THE FORTRESS WAR: EFFECT OF UNION FORTIFICATIONS IN THE WESTERN THEATER OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR by Thomas R. Flagel A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public History Middle Tennessee State University May 2016 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Carroll Van West, Committee Chair Dr. Mary S. Hoffschwelle, Committee Member Dr. Robert E. Hunt, Committee Member Dr. Martha K. Norkunas, Committee Member Für meine Hirten Cricket und Nico ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Primary credit for this endeavor goes to my family and friends, who provided boundless motivation and support despite my long and distant absence. Most of what I have learned about Fort Granger and occupied Franklin, Tennessee can be attributed to the research, writing, and guidance of Rick Warwick of the Williamson County Heritage Foundation. For preservation of earthworks directly studied, thanks go foremost to Fred Prouty and the Tennessee Wars Commission, Dot Kelly and her associates who have moved mountains to preserve and interpret fortifications at Knoxville, Tennessee, Greg Biggs and all those who have made Fort Defiance possible at Clarksville, Tennessee, and Krista Castillo’s staff and supporters of Fort Negley in Nashville. Thanks also to Mary Ann Peckham, Jim Lewis and everyone who has labored to preserve the history and landscape of Fortress Rosecrans at Stones River National Battlefield, as well as Jim Ogden at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. Thanks also go to veterans John Sylva, Ralph Walker, and Sam Whitson for their added insights concerning military defenses and occupation. Enormous gratitude also goes to the professional and patient staff at the Williamson County Archives in Franklin, Tennessee, in particular Aimee Saunders, Rebecca Robinson, Siony Flowers, Lisa Lundstrom, and Rose Huff, the Bancroft Library-University of California at Berkeley archives staff, the Emory University Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) team in Atlanta, Georgia, the Western Michigan University Archives and Regional History Collections (WMUA), Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Tennessee State Library and Archives iii in Nashville, the John C. Hodges Library Special Collections staff at University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Bob Duncan and the Maury County Archives in Columbia, Tennessee, as well as the staff of the Wisconsin Historical Society at Madison. I am also eternally grateful for my many colleagues and students at Columbia State Community College who supported this work, especially Hoyt Gardner, Dr. Barry Gidcomb, Dr. Jan de la Mer, Greg Mewbourn, Dr. William Andrews, and everyone at the Williamson County Campus. For archeological work on extant fortifications, I am indebted to Dr. Larry McKee and TRC Solutions and again to the Tennessee Wars Commission. Additional thanks goes to the heartfelt and inspiring motivation from Bill Radcliffe and Trisha Floyd, John Wasson, Mike Skinner, Tom Lawrence, Joe Smyth, Thelma Battle, the Knoxville Civil War Round Table, the Tennessee Valley Civil War Round Table, my publicist Barb Trujillo, Barb Ross, John and Jacki Sylva, Tim Pierce, Green, Billy and Donna Nichols, and Karl Green. Lastly my thanks to the many who have done their best to formally train me, including my professors at Loras College, Kansas State, Creighton, and MTSU, including Dr. Robert Hunt, Dr. Martha Norkunas, Dr. Mary Hoffschwelle, Dr. Rebecca Conard, and Dr. Carroll Van West. iv ABSTRACT Civil War historiography generally overlooks Union occupation forts or interprets them as forward bases of supply. What is missed when these structures are not explored in their wider context? This dissertation determines that the Union Army and African Americans constructed more than 300 forts in some 130 cities and towns in the Western Theater, where the majority of Southerners free and enslaved resided. Further, this study examines the impacts of these fortified positions, particularly upon adjacent slave societies. Initially epicenters of environmental destruction and incubators of human and animal contagions, these forts became major portals for slave escapes. Subsequently, fortified areas enabled many escapees to reinvent themselves as contract laborers and commercial entrepreneurs. Further, by the end of the war, many fortified areas had evolved into generally stable city-states in which Federal soldiers, freed persons, and white citizens achieved tacit levels of coexistence. Posited here is that Union forts resembled Josef Schumpeter’s economic premise of “creative destruction,” a paradigm in which innovations continually dismantle outdated social and economic constructs. In short, Union forts were innovations. Traditionally depicted as arbitrarily destructive, Union garrisons were more commonly engineering operations, many of which successfully reallocated major commercial, industrial, transportation centers from Confederate to Federal use. Much of this stability and social transformation reverted to local white control when the U.S. War Department abandoned over 90 percent of these forts by the end of 1865. