By Warner Todd Huston
President Donald Trump created the first national park to
honor black people who fought in the Civil War with the designation of Camp
Nelson in Nicholasville, Kentucky, as the nation’s newest National Monument.
The media paid little attention, but President
Trump signed the proclamation on October 26 making Camp
Nelson a national monument, Daily Wire noted.
“Camp Nelson was one of the largest Union Army
recruitment centers for African American Union soldiers, then known as United
States Colored Troops,” Trump’s proclamation states.
“During the war, thousands
of enslaved African Americans risked their lives escaping to Camp Nelson, out
of a deep desire for freedom and the right of self-determination. Today, the
site is one of the best-preserved landscapes and archeological sites associated
with United States Colored Troops recruitment and the refugee experiences of
African American slaves seeking freedom during the Civil War.”
The Civil War recruitment and training camp “was
organized around an 800-acre core, included more than 300 buildings and tents
that housed a quartermaster commissary depot, ordnance depot, recruitment
center, prison, and a hospital,” the proclamation says.
“Camp Nelson reminds us of the courage and determination
possessed by formerly enslaved African Americans as they fought for their
freedom,” the proclamation continued.
“The broader Camp Nelson archeological
record also provides opportunities for research and scholarship related to
military history, race, identity, and gender during the Civil War — a pivotal
chapter of the Nation’s history.”
More than 10,000 African American soldiers enlisted at
and were trained at Camp Nelson during the war and added to the 23,000 Kentucky
blacks who fought for the Union Army and the 179,000 total black troops
who served during the war.
The inclusion of blacks into the U.S. war effort was
hailed as the biggest step toward certifying that they would be considered U.S.
citizens from that point forward.
Famed anti-slavery advocate Frederick Douglass celebrated
the black soldier saying, “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass
letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder
and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has
earned the right to citizenship.”
Frederick
Douglass and Family: (Seated–His second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass),
(Standing–His sister-in-law, Eva Pitts). Douglass once wrote on Abraham Lincoln’s
Leadership in war: “In all my interviews with Mr. Lincoln I was impressed with
his entire freedom from prejudice against the colored race.” Photo: National
Park Service. REFERENCE: Encyclopaedia Britannica.
While Kentucky was a slave state as the war started and
initially tried to stay neutral as the fighting flared, the state eventually
became a federal stronghold.
Indeed, despite its southern leanings, more
Kentucky men served in the Union Army than served in southern forces. About 125,000 Kentuckians fought for the north during
the war while only about 33,000 went into the thin gray ranks.
Forty-thousand African Americans died nation-wide during
their service between 1862 and 1865.
