“The Civil War in Kentucky” is a 10-part series recently published in my Journey Log entitled “Surrounding Fort Knox, including Southern Indiana.” It deals primarily with the Central Kentucky Theater. I present it here as a series of individual blogs for my readers. Links to the previously published chapters will be provided at the end of each blog. Look for them on each Saturday morning! (A link to the book and its Table of Contents is found here.)
Nowhere in the Western War of Secession, was there a more straightforward connection between warring states in the North and South sections; between the population centers of Louisville, Kentucky and Nashville, Tennessee; between Union General William Tecumseh Sherman and Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston. If a war was to be fought here, it would be fought along the straight-as-an-arrow routes of invasion: the old and well-maintained road bed of Louisville and Nashville Turnpike, and the new and shiny metal railways of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad which had opened just in time to carry soldiers.
When Sherman arrived in Louisville in mid-September 1861, soon to take over full command of Union forces in this region, the significance of the railroad route had already been raised. Literally, it seems, as in the meaning of the other similar sounding word, “razed.” For the Confederates had just burned the railroad bridge over the Rolling Fork River south of Lebanon Junction!
Had they burned more railroad trestles? Union General Rousseau immediately brought the troops he was training across the Ohio River at Camp Joe Holt in Clarksville over to Louisville. He was then sent out to investigate in force and block any further Confederate advance toward Louisville.
Between Louisville and Bowling Green, Kentucky, the railroad had many vulnerable bridges and trestles.
- The Rolling Fork River railroad bridge south of Lebanon Junction [33 miles from Louisville].
- Two high trestles supporting the railroad climbing Muldraugh Hill [38 miles south from Louisville, about 7 miles north of Elizabethtown].
- The railroad bridge over the Nolin River [13 miles south of Elizabethtown, 23 miles north from Munfordville on the Green River].
- The railroad bridge over Bacon Creek at the community now called Bonnieville [25 miles south of Elizabethtown, 8 miles north of Munfordville].
- The high, long expanse carrying the railroad over the Green River at Munfordville [74 miles south of Louisville, 33 miles south of Elizabethtown, 43 miles north of Bowling Green and 105 miles north of Nashville].
The stage was set. With Confederate General Simon Bolivar Buckner having occupied his hometown of Munfordville on the Green River, the threat of a Confederate attack on Louisville was obvious. Confederate pickets ranged far north, probing defenses surrounding Louisville. And Sherman could feel them, was worried about them, and feared what they might do to him. He had to get out in front of the threat. So he sent General Rousseau farther in.
Rousseau immediately began rebuilding the rickety Railroad Bridge over the Rolling Fork River. Then, with the bulk of his force, he moved on up Muldraugh Hill to the two high railroad trestles crossing creeks on the way to Elizabethtown. They were still standing [they would be targets later] and Rousseau left men to dig in, build blockhouses, and defend the bridge works from future attacks. The lower trestle crossed Broad Run Creek and was defended by Fort Boyle with earthworks and cannon emplacements located above the tracks to the southwest. A second, similar fort, Fort Sands, was constructed on higher land to the north to defend the upper trestle crossing over Sulphur Fork Creek. These sites are now on private lands and cannot be reached by roads.
Basil Duke, soon to become Confederate Cavalry Raider John Hunt Morgan’s most trusted Lieutenant [and who was Morgan’s brother-in-law], was then in Elizabethtown seeking to raise a Confederate Cavalry Corps himself:
“… I could find no better occasion to recruit the cavalry command I had been so anxious to raise … I found an ally, however, in the County Judge … I had already suggested to him a plan of campaign with the capture of Louisville … to be inaugurated so soon as the two companies … could be recruited and organized.”
Duke records that he thought Union Troops might be on the march from Louisville. Although they would be led by Rousseau, he recognized that they were commanded by General Sherman. Then he discovered, to his surprise, that they had already reached Elizabethtown!
“I was much elated, but just as I began to prepare a muster roll an ominous and appalling sound came rolling down the long street, at one end of which we were assembled. It was the hoarse, threatening rattle of a drum, and every man knew at once that the Yankees were upon us. … I have rarely witnessed such a stampede as then ensued … The men who were to compose the two companies were so promptly and completely scattered that they were never gotten together again.”
