolitionist William “Bill” Jones (Underground Railroad Society of Cass County, Michigan)

When slave catchers reached Zachariah Shugart’s farm near Cassopolis, William Casey (formerly Lewis Gardner) “grabbed a three-legged stool and gave them a battle.” Casey struck his “young master” (likely James Scott, the son of enslaver Charles W. Scott) ” a terrible blow” with the stool; Casey and other abolitionists claimed that the younger Scott died of his wounds weeks later. Slave catchers eventually subdued Casey and his daughter Mary, but Casey’s fierce resistance bought time for his wife Elizabeth to crawl out a small window at the back of the cabin and race through a nearby corn field for help. It was likely Elizabeth Casey who first reached Zachariah Shugart’s house and “gave the alarm.” [8]

In all, slave catchers captured between nine to 10 of the 33 freedom seekers. The captives included William Casey (formerly Lewis Gardner) and his daughter Mary; Joe Sandford, his wife Celia (or Cena) Sandford, and their young daughter. The other captives included the family of five seized at Osborn’s farm, which may have been the Hughbanks family.

Crucially, Reuben Stephens, Perry Sanford, and Elizabeth Casey had all managed to evade capture and tipped off local abolitionists Bill Jones, Stephen Bogue, and Zachariach Shugart. Jones, Bogue, and Shugart each rallied local residents to the freedom seekers’ defense. The slave catchers at Osborn’s farm soon found themselves “surrounded by a throng of angry and threatening men, among them some free negroes.” Other slave catching parties encountered similar resistance. The Kentuckians headed south and regrouped at Odell’s Mill, where at daybreak they were met by an even larger group of angry Michiganders armed with “stout club[s].” The Michiganders made clear that the slave catchers “could not proceed further southward, unless they went without the negroes.” The confrontation nearly escalated to violence, but Quakers Josiah Osborn, Stephen Bogue, and Zachariah Shugart insisted that “only peaceable and lawful measures should be employed.” Outnumbered and cut off, the Kentuckians reluctantly agreed to go before a justice of the peace in the county seat at Cassopolis. [9]

Meanwhile, local abolitionists sabotaged the slaveholders’ distinctive-looking tobacco wagon, which they had left back on Osborn’s farm. First, local residents stripped the wagon of its wheels; later, they reportedly pushed the wagon into nearby Birch Lake. The wagon became a part of local Underground Railroad lore nearly a century later in 1936, when swimmers spotted the wagon submerged “under 100 feet of water.” A year later in 1937, a local newspaper reported plans to recover the wagon for display at the Cass County Historical Museum. [10]

Once in Cassopolis, Timberlake, Graves, and company hired a local lawyer, George Turner, who counseled the slave catchers that they had little hope of success. “Although the [1793 Fugitive Slave] law was up on their side,” Turner explained, “it would be almost an absolute impossibility” to return south with the freedom seekers, “even if an order was secured from any court in Cass County.” The Kentuckians ignored Turner’s advice and proceed anyway. While Timberlake, Graves, and company sought out a justice of the peace, local authorities charged all the Kentuckians with kidnapping. Authorities also pressed additional charges against four of the Kentuckians for trespass on Josiah Osborn’s property, and singled out another slave catcher for assault and battery. The Kentuckians had to post $2,600 bail as they waited for a rendition hearing to decide the fate of the nine captives. [11]

Meanwhile, local abolitionists were determined to frustrate the slaveholders’ attempt to use the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act. Although it was a federal law, the 1793 statute entrusted enforcement largely to state and local officials throughout the North. State and local officials across the North often did not enforce the law as vigorously as slaveholders would have liked. The local judge in Cass County, A.H. Redfield, was absent, so abolitionists applied to a sympathetic judge in neighboring Berrien County, Ebenezer McIlvain, for a writ of habeas corpus. McIlvain agreed to hear the case and traveled to Cassopolis on Monday, August 23. [12]

The Kentuckians quickly realized that they were fighting an uphill battle with the antislavery-leaning McIlvain. “This unprincipled scoundrel declared before he went on the bench, that he intended to set the negroes at liberty,” the slave catchers alleged. Whatever McIlvain may have uttered, he quickly released the freedom seekers on a technicality: the Kentuckians had not brought a certified copy of Kentucky’s laws authorizing slavery. A Covington newspaper decried “this most atrocious piece of abolition villainy,” and denounced southern Michigan as a “vile den of Negro thieves and recreants to every principle of honor and common honesty.” [13] 

AFTERMATH

After McIlvain released the nine captives, local abolitionists rushed the freedom seekers to the farm of Ishmael Lee. There, the nine released captives rejoined with a larger group of about 52 freedom seekers; many from the two Kentucky stampedes, and other local Black residents alarmed by the Kentuckians’ raid. Immediately, the group of 52 freedom seekers continued northeast to Schoolcraft, Michigan, where abolitionists Dr. Nathan and Pamela Thomas offered them food. “They soon arrived, took the provisions without alighting, and passed in safety to Canada,” remembered Pamela Thomas. Most of the freedom seekers put down roots in Canada, but not all. Perry Sanford, Lewis Gardner/William Casey, his wife Elizabeth, and their daughter Mary all stayed in Battle Creek, Michigan, where they continued to work for abolitionist farmers. [14]

Most of the freedom seekers were safely in Canada, but the legal fallout from the August 1847 rescue was only beginning. Section 4 of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act authorized enslavers to sue abolitionists who harbored freedom seekers for damages. Graves, Timberlake, and the other enslavers involved in the raid were likely encouraged to do so by the outcome of another penalty case: in late 1848, Kentucky slaveholder Francis Glitner won damages from residents of Marshall, Michigan for their role in rescuing the Crosswhite family nearly two years earlier. [15]

In January 1849, slaveholders Thornton Timberlake, John and Milton Graves, and Charles Scott all filed penalty cases under the 1793 federal Fugitive Slave Act. The trial began in December 1850. Thornton Timberlake sued for $2,000 for 5 individuals, Jonathan, Nancy, Mary, Robert, and Gabriel; Milt Graves sued Stephen Bogue for $600 for Perry Sanford; John Graves sued Bogue for $1,500 for 3 freedom seekers valued; and Charles Scott sued Bogue, Shugart, Jones, David T. Nicholson, and even McIlvain for $900 for Lewis Gardner/William Casey. For their defense counsel, Michigan abolitionists hired Jacob M. Howard, later a US senator who would play a crucial role in drafting the 13^th Amendment abolishing slavery. The first case ended in a mistrial in January 1851. [16]

A retrial began in December 1851, but most defendants opted out. The Michigan farmers were still struggling to pay the $2,200 in legal fees incurred during the first trial. Instead of enduring another trial, Ishmael Lee (whose farm the freedom seekers stayed at after their release by McIlvain) and David T. Nicholson agreed to settle with the enslavers out of court: Lee and Nicholson paid the slaveholders’ counsel, Abner Pratt, a total of $1,000, plus $300-500 for legal costs. Cass County abolitionists had started a subscription to pay off their legal fees, though it remains unclear how much of the cost Lee and Nicholson shouldered alone. [17]

As far as slaveholders were concerned, the rescue of the freedom seekers and the long, expensive process to recover damages only confirmed the need for tougher federal fugitive slave legislation. Back in Kentucky, a Covington newspaper denounced the August 1847 rescue as a “most atrocious piece of abolition villainy.” Michigan abolitionists’ defiance of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, the paper argued, made clear that “things have indeed come to a startling condition when such conduct is not only allowed to pass unpunished, but actually receives the sanction of public approval in the North.” [18] In particular, McIlvain’s involvement in the case highlighted what slaveholders viewed as the unreliability of Northern state and local officials. Increasingly, slaveholders believed that Northern officials like McIlvain could not be trusted to honor slaveholders’ property rights. [19]

The August 1847 raid and rescue was among several key cases during the late 1840s that led slaveholders to demand a tougher federal fugitive slave law. As part of the Compromise of 1850, enslavers would ultimately secure a new, more draconian Fugitive Slave Act, to be enforced by federal officials.

