Louisville in the American Civil War
It attracted numerous immigrants from Europe such as Irish and Germans, had a large slave market from which enslaved African Americans were sold to the Deep South, and had both slaveholders and abolitionists as residents.
[1] Not only did Louisville profit from the river, but in August 1855, its citizens greeted the arrival of the locomotive "Hart County" at Ninth and Broadway and connection to the nation via railroad.
With the increase in new immigrants in the city, native Louisville residents felt threatened by change, and began to express anti-foreign, anti-Catholic sentiments.
On August 6, 1855, "Bloody Monday" erupted, in which Protestant mobs bullied immigrants away from the polls and began rioting in Irish and German neighborhoods.
On April 12, 1861, Confederate Brigadier General Pierre G. T. Beauregard ordered the firing on Fort Sumter, located in the Charleston harbor, thus starting the Civil War.
Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin refused to send any men to act against the Southern states, and both Unionists and secessionists supported his position.
On April 17, 1861, Louisville hoped to remain neutral and spent $50,000 for the defense of the city, naming Lovell Rousseau as brigadier general.
Although Lincoln did not want to upset Kentucky's neutrality, on July 10, 1861, a federal judge in Louisville ruled that the United States government had the right to stop shipments of goods from going south over the L&N railroad.
On July 15, 1861, the War Department authorized United States Navy Lieutenant William "Bull" Nelson to establish a training camp and organize a brigade of infantry.
With twenty thousand troops, Johnston established a defensive line stretching from Columbus in western Kentucky to the Cumberland Gap, controlled by Confederate General Felix Zollicoffer.
On October 8, Anderson stepped down as commander of the Department of the Cumberland and Union General William Tecumseh Sherman took charge of the Home Guard.
Confederate General John Hunt Morgan, of Lexington, Kentucky, managed to destroy the L&N railroad tunnel at Gallatin, Tennessee, cutting off all supplies to Buell's Union army.
One of the major objectives of the Confederate campaign in Kentucky was to seize the Louisville and Portland Canal and sever Union supply routes on the Ohio River.
With Frankfort in Confederate hands for about a month, Governor Magoffin maintained his office in Louisville and the state legislature held their sessions in the Jefferson County Courthouse.
He sent Union troops to build pontoon bridges at Jeffersonville and New Albany to speed up the arrival of reinforcements, supplies and, if needed, the emergency evacuation of the city.
The Reverend Thomas James, an African Methodist Episcopal minister from New York, supervised activities at the camp and set up a church and school for the refugees.
Under direction by generals Stephen G. Burbridge and John M. Palmer, James monitored conditions at prisons and could call on US troops to protect slaves from being held illegally, which he did several times.
In later years, the depredations of guerrilla warfare in the state, together with Union measures to try to suppress it, and the excesses of General Burbridge as military governor of Kentucky, were probably more significant in alienating more citizens.
To secure legal freedom for the many slave women arriving alone at the contraband camp, Burbridge directed James to marry them to available USCT soldiers, if both parties were willing.
In the Summer of 1863, Confederate John Hunt Morgan violated orders and led his famous raid into Ohio and Indiana to give the northern states a taste of the war.
On February 4, 1864, at the Galt House, Union generals Ulysses S. Grant, William S. Rosecrans, George Stoneman, Thomas L. Crittenden, James S. Wadsworth, David Hunter, John Schofield, Alexander McCook, Robert Allen, George Thomas, Stephen Burbridge and Read Admiral David Porter met to discuss the most important campaign of the war.
In a follow-up meeting on March 19, generals Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman met at the Galt House to plan the Spring campaign.
On July 5, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln temporarily suspended the writ of habeas corpus, which meant a person could be imprisoned without trial, his house searched without warrant, and the individual arrested without charge.
59: "Whenever an unarmed Union citizen is murdered, four guerrillas will be selected from the prison and publicly shot to death at the most convenient place near the scene of the outrages.
Burbridge received permission from Union General John Schofield to build fortifications in Mount Sterling, Lexington, Frankfort and Louisville.
James Hopkins, John Simple and Samuel Stingle were taken from Louisville to Bloomfield, Nelson County, and shot in retaliation for the alleged guerrilla shooting of two black men.
[16] By the end of 1864, Burbridge ordered the arrest of twenty-one prominent Louisville citizens, plus the chief justice of the State Court of Appeals, on treason charges.
The troops boarded ninety-two steamboats at Parkersburg and descended the river in convoys of eight boats, to the sounds of cheering crowds and booming cannon salutes at every port city.
This is documented in Louisville by prominent Washington, D.C. journalist Whitelaw Reid, who accompanied Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase for a tour of the south from May 1, 1865, to May 1, 1866.
[24][25] Around 1864–65, city defenses, including eleven forts ordered by Union General Stephen G. Burbridge, formed a ring about ten miles (16 km) long from Beargrass Creek to Paddy's Run.