Duke shared in “a general disposition” to take to the woods. He rode east out of town on a “small country road.” He would later return as one of the most vigorous fighters in Morgan’s Cavalry Raiders.
Sherman returned to Louisville, now finding himself in complete command of the Cumberland Department after General Anderson surrendered his position because of the stress and anguish. Sherman was left to defend the entire Commonwealth of Kentucky with what he argued were insufficient troops. He would list the following centers of his statewide operations in correspondence to General McClellan’s Adjutant commanding in Washington, D.C.:
“HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE CUMBERLAND, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, November 4, 1861.
General L. Thomas,
Adjutant-General, Washington, D. C.
SIR:
In compliance with the telegraphic orders of General McClellan, received late last night, I submit this report of the forces in Kentucky, and of their condition …
The camp at Nolin is at the present extremity of the Nashville Railroad. This force was thrown forward to meet the advance of Buckner’s army, which then fell back to Green River, twenty-three miles beyond …
These regiments are composed of good materials, but devoid of company officers of experience … Have been put under thorough drill since being in camp …
Beyond Green River, the enemy has masked his forces, and it is very difficult to ascertain even the approximate numbers. No pains have been spared to ascertain them, but without success, and it is well known that they far outnumber us. … their railroad facilities south enable them to concentrate at Munfordville the entire strength of the South.
General McCook’s command is divided into four brigades, under Generals Wood, R.W. Johnson, Rousseau, and Negley.
General Thomas’s line of operations is from Lexington, toward Cumberland Gap and Ford, which are occupied by a force of rebel Tennesseeans, under the command of Zollicoffer. Thomas occupies the position at London, in front of two roads which lead to the fertile part of Kentucky, the one by Richmond, and the other by Crab Orchard, with his reserve at Camp Dick Robinson, eight miles south of the Kentucky River. His provisions and stores go by railroad from Cincinnati to Nicholasville, and thence in wagons to his several regiments. …
Our lines are all too weak … There are four regiments forming in the neighborhood of Owensboro, near the mouth of Green River, who are doing good service, also in the neighborhood of Campbellsville …
I know well you will think our force too widely distributed, but we are forced to it by the attitude of our enemies, whose force and numbers the country never has and probably never will comprehend.
I am told that my estimate of troops needed for this line, viz., two hundred thousand, has been construed to my prejudice, and therefore leave it for the future. …
With great respect, your obedient servant,
- T. Sherman, Brigadier-General Commanding.”
Rousseau was in command of the Union forces that had advanced up Muldraugh Hill. Sherman then instructed Rousseau to “move his camp as soon as practicable forward to the vicinity of Nolin,” and “cause scouts to be sent forward towards Green River.”
This he would do, taking the land of a prominent Confederate sympathizer, David Nevin, along the Nolin River near the Railroad Bridge that crossed it. Just across the river was the small community of Nolin, with its Station Depot. Rousseau established his headquarters in the Monin House [which still stands today], where he could look out and see the bridge and river. He called his bivouac “Camp Nevin.” It would grow in size to 13,000 men, tenting and training upwards of 30,000 men.
On October 12, 1861, William Tecumseh Sherman designated General Alexander McDowell McCook as Commander of Camp Nevin. McCook quickly reorganized the 10,000 men at Camp Nevin into three brigades. The first was commanded by Brigadier General Lovell Harrison Rousseau; the second, Brigadier General Thomas J. Wood [from Munfordville and childhood friend of Confederate General Simon Bolivar Buckner]; and third, Brigadier General James Negley. All four of these military leaders would soon be facing the terror that would envelop all of the forces fighting in this war!
By February 1862, Union General Ulysses Grant had overpowered Confederate Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, respectively. With a river route now open for Union gunboats to attack Nashville directly, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston was forced to abandon both Bowling Green and Nashville. He patiently gathered his Army south of Memphis near the railroad hub at Corinth, Mississippi. There, he would await the Union Army’s advance down the Tennessee River, where he would attack it at Pittsburg Landing near the Shiloh Church. That battle changed our understanding of war, imposing the realization that war had changed into something even more terrible!