FURTHER READING

Alfred Mathews’s and Howard Roger’s histories of Cass County provide the most detailed accounts of the August 1847 raid and rescue. [20] Perry Sanford’s 1884 newspaper interview offers a key eyewitness account to the raid. [21]

Historian Carol Mull covers the August 1847 raid in detail in her book, The Underground Railroad in Michigan (2010). [22] David Chardavoyne has provided the most detailed account of the legal penalty cases stemming from the rescue in his article, “Michigan and the Fugitive Slave Acts” (2004). [23]

[1] For Perry Sanford’s recollection, see Mary G. Butler and Martin L. Ashley (eds.), “Out of Bondage,” Heritage Battle Creek, vol. 9 (Winter 1999), 78-81, [WEB]. Original interview with Perry Sanford from Sunday Morning Call, August 3, 1884.

[2] Alfred Mathews, History of Cass County, Michigan (Chicago: Waterman, Watkins, & Co., 1882), 109-115, [WEB]; Howard S. Rogers, History of Cass County, from 1825 to 1875 (Cassopolis, MI: W.H. Mansfield, 1875), 131-142, [WEB]; David G. Chardavoyne, “Michigan and the Fugitive Slave Acts,” The Court Legacy (The Historical Society for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan) vol. 12, no. 13 (November 2004), 1-11, [WEB].

[3] Quoted in Senate Rep. 143, 30^th Cong, 1^st sess., p. 2.

[4] Mathews, History of Cass County, 109-115, [WEB]; Rogers, History of Cass County, 131-142, [WEB]. According to abolitionist Levi Coffin in Cincinnati, a white Kentucky man sympathetic to the freedom seekers caught wind of slaveholders’ plans and alerted him. Coffin sent a messenger to Young’s Prairie to warn Bogue and Shugart, but he arrived too late. See Levi Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, The Reputed President of the Underground Railroad (Cincinnati, OH: Western Tract Society, 1876), 368, [WEB].

[5] Butler and Martin L. Ashley (eds.), “Out of Bondage,” 78-81, [WEB]; Mathews, History of Cass County, 109-115, [WEB]; Rogers, History of Cass County, 131-142, [WEB]; Cass County (MI) Advocate, quoted in Covington (KY) Licking Valley Register, October 15, 1847.

[6] Mathews, History of Cass County, 109-115, [WEB]; Rogers, History of Cass County, 131-142, [WEB].

[7] Butler and Martin L. Ashley (eds.), “Out of Bondage,” 78-81, [WEB].

[8] Butler and Martin L. Ashley (eds.), “Out of Bondage,” 78-81, [WEB]; Mathews, History of Cass County, 109-115, [WEB]; Rogers, History of Cass County, 131-142, [WEB]; Coffin, Reminiscences, 370, [WEB]; see Lewis Gardner/William Casey’s obituary, “Slavery Days Recalled,” Detroit (MI) Free Press, January 24, 1893.

[9] Mathews, History of Cass County, 109-115, [WEB]; Rogers, History of Cass County, 131-142, [WEB].

[10] Slaveholders reported the damage done to their wagon in Covington (KY) Licking Valley Register, September 17, 1847. On efforts to recover the wagon, see Cassopolis,” Unionville (MI) Crescent, March 5, 1937.

[11] Mathews, History of Cass County, 109-115, [WEB]; Rogers, History of Cass County, 131-142, [WEB].

[12] Mathews, History of Cass County, 109-115, [WEB]; Rogers, History of Cass County, 131-142, [WEB]; Chardavoyne, “Michigan and the Fugitive Slave Acts,” 1-11, [WEB].

[13] “Infamous!,” Covington (KY) Licking Valley Register, September 3, 1847; Covington (KY) Licking Valley Register, September 17, 1847.

[14] Carol Mull, The Underground Railroad in Michigan (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 113.

[15] Chardavoyne, “Michigan and the Fugitive Slave Acts,” 8, [WEB].

[16] Chardavoyne, “Michigan and the Fugitive Slave Acts,” 8-9, [WEB]. For the case files, see Thornton Timberlake v. Josiah Osborn, National Archives Identifier: 12563235; Thornton Timberlake v. Josiah Osborn, et al. National Archives Identifier: 12562895; Milton W. Graves v. Stephen Bogue, National Archives Identifier: 12561278; John L. Graves v. Stephen Bogue, National Archives Identifier: 12563250; Charles Scott v. Zachariah Shugart, Stephen Bogue, David T. Nicholson, William Jones, and Ebenezer McIlvain, National Archives Identifier: 12563189; John L. Graves v. Stephen Bogue, William Jones, and Ebenezer McIlvain, National Archives Identifier: 12562736.

[17] Chardavoyne, “Michigan and the Fugitive Slave Acts,” 9-11, [WEB].

[18] “Infamous!,” Covington (KY) Licking Valley Register, September 3, 1847.

[19] On criticisms of McIlvain, see Covington (KY) Licking Valley Register, September 17, 1847.

[20] Mathews, History of Cass County, 109-115, [WEB]; Rogers, History of Cass County, 131-142, [WEB].

[21] Butler and Martin L. Ashley (eds.), “Out of Bondage,” 78-81, [WEB].

[22] Mull, The Underground Railroad in Michigan, 111-113.

[23] Chardavoyne, “Michigan and the Fugitive Slave Acts,” 1-11, [WEB].

This post is the first of two posts on the first newspaper-identified “slave stampede” in American history from Kentucky; see also 1847 Kenton and Boone County Stampedes: Part 2.

DATELINE: APRIL 24, 1847, KENTON COUNTY, KY

Above, the Cincinnati (OH) Commercial Tribune, April 28, 1847 coins the term “stampede” to refer to group escapes (Newspapers.com), while below, a detail from Zachariah Shugart’s account book lists the names of the Gardner (aka Casey) and Stevens families who escaped in the stampede (Huntington Library)

Sometime in May 1847, Michigan farmer Zachariah Shugart opened his account book and added several new names to a list of “Runaway Negroes” whom he had assisted over years of Underground Railroad activism. Shugart scrawled the names of Kentucky freedom seekers “L Gardner” “B Gardner” and their “1 ch[ild]”: Lewis and Betsy Gardner, and their young daughter Mary. Shugart also recorded five members of the “Stephenson” or Stevens family: Reuben, Nelson, Nancy, and likely at least two of her children, Peter and Anny. [1]

Shugart’s account book documented just part of two bold mass escapes from slavery during the spring of 1847. Multiple families–33 enslaved men, women, and children in all–liberated themselves from two northern Kentucky counties in under a month. In response, newspaper editors across the river in Cincinnati coined a new term to describe the growing trend of large, group escapes from slavery: the “slave stampede.” [2]

STAMPEDE CONTEXT

The April 1847 stampede marked the first known application of the term “stampede” to describe group escapes from enslavement. Within days of the first group escape on April 24, at least two Cincinnati newspapers reported it under the headline: “Grand Stampede.” [3] The term quickly captivated public attention. Newspapers across the country reprinted the headline “Grand Stampede” and its brief description of the large group escape. [4]

In 1847, the term “stampede” had only recently entered Americans’ vocabulary. Reports on the ongoing US-Mexican War (1846-1848) and expansion into the southwest introduced the term “stampede” to American readers; both to describe Mexican troops “stampeding” from the battlefield and droves of cattle “stampeding” across the western plains. It was no coincidence that the first reports of “slave stampedes” in 1847 ran alongside dispatches from the frontlines of the Mexican War. [5]

MAIN NARRATIVE

Six slaveholders jointly advertised a $3,125 reward for 18 of the 22 freedom seekers who escaped in the April 24 stampede (Amherstburg Freedom Museum)

Families from six different plantations joined the initial mass escape from Kenton County on Saturday, April 24. From slaveholder Thornton Timberlake’s plantation came the Hughbanks family: 45-year-old Jonathan, 33-year-old Nancy, 16-year-old Mary, and Robert (either 14 or 15 years old). Twenty-six year old Lewis (also known as William) and 22-year-old Betsy (also known as Elizabeth) Gardner escaped from different slaveholders, and brought their young daughter Mary too. Once free, the Gardner family adopted the surname Casey. Nancy Stevens (also written as Stephens and Stephenson) escaped from Thomas Lindsay’s plantation, taking two of her children, Peter who was seven or eight years old, and Anny who was three or four. The oldest freedom seeker was Rachel, in her late 60s, who escaped from slaveholder Alexander P. Sandford. Two days on April 26, the six affected slaveholders jointly advertised a $3,125 reward for the freedom seekers’ recapture. [6]