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………... viii LIST OF TABLES….…………………………………………………………… ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………………………… x INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………….. 1 CHAPTER ONE: THE BLUE KEEP – EMERGENCE OF A NEW WESTERN STRATEGY...... 15 The Geopolitical Context……………………………………………….... 17 The Emergence of “Different Principles”………………………………… 24 Bragg’s Great Push Northward …………..……………………………… 26 The Blue Keep and the Above Ground Railroad ………………………… 29 CHAPTER TWO: CONTAGION – THE SCOURGE OF OVERPOPULATION…………….. 39 Fort Granger – A Case Study in Biological Destruction ………………… 42 The Process of Overpopulation …..……………………………………… 53 White Flags – The Creation of Occupier/Occupied Empathy……………. 58 Black Death and Black Labor…………………………………………….. 60 CHAPTER THREE: DECONSTRUCTION – ALTERATIONS TO THE WESTERN THEATER LANDSCAPE ………..…… 69 Creative Destruction in Urban Landscapes ……….. …………………….. 72 The Sound of Power……………………………………………………….. 87 Forts as Urban Slaughterhouses ………………….………………………... 97 An Evolving Stability………….………………….………………………... 103 CHAPTER FOUR: INVESTMENT – NATION-BUILDING IN FORTIFIED ZONES………….. 115 Loyalty Oaths and Political Cleansing…………………………………….. 119 United States Colored Troops……………………………………………… 127 The Impact of Public Works …….……………..………………………….. 137 vi CHAPTER FIVE: RETICENCE – THE ERASURE OF UNION OCCUPATION FORTS…… 146 Regression for the Liberated ……………………………………………… 146 Evacuating the City-States………………………………………………… 154 The Enduring Strategy of Federal Fortification …………………………... 163 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………. 169 APPENDICES…………………………………………………………………….. 195 APPENDIX A: WESTERN THEATER UNION OCCUPATION SITES… 196 APPENDIX B: MOST COMMON ENLISTMENT SITES OF USCT SOLDIERS BORN IN WILLIAMSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE.. 200 NOTES.…………………………………………………………………………….. 201 vii LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 Samuel Boyd Map of April 10, 1863 Franklin, Tennessee …………………. 44 3.1 Gabions and Fascines ……………………………………………………….. 81 3.2 Section of Samuel Boyd Map of Fortified Franklin, Tennessee ……………. 84 3.3 Deforestation around Fort Sanders at Knoxville, Tennessee – March 1864… 86 3.4 Sketch of Fort Anderson in Paducah, Kentucky – April 1862 ……………… 104 3.5 Fort Curtis outside Helena, Arkansas ………………………………………. 106 3.6 The 84th Indiana at Murfreesboro, Tennessee ……………………………… 111 4.1 USCT Artillery unit garrisoned at Johnsonville, Tennessee – 1864 ………. 133 5.1 Union Fort Sites by January 1, 1862 ………………………………………. 157 5.2 Union Fort Sites by January 1, 1864 ………………………………………. 158 5.3 Union Fort Sites by January 1, 1866 ………………………………………. 159 viii LIST OF TABLES 2.1 Local Union Deaths from Three Primary Diseases, Franklin, Tennessee, Spring 1863 ……………………….. 50 2.2 Citizen Burials within Two-mile Radius of Franklin, Tennessee, 1859-1867 …... 51 ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CWH Civil War History JNH Journal of Negro History JSH Journal of Southern History LOC Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. MARBL Emory University Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Atlanta, GA NARA National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. OR Official Records of the War of the Rebellion SRNBA Stones River National Battlefield Archives, Murfreesboro, TN THQ Tennessee Historical Quarterly TSLA Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, TN USCT United States Colored Troops WCA Williamson County Archives, Franklin, TN WMUA Western Michigan University Archives and Regional History Collections, Kalamazoo, MI x 1 INTRODUCTION In his 2005 study of the Eastern Theater earthworks in the American Civil War, Earl J. Hess observed, “the topic of fortifications is one of the more important yet to be explored by historians.”1 Ten years onward, with few exceptions, the subject remains largely overlooked. When addressed, defensive structures are almost exclusively examined through the prism of military engagements. What do we miss when we do not consider Civil War fortifications within their larger context? Counterbalancing Hess’s focus on campaign trenches in the East, this dissertation explores Union occupation fortresses west of the Appalachians. The region of choice stems from the growing perception among historians that the Western Theater was militarily more decisive than the relative deadlock that transpired in and around Virginia. In addition, it was in the fixed Union fortified areas where the Federal soldier, Southern citizen, and enslaved African American operated