The Army at Camp Nevin moved south to join Grant, leaving only a small force of about 100 men to guard the camp for the rest of the war. They would not be enough.
Many at Camp Nevin had died of the diseases Diarrhea, Dysentery, Measles, Mumps, Smallpox, and Typhoid. They were originally buried at the Red Mills Cemetery just west of U.S. Hwy 31W at the Nolin River. After the war, these dead were reinterred in Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery.
Kentucky was a collage of different loyalties during the Civil War. Yet the South believed it had great support in the Commonwealth, even though the State never seceded. In Elizabethtown in Hardin County, there were free African Americans as well as those kept chained in bondage. Both sides in the war would find sympathizers there, and the city’s location was obviously significant.
The Louisville and Nashville Turnpike, in parts a macadam-surfaced road, ran up Muldraugh Hill from West Point to Elizabethtown, continuing on south through Upton. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad, completed just before the war, came out of Louisville, past the rail spurs at Bardstown and Lebanon Junction, beginning the climb up Muldraugh Hill at what is now Colesburg. As you drive up that hill today on Interstate 65, you can catch glimpses of the tracks on the slopes to your west. The first trains began to run between Louisville and Nashville in November 1859, just in time for Civil War action.
That railroad climb up Muldraugh Hill would become a focus of warring forces during the Civil War. Two wide creeks needed to be bridged, and a 2,000-foot-long tunnel dug through the mountain at the top. These points constituted weak links sought to be compromised by Confederate Rebel Raiders like Cavalry General John Hunt Morgan.
Hostilities broke out in Hardin County on September 18, 1861, after the Kentucky State Legislature ended its neutrality and stated support for the Union. From his Headquarters in Bowling Green, Confederate General Simon Bolivar Buckner immediately occupied Munfordville on the Green River, set up pickets at the Bacon Creek Bridge beyond and sent men to Nolin Station to control that river’s rail crossing, which they burned. Then they proceeded past Elizabethtown, moving down Muldraugh Hill, where they burned the railroad bridge on the Rolling Fork River at the bottom, just south of Lebanon Junction. The violence of war had come to Kentucky.
Kentucky’s avowed neutrality, declared by the State Legislature in May, 1861, had been violated by both sides in the war. The Union set up Camp Dick Robinson on the Kentucky River to train recruits in June 1861. The Confederates set up around Russellville to accept and train recruits.
The overt breach of Kentucky’s neutrality occurred on September 4, 1861, when Confederate General Leonidas Polk invaded Western Kentucky and occupied the high bluffs dominating the Ohio River at Columbus. From his base in Cairo, Illinois, Union General Ulysses S. Grant immediately seized Paducah in preparation for his river campaigns.
Union General Robert Anderson first learned of trouble on the L & N tracks when the passenger train from Lebanon Junction did not arrive on September 18, 1861. It had been seized by the Confederates, who then cut the telegraph lines adjacent to the railroad. James Guthrie, President of the L & N Railroad, was then informed that the railroad bridge over the Rolling Fork of the Salt River had been burned. The Confederates had advanced to within 30 miles of Louisville!
Anderson needed immediate action. He tasked the newly arrived General William Tecumseh Sherman to cross the Ohio River and bring over Colonel Lovell Harrison Rousseau’s men, who had been in training around Clarksville at Camp Joe Holt. Boarding trains at the downtown Louisville L & N Depot, Sherman led 1,700 men south into the unknown theatre of battle.
At Lebanon Junction, the troops disembarked and, led by Rousseau, marched to the Rolling Fork Bridge, finding no Confederates but confirming that it was down. Concerned about the trestles up on Muldraugh Hill, Sherman’s men then waded the river and found, to their relief, that the two high trestles were intact.
The railroad river bridge at the Rolling Fork River was immediately reconstructed, and, by September 22, 1861, Rousseau and his men were in camp two miles outside of Elizabethtown.