Within weeks, the 22 freedom seekers successfully reached Cass County, Michigan. Few specifics about their journey survive, but all signs suggest that the freedom seekers traveled a familiar Underground Railroad route (described below) that veered northwest through central Indiana all the way to southern Michigan. Within a few weeks, the freedom seekers had reached the end of that  route, an abolitionist enclave in Cass County, Michigan. Several of the freedom seekers found work and boarding on the farm of Quaker abolitionist Zachariah Shugart, located about three miles outside Cassopolis. In his account book, Shugart recorded the arrival of “L. Gardner” and “B Gardner” (Lewis and Betsy Gardner/Casey), a man named “Wesley,” as well as the Stevens family (recorded as “Stephenson”). [7]

Michigan abolitionist Zachariah Shugart’s account book recorded the arrival of multiple freedom seekers from the April 24 stampede, including the Gardners/Casey family and the Stephenson/Stevens family. (Huntington Library)

Back in Boone County, Kentucky (next to Kenton County), enslaved man Perry Sanford knew many of the freedom seekers who had escaped in the April 24 stampede. But as Sanford later told a journalist, their successful escape was not what inspired him to head north; rather, it was his slaveholder’s panicked reaction that prompted a second group escape from Kenton County. “Their [April 24] escape alarmed the slave owners and they began to sell off their slaves to the Mississippi cotton planters,” Sanford recounted. Sanford’s enslaver, Milt Graves, was among the panic-stricken slaveholders. Several weeks after the initial stampede, Graves’s son, “a talkative youngster, told me that his father had sold us into Mississippi.” Decades later, Sanford still remembered the shock and dread he felt at hearing the news. “I was struck with dismay. The horror of all horrors to the slave was the Mississippi cotton field. It was a living hell.” [8]

Freedom seeker Perry Sanford later in life (Battle Creek Enquirer)

Later that day while working in the field, Sanford quietly communicated “the startling information I had received to the other slaves.” When the overseer left for a few minutes, Sanford and other enslaved Kentuckians huddled together and “resolved on an escape.” Sanford tallied a total of 12 individuals planning to join the escape. Much like the first group of 22 freedom seekers, this second group consisted of men, women, and children: in addition to Perry Sanford, there was the Merriman family, William, Samuel, Isabella, and Hannah; James and Dorcas Oglesby; David (Dave) Walker and his mother, Susan Reynolds; and two other men, Abraham Washington and Tom Harris. One of the freedom seekers managed to secure a pass and traveled to Covington, where they made arrangements with an unidentified white man to help the group navigate the river-crossing to Cincinnati. [9]

Reaching Covington took longer than expected. Although the freedom seekers only had to cover 12 miles from their plantation to the riverside town of Covington, Sanford explained, “we had to travel across the fields in order to avoid meeting teams and travelers and to pass the tollgates.” The group did not reach Covington until 4 am. By then, the white man who had agreed to ferry them across the river had tired of waiting and gone home. “This was a great disappointment to us,” Sanford recalled, “but we started down the bank of the Ohio River and almost providentially found a boat, or as they are called there, a skiff.” Sanford and 10 others crowded into the skiff. “The sides came to within an inch of the water,” Sanford detailed. “How we ever got across I don’t know. But it was life or death, as we made the attempt and reached Cincinnati in safety.” All 11 freedom seekers who attempted the river crossing made it safely across––one man, Henry Buckner, was reportedly drunk and failed to arrive in time. Slaveholders punished Buckner for his attempt to flee enslavement, though he escaped less than two years later. [10]

In Cincinnati, Sanford and the 10 other freedom seekers linked up with the city’s Underground Railroad network. “As we landed, we saw a colored and a white man standing together. They exclaimed: ‘There comes some runaway slaves.’” The freedom seekers’ dread soon turned to relief; they had stumbled into Cincinnati’s network of Underground Railroad activists. The two Underground Railroad operatives divided the group into pairs, and “we were distributed around and secreted in the cellars of business blocks,” Sanford recalled. [11] The cadre of Underground Railroad operatives who sheltered Sanford’s group may well have included Quaker abolitionists Levi and Catharine Coffin, who had just relocated to Cincinnati weeks earlier in April 1847. [12]

After laying low for a week in Cincinnati, abolitionists guided Sanford and the other ten freedom seekers northward along a well-established Underground Railroad route that veered northwest through central Indiana all the way to southern Michigan. Leaving Cincinnati, the freedom seekers headed to Hamilton, Ohio, and then northwest to Jonesboro, Indiana. Near Jonesboro, the freedom seekers met up with Quaker abolitionist bothers George and John Shugart. “We only traveled nights, and in covered wagons,” Sanford detailed, “and would be secreted day times in some Quaker’s barn or in the woods.” Along the way, Quaker abolitionists provided the freedom seekers with new clothes. [13]

Sanford did not mention any other stops by name until they neared Cassopolis, Michigan, but his 1884 interview aligns closely with what Quaker abolitionists later told historian Wilbur Siebert about a well-traveled Underground Railroad route from Cincinnati to southern Michigan. Assuming Sanford’s group followed the familiar route, they likely continued north from Jonesboro to North Manchester, Indiana, where they may have sought refuge with abolitionist Morris Place. Then, they likely proceeded north to Goshen, Indiana, where a Dr. Matchett assisted freedom seekers. [14]

AFTERMATH

Abolitionist farmer Zachariah Shugart offered housing and work to freedom seekers from the two stampedes, including the Gardner (Casey) family. (Huntington Library)

After about a month of travel, the freedom seekers reached Young’s Prairie, about three miles outside Cassopolis, Michigan. There, abolitionists Stephen Bogue and Zachariah Shugart (brother of  George and John Shugart in Jonesboro, Indiana) helped place the freedom seekers with local farmers. Perry Sanford and Reuben Stevens went to work for Stephen Bogue, sharing a cabin on his farm. [15]

In two stampedes occurring just weeks apart, a total of 33 men, women, and children had liberated themselves from two Kentucky counties. However, their freedom was far from secure. Just months later, Kentucky slaveholders arrived in southern Michigan in hopes of recapturing the freedom seekers.

FURTHER READING

Perry Sanford’s impromptu 1884 newspaper interview provides the most detailed eyewitness account from either of the two stampedes. [16]

Historian Carol Mull briefly addresses both escapes in her book, The Underground Railroad in Michigan (2010), but does not use the term “stampede” to describe either escape. Mull notes how the first group of 22 freedom seekers settled near Young’s Prairie in Cass County, Michigan, while also detailing the second group of freedom seekers using Perry Sanford’s recollection. [17]

[1] Zachariah Shugart Account Book, p. 101, Zachariah T. Shugart Papers, Huntington Library, [WEB].

[2] “Grand Stampede,” Cincinnati (OH) Commercial Tribune, April 28, 1847.

[3] “Grand Stampede,” Cincinnati (OH) Commercial Tribune, April 28, 1847; A Danville, Vermont newspaper reported an identical article, but attributed it to the Cincinnati Atlas. See “Grand Stampede,” Danville (VT) North Star, May 17, 1847. We have been unable to locate the original issue of the Atlas; it remains unclear which Cincinnati paper first coined the term.

[4] “Grand Stampede,”New York (NY) Evening Post, May 3, 1847; Providence (RI) Republican Herald, May 4, 1847; “Grand Stampede,” Hallowell (ME) Cultivator and Hallowell Gazette, May 15, 1847; “Grand Stampede,” Danville (VT) North Star, May 17, 1847; “Grand Stampede,” Prairieville (WI) American Freeman, June 9, 1847

[5] For more on the origins of the “stampede” terminology, see this post.

