The camp was established in 1863 as a depot for the Union Army during the Civil War, becoming a recruiting ground for new soldiers from Eastern Tennessee and escaping freedom seekers.
Among the many African American freedom seekers who arrived at Camp Nelson, were the families— wives, children, elderly parents— of the men who would later enlist and serve in the Union Army. The women, children, and parents built (makeshift) settlements on the outskirts of the camp, fueled by racist assumptions about African American women’s sexuality, a number of the white officers erroneously feared that the African American women would spread venereal disease among the black soldiers and began to agitate for their removal (Richard Spears. “John G. Fee, Camp Nelson, and Kentucky Blacks, 1864-1865.” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 85, No. 1 (Winter 1987), 34).
Moreover, the freedom seekers from Kentucky were particularly vulnerable as they were still legally owned by Kentuckians who never officially join the Confederacy. At various points over 1864 Commander Speed Smith Fry successfully expelled unwanted refugees from Camp Nelson.
On November 23, 1864, Fry ordered the forcible expulsion of more than 400 women and children. Leaving almost no time to gather their possessions, mounted Union soldiers drove the women and children from the camp in freezing temperatures and then destroyed their makeshift homes. More than 100 freedom seekers perished in the freezing weather. To read an affidavit of a USCT soldier from Kentucky whose family was forcibly removed in November 1864 from Camp Nelson, click here.
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"News of the bombardment of Fort Sumter inspired many African American men to enlist in the U.S. armed forces, but federal law prohibited their service. Frederick Douglass and other black leaders urged changes to allow black enlistments. By mid-1862, as the numbers of white volunteers diminished, the needs of the U.S. Army grew, and the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation became imminent, more voices called for black recruitment. The Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863, formally authorized African American military service. By the end of the war, about 180,000 blacks – including some from Perquimans County – had borne arms in the U.S. Army (almost 10 percent of total enlistments) and about 19,000 had served in the U.S. Navy. To remember the county’s African American Union soldiers, women of the black community, many of them the wives and widows of those men, erected one of the few such monuments in the nation on Academy Green in 1910. Coordinated by First Baptist Church and the United Daughters of Union Veterans, the monument is inscribed “In Memory of the Colored Union Soldiers Who Fought in the War of 1861-1865.” Academy Green was the location of the county’s first black school, library, and church (present-day First Baptist Church), which freed-men formed in a bush shelter in 1866. The congregation later built a church across the street. They Answered the Call Three of the men whom this monument commemorates are buried in Perquimans County. Sgt. John Gordon served in Co. A 1st U.S.C.T., organized in Washington, D.C., in May-June 1863. The regiment fought in Virginia (Wilson’s Wharf, The Crater, New Market Heights) and North Carolina (Fort Fisher). It also participated in Gen. Edward A. Wild’s eastern N.C. expedition in Dec. 1863 and burned a Confederate camp near Hertford. It mustered out on Sept. 29, 1865. Pvt. John Sharp enlisted in Co. B. 37th U.S.C.T. at age 19 on Jan. 21, 1864, in Plymouth, N.C. His regiment fought at New Market Heights and Fort Fisher and mustered out on Feb. 11, 1867. Pvt. Arthur Mixon served in Co. G, 40th U.S.C.T., organized in Aug. 1864 in Tennessee, where it guarded railroads and bridges. It mustered out in Oct. 1865."
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