On October 8, 1861, just three weeks after Sherman arrived in Louisville as Second in Command of the Department of the Cumberland, his Commanding Officer, Robert Anderson, relinquished his position. Sherman, in his memoirs, reported that Anderson told him that, “he could not stand the mental torture of his command any longer, and that he must go away, or it would kill him.” Sherman was now in charge, facing the same worries and concerns that would lead to his own mental distress and reassignment.
Sherman immediately determined that he needed a defensive front farther south to block another Confederate advance. So, the next day, October 9, 1861, he sent now General Rousseau forward to the railroad crossing at the Nolin River. There, he established Camp Nevin, named for the Confederate sympathizer whose land he confiscated. Rousseau took up quarters in the Monin House, which still stands on private property.
Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston was headquartered in Bowling Green, with his advance forces led by General Buckner on the Green River at the railroad bridge in Munfordville. General Sherman was headquartered in Louisville, with his advance forces led by General Rousseau on the Nolin River at the railroad bridge near Nolin Station. The stage was set, and players positioned.
Camp Nevin was a sprawling establishment, much of which now embraces the massive new Ford Battery Plant. You can still drive through the camp’s location, or at least some of the land upon which it once sat.
Think of your route as a physical rectangle running through your imagination. Begin at its northwest corner at the old Gilead Baptist Church. That church also figures into this short Civil War history. But I will let you uncover its story as part of your own journey.
The church lies at the intersection of New Glendale Road [Route 1136] and Gilead Church Road [Route 1138]. A Historical Marker will be found at this location. Now head east on Gilead Church Road. The majority of Camp Nevin lies to your right, between the road and the Nolin River. Small historical signs indicate that you are headed in the right direction.
The signs would have you turn right on Monin Lane, bisecting the middle of the rectangle imagined in your mind. That road will bend around and pass the Monin House, in front of which is a broad informational panel. The railroad crosses the Nolin River nearby, just to the west.
Retreat back to Gilead Church Road and continue driving east. Drive under modern Interstate 65 to the junction with the much older “Dixie Highway,” U.S. Hwy 31W. Turn right into history, as you will be driving along the old Louisville and Nashville Turnpike upon which Union General Rousseau’s men would soon march towards Shiloh. In a pull-off to your right, just before you cross the Nolin River to the south, is another Civil War informational display. Stop and relive this region’s important history!
Then, as you look back on that Dixie Highway, let your imagination again fly back in time. If you do, you might see Confederate General Braxton Bragg riding along with his columns of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers marching forward during their invasion of Kentucky, seeking to create a different history. Perhaps, if you squint, you will see the massive Union Army of General Don Carlos Buell trying to catch up with Bragg and “sneak” around him on the road to West Point, where supplies had been brought in by steamboat.
Buell would reach Louisville first. Why Braxton Bragg didn’t turn and fight Buell here, or even earlier at Munfordville, is a question of perplexing interest to historians. Perhaps you will be the one to do further research.
Back in the car, drive south on that Dixie Highway and cross the Nolin River. Look carefully on your right for Route 1407, called the “Nolin Road.” Turn right and follow it back around to the community of Nolin, once the location of Nolin Station, an important Civil War platform serving the L & N Railroad, which crosses the Nolin River just north of town.
Nolin is one of those hidden places in Kentucky where you have to want to be in order to get there. You’re not going to stumble on it going to work. Yet, its importance to Kentucky’s Civil War story is evident to those who study the war’s early history.
Early on, it was a center of Confederate enlistment. It was the location where rebel cavalryman Nathan Bedford Forrest first assembled his recruits from the area around Louisville. That included men recruited by Frank Overton from the region around Garnettsville.
Overton called his men “The Boone Rangers.” They were taken down to Memphis to muster into the Confederacy. And let’s not forget the early attacks by rebel cavalryman John Hunt Morgan on the Camp Nevin pickets. Even before Morgan had been sworn into the Confederate Army!
Continue west on Nolin Road until you hit the New Glendale Road. Turn right and you are back at the Gilead Church, having completed your imaginary historical journey!
Previous Chapters
Chapter 1: The History of the Civil War in Kentucky
Chapter 2: Surrounding Sherman and Grant
Chapter 3: William Tecumseh Sherman in Kentucky
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