[6] “$3,125 Reward,” at “What’s In a Name–Johnson Family,” Amherstburg Freedom Museum, [WEB]. See Perry Sanford’s recollection for the name of Gardner’s/Casey’s daughter, Mary. Mary G. Butler and Martin L. Ashley (eds.), “Out of Bondage,” Heritage Battle Creek, vol. 9 (Winter 1999), 78-81, [WEB]. Original interview with Perry Sanford from Sunday Morning Call, August 3, 1884. For more on the Gardner/Casey family, see Lewis Gardner/William Casey’s obituary, “Slavery Days Recalled,” Detroit (MI) Free Press, January 24, 1893.

[7] Zachariah Shugart Account Book, p. 101, Zachariah T. Shugart Papers, Huntington Library, [WEB]; Timberlake later named five freedom seekers, Jonathan, Nancy, Mary, Robert, and Gabriel, whom he accused Michigan abolitionists of harboring. See Thornton Timberlake v. Josiah Osborn, et al., January 10, 1849, National Archives Identifier: 12562895.

[8] Butler and Martin L. Ashley (eds.), “Out of Bondage,” 78-81, [WEB]; Milton W. Graves v. Stephen Bogue, January 10, 1849, National Archives Identifier: 12561278.

[9] Butler and Martin L. Ashley (eds.), “Out of Bondage,” 78-81, [WEB]. See African Americans of the Kentucky Borderlands database, https://omekas.bcplhistory.org/s/borderlands/item/15621.

[10] Butler and Martin L. Ashley (eds.), “Out of Bondage,” 78-81, [WEB].

[11] Butler and Martin L. Ashley (eds.), “Out of Bondage,” 78-81, [WEB].

[12] Levi Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, The Reputed President of the Underground Railroad (Cincinnati, OH: Western Tract Society, 1876), 274, 297, [WEB].

[13] Butler and Martin L. Ashley (eds.), “Out of Bondage,” 78-81, [WEB].

[14] John Rattiff to Wilbur H. Siebert, March 22, 1896, [WEB]; Charles W. Osborn to Wilbur H. Siebert, February 11, 1896, [WEB]; Charles W. Osborn to Wilbur H. Siebert, March 4, 1896, [WEB], all in Wilbur H. Siebert Papers, Ohio History Connection.

[15] Butler and Martin L. Ashley (eds.), “Out of Bondage,” 78-81, [WEB]; Zachariah Shugart Account Book, p. 101, Shugart Papers, Huntington Library, [WEB].

[16] Butler and Martin L. Ashley (eds.), “Out of Bondage,” 78-81, [WEB].

[17] Carol Mull, The Underground Railroad in Michigan (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 109-113. Mull states that the first group of freedom seekers escaped “in late March.” She likely based this off of Sanford’s account; Sanford recalls escaping on the Monday after Easter (which would have been April 5, 1847). However, the newspaper reports, the slaveholders’ runaway ad, and court documents (cited above) all clearly concur that the first escape occurred on April 24, 1847. Moreover, Sanford’s recollection makes clear that it was slaveholders’ panic at the first escape which prompted the second group escape. In all likelihood, Sanford confused the exact time of the second escape.

This post is the third of three posts on the Camp Nelson Stampede:  see also Initial Stampede (Part 1) and Enslaved Women (Part 2)

DATELINE: MARCH 1865, GARRARD COUNTY, KY

“I told my master that I wanted to go to Camp Nelson.” With those words, Martha Cooley boldly challenged her slaveholder’s authority in early March 1865. Months earlier, her husband Simon had gone to Camp Nelson and enlisted in the US army, only to be killed in action shortly thereafter. Newly widowed, Cooley hoped to gather her four children and journey to Camp Nelson. But slaveholder John Nave would have none of it. “He said, ‘I will give you Camp’ and immediately took a large hickory stick with which he commenced beating me.” After Nave’s successive beatings broke her left arm, Cooley “watched my chance and ran away.” She reached Camp Nelson in mid-March, but only after making the difficult decision “to leave my children behind with my master.” Cooley told US army officials that she was “very anxious to get my children.” [1]

Following the US army’s controversial November 1864 expulsion of enslaved women and children, Black families pressured Congress to act. In March 1865, lawmakers finally did, declaring free the family members of Black US soldiers. The new law emboldened Black women like Martha Cooley to head for Camp Nelson, even as Kentucky slaveholders tried everything to stop them. The influx of freedom seekers prompted US army officials to construct the Refugees Home, a community of 100 cottages to house freedpeople. But US victory in 1865 underscored Black Kentuckians’ tenuous foothold in freedom. Army officials wanted to demobilize the army and close wartime contraband camps like Camp Nelson’s Refugee Home. Freedpeople resisted, and in a remarkable turn of events, secured title to the land and put down permanent roots, founding the community of Ariel (later renamed Hall). At Camp Nelson, freedpeople transformed a wartime stampede into a permanent community which outlasted the war. 

MAIN NARRATIVE

Of the 400 women and children expelled from camp, around 250 returned to Camp Nelson. On December 2, 1864, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton ordered army officials to provide permanent quarters for the refugees. [2] Stanton hoped to prevent further suffering during the winter months, but the haphazard accommodations provided by the army still remained far from ideal––especially for women and children still recovering from exposure during the expulsion. Throughout January and February 1865, as many as 102 of the 250 returning refugees perished.  Among the deceased were Pvt. Joseph Miller, whose heartrending testimony helped spur Congressional action, and his entire family. [3]

US officials worried that the overcrowding in Camp Nelson would only get worse after March 1865, when Congress passed a law freeing the enslaved family members of Black US soldiers. US general John Palmer decided to designate Camp Nelson “a general rendezvous for all these people in Ky.” [4] Palmer tapped quartermaster Theron E. Hall to supervise the construction of housing for the expected influx of Black women and children: a village of 100 cabins called the Refugees Home. Led by Hall and his assistant superintendent, freedom seeker and preacher Gabriel Burdett, Black refugees performed much of the physical labor. The resulting cottages measured 32 by 16 feet, divided into two 16 by 16 foot rooms. Each room was “designed to accommodate 10 persons, possibly 12,” meaning that every cottage could house at least 20-24 people. Work proceeded fast. “These cottages are now being built by the government at the rate of three per day,” reported one observer in late April 1865, “thus far making shelter for 60 newcomers daily.” [5]

Even so, construction of the Refugees Home struggled to keep pace with the influx of freedom seekers; as word of Congress’s new law spread across Kentucky, more and more Black women felt emboldened to head for Camp Nelson. An enslaved woman named Lucinda learned of the new congressional law when she received a letter dictated by her husband, a Black soldier at Camp Nelson, informing her “that she was free” and advising her to either demand wages from her slaveholder or else leave and seek work elsewhere. Two weeks later, Lucinda’s former slaveholder William Pratt awoke to find “the kitchen in the morning, swept, garnished, & Empty”—Lucinda and her daughter had vanished during the night, presumably bound for Camp Nelson. [6]

Reaching Camp Nelson remained as perilous as ever, with slaveholders and local authorities continuing to obstruct their path. Married couple William and Marilda Jones learned about the new congressional law and resolved to head to Camp Nelson together. “Desiring to enlist and thus free my wife,” William later explained, “I ran away from my master in company with my wife…. Our clothes were packed up and some money we had saved from our earnings we carried with us.” However, local constables in Lexington seized the couple to prevent them from “going to Camp Nelson,” instead returning them to their slaveholder and pocketing the Jones’s hard-earned savings. Undeterred, Willian and Marilda escaped again and reached Camp Nelson towards the end of March. [7]

Also in March, Frances Johnson gathered her children and headed for Camp Nelson, only to cross paths with Theophilus Bracey, her slaveholder’s son-in-law. Bracey drew a pistol and “told me that if I did not go back with him he would shoot me.” Bracey held Johnson’s seven-year-old daughter “and kept her as an Hostage” to dissuade Johnson from trying to escape again. Early the next morning, Johnson made the difficult decision to slip away by herself. “I found I could not get away from Braceys with my children, and determined to get away myself hoping by this means to obtain possession of them afterwards.” Once at Camp Nelson, Johnson pleaded with US officials to help her secure her children. “I am anxious to have them but I am afraid to go near them,” Johnson told US army officials, “knowing that Bracey would not let me have them and fearing lest he would carry out his threat to shoot me.” [8]

Despite slaveholders’ best efforts to deter them, Black women and children continued to head to Camp Nelson in large numbers throughout the spring of 1865. A representative of the American Missionary Association calculated that as of April 1, there were 1,266 people living in the Refugees Home, “nearly all of them women and children.” Over the ensuing 11 days, 354 more refugees arrived. By the end of April, the AMA official had lost count—he simply reported that “there cannot be less than 2000” people residing in the Refugees Home.  “They came to the city of refuge hopeful and as a general thing earnest for improvement — for religious culture, for mental training.” [9]

AFTERMATH

The end of the war thrust Camp Nelson’s community of freedpeople into yet more uncertainty. With US victory assured, the federal government ceased recruiting Black soldiers in late April 1865. [10]  But slavery remained legal in Kentucky until the ratification of the 13^th Amendment in December 1865; the persistence of legal bondage rendered it dangerous for freedpeople to travel outside Camp Nelson. Moreover, Kentucky whites’ antipathy towards Black soldiers and their families had only deepened in the wake of US victory. In April 1865, a Kentucky judge declared unconstitutional Congress’s March 1865 law freeing the family members of Black US soldiers. US general John Palmer swept aside the judge’s ruling, but it underscored white Kentuckians’ continued resistance to emancipation. [11] Months later in June 1865, the Kentucky legislature demanded that the US army to remove all Black soldiers from the state. “Their presence is a source of great irritation to their former owners and the citizens generally,” legislators thundered. [12]

Freedpeople across Kentucky understood that their freedom—and their physical safety—hinged on the US military’s continued presence. In June 1865, a delegation of Black Kentuckians told President Andrew Johnson that if he “should give up the State to the control of her civil authorities there is not one of these [Black] Soldiers who will Not Suffer all the grinding oppression of her most inhuman[e] laws if not in their own persons yet in the persons of their wives their children their mothers.” [13] Superintendent Theron Hall echoed freedpeople’s warning. “Not a day passes during which I am not entreated by some poor defenceless wife or child to interfere for their protection against the furry of their master,” Hall explained from Camp Nelson in June. “I beg you to examine this subject carefully ere you decide to discontinue this ‘Home,’ this ‘City of refuge’ to which they can flee and be safe.” [14]

The dangers facing freedpeople were real and many, but senior federal policymakers remained determined to close Camp Nelson. The war had ended, and federal officials feared that freedpeople would become dependent on federal resources indefinitely. “My positive instructions from Washington are ‘to break up the Refugee Home at Camp Nelson at the earliest possible day consistent with humanity,’” explained Maj. Gen. Clinton B. Fisk, the regional commissioner for the Freedmen’s Bureau. [15] “Everything to break up the camp and not entail suffering,” Fisk instructed his subordinates. “There will be some suffering [but] do the best we can.” [16] Throughout the summer and fall of 1865, Fisk and Freedmen’s Bureau agents tried to prod freedpeople to leave Camp Nelson and establish their own homes, where they could farm and support themselves. [17]

So long as slavery remained legal in Kentucky, however, slaveholders and state officials refused to recognize the freedom of the Black soldiers and their families who called Camp Nelson home. Throughout the fall of 1865, Kentucky lawmakers adopted a rash of new slave codes restricting African Americans’ movement. Kentucky lawmakers fined anyone caught transporting enslaved people without their owners’ consent, including government wagons transporting freedpeople out of Camp Nelson. Legislators also passed a new law penalizing anyone who hired enslaved people, severely limiting the opportunities for freedpeople to find work outside Camp Nelson. [18]

Despite the Freedmen’s Bureau’s efforts to push them out, freedpeople stayed put. The federal government returned ownership of the land on which Camp Nelson sat to its prewar owner, a white Unionist named Joseph Moss. In a surprising turn, Moss indicated that he was willing to sell the land to freedpeople. But Moss’s irate white neighbors would have none of it; they menaced freedpeople with violence and strong-armed Moss into backing out of the original deal. Instead, Moss sold 130 acres of Camp Nelson land to John Fee, a white minister. Fee and his wife Matilda sold lots to Black veterans and refugees. [19]

Freedpeople rechristened their community Ariel (later changed to Hall). The community offered religious community and education, but Kentucky whites’ continued hostility prompted some residents to leave. In 1877, Gabriel Burdett, a freedom seeker and formerly the assistant superintendent of the Refugees Home, led a number of residents westward, where they resettled in Nicodemus, Kansas. Still other families remained at Ariel. By 1895, a Louisville paper reported that “there is now upon the site of the camp a negro village of some three hundred souls…It is a rather thrifty village, and has one of the best private schools utilized for negroes in Kentucky.” Descendants of Black U.S. soldiers and the freedom seekers continue to live at Ariel (Hall) to this day. [20]

FURTHER READING

The community of freedpeople at Camp Nelson has been richly documented in the records of the US army, the Freedmen’s Bureau, as well as various humanitarian and religious organizations. A good starting place is Richard Sears’s Camp Nelson, Kentucky (2002), an edited collection of primary sources covering the camp’s existence. The Freedmen and Southern Society Project’s Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation series 1 (The Destruction of Slavery) and series 2 (The Black Military Experience), also features primary sources related to the community of freedpeople at Camp Nelson. [21]

Amy Taylor’s Embattled Freedom (2018) explores the Freedmen’s Bureau’s efforts to close the Refugees Home and freedpeople’s determination to stay. [22]

NOTES

[1] Affidavit of Martha Cooley, March 24, 1865, in Richard D. Sears, Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2002), 186-187.

[2] Burbridge to Fry, November 27, 1864, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 137; Townsend to Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army, December 2, 1864, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 146.

[3] Amy Murrell Taylor, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 203; Affidavit of Albert A. Livermore (sexton at Camp Nelson), June 26, 1865, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 220-221.

[4] T.E. Hall to M.E. Strieby, March 24, 1865, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 184-185.

[5] E. Davis to Executive Committee of the American Missionary Association, April 28, 1865, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 196-197; Theron Hall to Oliver Otis Howard, June 22, 1865, in Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), ser. 2 (The Black Military Experience), vol. 2, 717-718; Taylor, Embattled Freedom, 203-204.

[6] William Pratt diary, April 2, 1865, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 192-193.

[7] Affidavit of William Jones, March 29, 1865, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 192.

[8] Affidavit of Frances Johnson, Sears, Camp Nelson,188-190.

[9] E. Davis to Executive Committee of the American Missionary Association, April 28, 1865, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 196-197.

[10] James B. Fry to Lorenzo Thomas, April 29, 1865, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 198.

[11] Freedom ser. 1 (The Destruction of Slavery), vol. 1, 617-619.

[12] Resolution of the General Assembly of Kentucky, June 3, 1865, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 209.

[13] Freedom ser. 1 (The Destruction of Slavery), vol. 1, 624-626.

[14] T.E. Hall to Oliver Otis Howard, June 22, 1865, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 219-220.

[15] Fisk to John G. Fee, August 4, 1865, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 236.

[16] Fisk to D.C. Jaquess, August 15, 1865, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 239-240.

[17] Taylor, Embattled Freedom, 222-223.

[18] Taylor, Embattled Freedom, 224.

[19] Taylor, Embattled Freedom, 221-230, 237-238.

[20] On Ariel / Hall, see https://www.nps.gov/cane/community-of-ariel-hall-and-fee-memorial-church.htm.

[21] Sears, Camp Nelson; Freedom ser. 1 (The Destruction of Slavery), and ser. 2 (The Black Military Experience.

[22] Taylor, Embattled Freedom, 221-230, 237-238.

This post is the second of three posts on the Camp Nelson Stampede:  see also Initial Stampede (Part 1) and Freedom and Community (Part 3)

DATELINE: FALL 1864, WOODFORD COUNTY, KY

For Patsey Leach, an enslaved woman in Woodford County, Kentucky, the worst began after her husband Julius went to Camp Nelson to enlist. “From that time,” Leach testified, slaveholder Warren Wiley “treated me more cruelly than ever whipping me frequently… saying my husband had gone into the army to fight against white folks and he my master would let me know that I was foolish to let my husband go.” Wiley vowed to “’take it out of my back,’ he would “Kill me by picemeal’ [sic].” [1] 

By June 1864, the initial stampede to Camp Nelson had forced federal officials to open the ranks to all enslaved men in Kentucky, regardless of their slaveholders’ approval. However, the reworked federal policy still did not clarify the status of enslaved women like Patsey Leach. Undeterred, Leach and countless other enslaved women continued to head to Camp Nelson, where they sought refuge and an opportunity to reunite their families. Braving threats of violence from their slaveholders and all manner of dissuasion from US military officials, enslaved women pressured the US military and lawmakers back in Washington to expand federal policy to provide for the families of Black recruits. Enslaved women’s persistent efforts to reunite their families at Camp Nelson directly inspired a new federal law adopted in March 1865, which explicitly freed the wives and children of Black US soldiers.

MAIN NARRATIVE

On June 20, 1864, US general Stephen Burbridge confessed that he was not sure about the status of enslaved women and children who were crowding into Camp Nelson alongside their husbands and fathers. Burbridge decided to wait until Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas, the army’s top recruiter of African American troops, arrived. In the meantime, Burbridge made clear that “women and children cannot be left to starve” and instructed his subordinates to “establish a contraband camp at Camp Nelson.” [2]

US army adjutant general Lorenzo Thomas (House Divided Project)

When Thomas arrived at Camp Nelson in July 1864, he decided to backtrack. Thomas based his decision on Kentucky’s status as a loyal slave state, as well as his own assumptions that enslaved women and children would be nothing but a drain on army resources. Matters would be different, Thomas explained, in Confederate states where the Emancipation Proclamation applied and all enslaved people, male and female, were free upon reaching US lines. But in a loyal state like Kentucky, Thomas explained, “I conceive I have only to do with those who can be put into the army.” Thomas believed that he lacked the authority to liberate enslaved women and children, but he also feared that women and children would deplete army resources. “It will not answer to take this class of slaves,” Thomas wrote, “as employment could not be obtained for them, and they would only be an expense to the Government.” If enslaved women remained at home, Thomas calculated, their slaveholders, rather than the army, would be responsible for feeding them. Moreover, they would be on hand to help harvest grain that would be essential to feeding Kentuckians and the Union army. Thomas insisted that he was dutifully following orders; if President Lincoln gave him the authority him to liberate women and children, Thomas declared himself “ready to obey his mandate.” From the perspective of Black recruits and their family members, however, Thomas’s policy seemed callous and inhumane. [3]

Thomas’s General Orders No. 24, issued on July 6, 1864, spelled out the US army’s new policy in Kentucky of discouraging enslaved women from coming to military outposts, while also threatening to return any women and children already behind army lines. “None but able-bodied men will be received,” Thomas declared. Women and children “will be encouraged to remain at their respective homes, where, under the State laws, their masters are bound to take care of them.” But Thomas went a step further. Women “who may have been received at Camp Nelson will be sent to their homes,” where they would be “required to assist in securing the crops, now suffering in many cases for the want of labor.” [4] 

Some US officers in Kentucky protested that Thomas’s orders violated federal law. It was one thing to discourage enslaved women and children from coming, but it was another to actively return women and children who had already entered Camp Nelson. In that respect, Thomas’s General Orders No. 24 seemed like a clear violation of Congress’s revised Articles of War adopted in March 1862, which forbade Union military personnel from returning freedom seekers to bondage, on pain of dismissal from the service. At Paducah in western Kentucky, Col. H.W. Barry refused to obey Thomas’s order. “I cannot return to Slavery, the wives and Children of men, whome… fought so gallantly,” Barry declared. Thomas arrested the good colonel for defying his orders, though War Department officials back in Washington eventually sided with Barry and the enslaved women. At least in western Kentucky, US officials would not turn enslaved women and children out of army lines. [5]

Brig. Gen. Speed Smith Fry, commandant of Camp Nelson (NPS)

No such protests came from Camp Nelson’s new commandant, Brig. Gen. Speed Smith Fry, a native Kentuckian who had already reached a general understanding with Thomas about the planned expulsion. The men agreed that they would select a date at which US forces would place all enslaved women and children outside the lines, furnishing them with just enough food to reach their slaveholders’ homes. Thomas even suggested that the US army give slaveholders advance notice of the expulsion so that they would be on hand to reclaim freedom seeking women and children. [6]

Impatient slaveholders were unwilling to wait for an official expulsion and showed up at Camp Nelson daily, using a combination of promises and threats to try to coerce freedom seekers back into slavery. “Their old owners came in carriages and on horseback every day to allure them by all kinds of promises and threats,” reported Sanitary Commission superintendent Thomas Butler. Sometimes slaveholders brought the wives of enslaved men along to camp, “and through them they attempt to bring back the servant and husband to slavery.” When such threats failed, slaveholders tried to sneak past camp guards and kidnap men and women back into slavery. [7]

Then suddenly and without warning, on Wednesday morning, November 23, 1864, enslaved women and children awoke to the sound of US soldiers gruffly shouting at them to leave camp. Within minutes, 400 enslaved women and children piled into six to eight large wagons and ominously trundled out of camp, to where they were not sure. [8]

To make matters worse, the morning was “bitter cold,” and “the wind was blowing hard,” recalled Joseph Miller of the 124^th U.S. Colored Infantry. “Having had to leave much of our clothing when we left our master,” Miller explained, his wife Isabella and their four children were ”poorly clad” for such frigid temperatures–which hovered around 16 degrees Fahrenheit that morning. Miller was “certain that it would kill my sick child to take him out in the cold.” The soldier pleaded with one of the soldiers carrying out the expulsion. “I told him that my wife and children had no place to go and I told him that I was a soldier of the United States.” It “would be the death of my boy” to force him out into the biting cold without shelter. The guard was unmoved, however, and threatened to shoot Miller’s wife Isabella and their four children on the spot if they did not climb into an army wagon. [9]

Later that night, Miller caught up his family, taking shelter with other refugees in a ramshackle old meeting house near Nicholasville, six miles north of Camp Nelson. “The building was very cold having only one fire,” Miller explained. “My wife and children could not get near the fire, because of the number of colored people huddled together.” When Miller found Isabella, she and their children were “shivering with cold and famished with hunger.” His son had not survived the frigid cold. “My boy was dead,” Miller testified. “I Know he was Killed by exposure to the inclement weather.” The grieving father returned the next morning, where he “dug a grave myself and buried my own child.” [10]

AFTERMATH

The November 23 expulsion caused untold human suffering, but it also proved to be a critical turning point for the US army’s policy towards enslaved women and children in Kentucky. In the days that followed, Miller and other Black soldiers turned to sympathetic US officers in Camp Nelson to help share their harrowing ordeal with the public. Grief-stricken husbands and fathers dictated sworn affidavits before assistant quartermaster Capt. E.B.W. Restieaux. [11]

US army assistant quartermaster Capt. Theron E. Hall (NPS)

Another sympathetic quartermaster, Capt. Theron E. Hall, recognized that the tragedy could help rally public support behind the Black women and children, and perhaps even push Congress to take action to ensure that nothing of the sort ever happened again. “The slave Oligarchy,” Hall wrote, “put into my hands the most potent weapon I could use.” Hall wasted no time circulating the Black soldiers’ affidavits to major Northern newspapers and antislavery politicians. Almost overnight, the Camp Nelson expulsion became front-page news. “Cruel Treatment of the Wives and Children of U.S. Colored Soldiers,” read the headline of the New York Tribune on November 28. The paper’s gripping account of “a system of deliberate cruelty” shocked Northern readers. [12]

Official action soon followed. On November 27, General Burbridge directed General Fry to “not expell [sic] any Negro women or children from Camp Nelson.” Instead, Fry should “allow back all who have been turned out” and “if necessary erect buildings for them.” Several days later on December 2, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton ordered that the quartermaster’s department construct permanent buildings to house Black women and children at Camp Nelson. “There will be much suffering among them this winter unless shelters are built and rations issued to them.” [13] Stanton’s order, writes historian Amy Murrell Taylor, “marked a significant blow to slavery in Kentucky, as it now opened the doors to any enslaved man, woman, or child wanting to enter the camp.” [14]

The expulsion also prodded Congressional lawmakers to action. Ohio senator Benjamin Wade read Joseph Miller’s affidavit into the senate record. Wade had visited Camp Nelson months earlier during the summer of 1864. Now on the Senate floor in January 1865, Wade roared that the expulsion had not only been inhumane, but it was against the US military’s interests to turn out Black women and children; doing so would discourage other enslaved Kentuckians from enlisting. “Colored men will not enlist while these things are allowed,” Wade argued. “They have the same feelings toward their wives and children that white men have… and where is the white man who would enlist in the Army of the United States and leave his wife and children subject tot the taunts, the insults, and the ignominy of a master.” [15]

The debate in Congress quickly crystallized around a bill that would free the wives and children of Black soldiers upon their enlistment. Congress approved the legislation on March 3, 1865. One week later on March 10, Stanton issued General Orders No. 10, declaring that for the purposes of enforcing the new law, the army would recognize marriages between enslaved people, even if Kentucky law did not. [16]

Back at Camp Nelson, Black families weathered the transition from slavery to freedom in what became known as the Refugees Home at Camp Nelson. (Continue reading part 3)

FURTHER READING

In recent years, historians have reconstructed Black families’ journeys to Camp Nelson and the details surrounding the infamous November 23, 1864 expulsion. A good starting place is Richard Sears’s Camp Nelson, Kentucky (2002), an edited collection of primary sources documenting the camp’s entire existence. The Freedmen and Southern Society Project’s Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation series 2 (The Black Military Experience), also features primary sources related to Black recruitment and Black family life at Camp Nelson. [17]

One of the first scholarly treatments of the expulsion, Victor Howard’s Black Liberation in Kentucky (1983), combs through army records to provide a detailed analysis of Black families’ fight for inclusion at Camp Nelson. [18] More recently, Amy Taylor’s essay, “How a Cold Snap in Kentucky Led to Freedom for Thousands” (2011) and her subsequent book Embattled Freedom (2018) show how the humanitarian crisis at Camp Nelson prodded congressional lawmakers to action. [19]

NOTES

[1] Affidavit of Patsey Leach, March 25, 1865, in Freedom, ser. 2, vol. 1, 268-269.

[2] J. Bates Dickson to Capt. T.E. Hall, June 20, 1864, Lexington, Ky., in Sears, Camp Nelson, 72-73; Dickson to Sedgwick, June 30, 1864, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 87.

[3] OR, ser 3, v4, pt 1, 467, 474, [WEB]; Thomas to S.G. Hicks, July 17, 1864, in Freedom, ser. 2, vol. 1, 260-261.

[4] OR, ser 3, v4, pt 1, 474, [WEB].

[5] Freedom, ser. 2, vol. 1, 260-262.

[6] Victor B. Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky Emancipation and Freedom, 1862-1884 (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1983), 113-114; Order of Brig. Gen. Speed Smith Fry, July 6, 1864, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 93-94. On July 28, 1864, assistant adjutant general C.W. Foster replied to Thomas: “ Although the law prohibits the return of slaves to their owners by the military authorities, yet it does not provide for their reception and support in idleness at military camps.” See Freedom, ser. 2, vol. 1, 263. Foster’s unhelpful reply did not address whether Thomas’s orders were in fact in violation of the revised Articles of War.

[7] Report of Butler, Sears, Camp Nelson, 83-84.

[8] Taylor, Embattled Freedom,201; Taylor, “How a Cold Snap in Kentucky Led to Freedom for Thousands: An Environmental Story of Emancipation,” 191-214, in Stephen Berry (ed.), Weirding the War: Stories from the Civil War’s Ragged Edges (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2011).

[9] Freedom, ser. 2, vol. 1, 269-271; Taylor, Embattled Freedom, 201.

[10] Freedom, ser. 2, vol. 1, 269-271.

[11] Freedom, ser. 2, vol. 1, 269-271.; Taylor, Embattled Freedom, 202-203; Taylor, “How a Cold Snap.”

[12] Hall, quoted in Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky, 116; Taylor, Embattled Freedom, 202-203; Taylor, “How a Cold Snap”; New York Tribune, quoted in Sears, Camp Nelson, 138.

[13] Burbridge to Fry, November 27, 1864, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 137; Townsend to Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army, December 2, 1864, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 146

[14] Taylor, Embattled Freedom, 203.

[15] Cong Globe, 38th Cong, 2nd sess., 160-162.

[16] Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky, 79.

[17] Sears, Camp Nelson; Freedom ser. 2 (The Black Military Experience).

[18] Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky, esp. chap. 8.

[19] Taylor, “How a Cold Snap”; Taylor, Embattled Freedom, 174-208.

This post is the first of three posts on the Camp Nelson Stampede:  see also Enslaved Women (Part 2) and Freedom and Community (Part 3)

DATELINE: JUNE 4, 1864, CAMP NELSON, KY

Black US soldiers at Camp Nelson (Explore KY History)

“Within a few days the negroes of Kentucky have become impressed with the idea that the road to freedom lies through military service, and there has been a stampede from the farms to the recruiting offices.”  [1]  So reported the Cincinnati Commercial on June 4, 1864. The federal government had finally opened enlistment–and thus a pathway to freedom–to enslaved men in the Bluegrass State. However, there was a catch: enslaved men first needed to secure their slaveholders’ consent to enlist. Throughout the spring and early summer of 1864, enslaved Kentuckians refused to take no for an answer; they were determined to enlist and gain their freedom, with or without their slaveholders’ approval. In just a matter of weeks, the initial stampede of enslaved men to recruiting offices and Camp Nelson pressured the US army into opening its ranks to all enslaved Kentuckians. 

STAMPEDE CONTEXT

Unlike many pre-war group escapes in Kentucky, the “stampede” to Camp Nelson was not a single group of freedom seekers with one shared starting point; rather it consisted of a succession of group escapes originating from throughout the counties surrounding Camp Nelson. Collectively, those group escapes amounted to one of the largest wartime “stampedes”—thousands of enslaved men, women, and children escaped to Camp Nelson starting in the summer of 1864 and continuing through the summer of 1865.

Right from the beginning, newspapers employed the term “stampede” to describe freedom seekers’ rush to Camp Nelson.  The Cincinnati Commercial described “a stampede from the farms to the recruiting offices.” Papers in Cleveland and San Francisco reprinted the Commercial’s original story under new headlines that described the “Exodus of Negroes from Kentucky.” [2]

Newspapers continued to use the term “stampede” to describe occasional upticks in the number of freedom seekers heading to Camp Nelson. In April 1865, a correspondent from Danville, Kentucky commented that “the stampede of negroes from this region to Camp Nelson has received a new impulse within a few days” due to rumors that the camp might close its doors. [3] Several months later in June 1865, a correspondent for the Cincinnati Commercial described another “stampede” after enslaved Kentuckians eavesdropped on a local politician’s speech insisting that Kentucky could maintain slavery for another seven years. “There happened to be quite a number of darkies listening to him, and the idea of seven years more of slavery was so distasteful to them that they concluded immediately to take the short cut to freedom via the army,” the journalist wryly reported. “Accordingly, they not only went themselves, but got all their neighbors to join them in a stampede for the nearest recruiting station.” [4]

MAIN NARRATIVE

The US army originally established Camp Nelson in 1863 as a supply depot, not as a center for African American recruitment. The camp was located in Kentucky, a loyal slave state which continued to fiercely resist federal antislavery policies. In hopes of appealing to white Kentuckians, President Abraham Lincoln had exempted the Bluegrass State from his Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863. The Lincoln administration also held off enlisting enslaved Kentuckians into the US army, even though by mid-1863 the federal government had already begun recruiting enslaved men as soldiers in other border slave states such as Maryland and Missouri. [5]

Finally in April 1864, the US army’s manpower needs led federal officials to authorize limited Black recruitment in Kentucky. US general Stephen Burbridge sought to soften the blow by making several key concessions to Kentucky slaveholders. First, the federal government would compensate slaveholders $300 for each enslaved recruit. Secondly, prospective recruits needed to secure their slaveholder’s permission before they could enlist. Third, the US army would not send recruiters out onto plantations to enlist enslaved men, but would require enslaved recruits to journey to recruiting offices run by provost marshals (the army’s military police) where they could enlist. [6]

Enslaved men were determined to enlist, with or without their slaveholder’s blessing. As US officials quickly recognized, it proved almost impossible to determine on the spot whether slaveholders had actually given consent. At least some provosts went ahead and enlisted enslaved men without their slaveholders’ approval. In May 1864, a group of 15 enslaved men presented themselves for enlistment at the provost marshal’s office in Stanford, Kentucky. Even though only five of the recruits had their slaveholders’ consent to enlist, the local provost marshal forwarded all 15 men to Camp Nelson. [7] More often, US officials demanded hard proof of slaveholders’ consent. The provost marshal at Berea, Kentucky only agreed to enlist enslaved men who came to his recruiting office accompanied by their slaveholder. If he “let the slave[s] come and enlist at their own option,” the provost marshal explained, “all [the] slave men in the county would come.” [8] 

Turning away prospective recruits left enslaved men vulnerable to violent reprisals by slaveholders and white Kentuckians, who were determined to stop Black enlistment at all costs. On May 10, a group of 17 enslaved men traveled from Green County more than 20 miles to Lebanon, where provost marshal James Fidler “kindly received” them, but explained that he would need written proof that their slaveholders had consented to them enlisting. Fidler supplied each man with “notes to their owners asking that the negroes be permitted to enlist.” Fidler’s attempt to follow the fine print of federal policy ended in tragedy. White Kentuckians “followed these black men from town, seized them and whipped them most unmercifully with cow-hides.” Declaring that “negro enlistment should not take place in Lebanon,” local whites threatened the provost marshal “with a mob” should he attempt to enlist any Black recruits. [9]

Slaveholders also stepped up violence towards enslaved women, both in retaliation for their husbands enlisting and also to dissuade them from any designs they might have on joining their husbands at Camp Nelson. “My master beat me over the head with an axe handle,” enslaved Kentuckian Clarissa Burdett later testified, “saying as he did so that he beat me for letting [husband] Ely Burdett go off…. He bruised my head so that I could not lay it against a pillow without the greatest pain.” [10] Whenever opportunity presented itself, enslaved women gathered their children and slipped away to Camp Nelson, where they hoped to reunite their families.

Enslaved Kentuckians who withstood the violence and reached Camp Nelson met with a disappointing reception from the US army. When 250 enslaved men “thirsting for freedom” departed Danville, Kentucky on May 23 bound for Camp Nelson, students at Centre College “assailed them with stones and the contents of revolvers.” The men braved the assault and made it the sixteen miles to Camp Nelson later that same afternoon, only to be turned away by camp commandant Col. A.H. Clark, who claimed he “had no authority” to muster them into the army. [11]

Clark was even less sympathetic to the many enslaved women who had risked it all to accompany their husbands to Camp Nelson. Clark ordered his subordinates to exclude enslaved women from camp and threaten that “if they return, the lash awaits them.” [12] Despite US officials’ best efforts to keep them out, enslaved women kept coming back, determined never return to slavery and intent on keeping their families together. “There is not one among two hundred that want to go,” conceded one US army official, who acknowledged that enslaved women believe “that they will be killed by their masters if they return.” [13]

AFTERMATH

By June 1864, rampant violence against enslaved recruits prompted federal officials to open up enlistment to all enslaved men in Kentucky. “It became absolutely necessary for the protection of the slave to enlist him without the consent of the owner,” explained provost marshal James Fidler in Lebanon, Kentucky. [14] Federal officials back in Washington agreed. “In view of the cruelties practiced in the State of Kentucky by owners of slaves towards recruits,” assistant adjutant general C.W. Foster suggested that the US army should “accept and enlist any slave who may present himself for enlistment,” regardless of whether their slaveholder approved. In mid-June, US officials in Kentucky announced that the army would now accept the services of any enslaved men willing to enlist, regardless of whether their slaveholder approved. [15] 

However, the reworked federal policy still did not clarify the status of enslaved women and children who crowded into Camp Nelson alongside their husbands and fathers. Despite the US army’s best efforts to keep them out, enslaved women would continue to head to Camp Nelson in an effort to keep their families together. (Continue reading part 2)

FURTHER READING

A robust body of scholarship has highlighted Camp Nelson’s importance as a redoubt for Black emancipation in slaveholding Kentucky. A good starting place is Richard Sears’s Camp Nelson, Kentucky (2002), an edited collection of primary sources covering the camp’s existence. The Freedmen and Southern Society Project’s Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation series 2 (The Black Military Experience), also features primary sources related to Black recruitment and Black family life at Camp Nelson. [16]

Historians have also explored the experiences of freedom seekers heading to Camp Nelson, as well as the site’s continuing significance to public memory of the Civil War. Amy Taylor’s Embattled Freedom (2018) foregrounds the experiences of freedom seeker Gabriel Burdett, his wife Clarissa, and their family as they sought liberation at Camp Nelson. [17] W. Stephen McBride argues in “Camp Nelson and Kentucky’s Civil War Memory” (2013) that the Camp Nelson National Monument remains an important site in shaping public memory of the Civil War. By highlighting the crucial contributions Black men and women made to US victory, Camp Nelson gives lie to Lost Cause narratives which downplay the centrality of emancipation. [18]

[1] Cincinnati Commercial, June 4, 1864, quoted in “Kentucky Negro Exodus,” Cleveland (OH) Daily Herald, June 6, 1864, p. 4.

[2] “Kentucky Negro Exodus,” Cleveland (OH) Daily Herald, June 6, 1864, p. 4; “Exodus of Negroes From Kentucky,” San Francisco (CA) Daily Evening Bulletin, June 29, 1864, p. 3; A July 1865 referred back to the “stampede of slaves from surrounding country” who “came here in May and June of ’64 by scores.” See “Refugee Home in Kentucky,” Worcester (MA) Spy, July 21, 1865, p. 2.

[3] “Stampede of Negroes,” Louisville (KY) Daily Journal, April 28, 1865, p. 1.

[4] Cincinnati Commercial quoted in, “How Dinah Got a Companion for Life,” New Orleans (LA) Times, June 19, 1865, p. 3.

[5] Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), ser. 2 (The Black Military Experience), vol. 1, 193; Amy Murrell Taylor, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 186-187.

[6] Freedom, ser. 2, vol. 1, 193; Amy Murrell Taylor, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 186-187.

[7] Robert E. Barron to the Provost Marshal at Camp Nelson, Kentucky, May 27, 1864, Stanford, Ky., RG 393, pt. 4, entry 1660, vol. 237DKy, pp. 417-418, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

[8] John G. Fee to Brother Jocelyn, May 11, 1864, Berea, Ky., in Richard D. Sears, Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2002), 56-57.

[9] Freedom, ser. 2, vol. 1, 257.

[10] Taylor, Embattled Freedom, 188.

[11] Report of Thomas Butler, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 58.

[12] “Slave-Hunting in Kentucky,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, June 18, 1864, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 63-65.

[13] Hanaford to McQueen, May 26, 1864, in  Sears, Camp Nelson, 60; Hanaford to Dickson, July 6, 1864, in Sears, Camp Nelson, 94.

[14] Freedom, ser. 2, vol. 1, 257.

[15]  The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1891), ser. 3, vol. 4, 422, [WEB]; Lorenzo Thomas, Special Order No. 20, June 13, 1864, cited in Taylor, Embattled Freedom, 187.

[16] Sears, Camp Nelson; Freedom ser. 2 (The Black Military Experience).

[17] Taylor, Embattled Freedom, 174-208, 221-230.

[18] W. Stephen McBride, “Camp Nelson and Kentucky’s Civil War Memory,” Historical Archaeology 47, no. 3 (2013): 69–80.