Fort Negley

The Union Army occupied Nashville on February 25, 1862, and the next month President Lincoln appointed Senator and future running mate Andrew Johnson as Tennessee's military governor. Johnson, fearing that the Confederates would try to retake Nashville, sought to fortify the city, and commanding general James S. Negley was ordered to prepare the defenses.

To do this, the Army needed workers, so they simultaneously recruited and forced much of Nashville's black population and put them to work on the fort. An estimated 2,000 workers dug foundations, laid stone walls, put down heavy wooden flooring to support cannons, and finished Fort Negley by December 7, 1862.

The largest fort west of Washington, D.C., Fort Negley never actually saw combat; the Confederates attempted to retake Nashville in 1864, but were stopped in Franklin. The Union Army pulled out of the fort in 1867.

The Ku Klux Klan met clandestinely in the fort, and it was there in 1869 that Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest called a final meeting at which he hoped to disband the organization. Klan robes were burned in the fort.

The ensuing years saw stones from Fort Negley removed for various building projects. Beginning in 1936, the Works Progress Administration set out to restore the fort, but this effort never accomplished much and, historically speaking, did considerable damage to the ruins. Over the years a forest encircled the fort, and visitors to the Adventure Science Center on its periphery had no idea that they were close to a Civil War site.

At long last Nashville decided to reopen the fort, but to preserve it as a ruin and not attempt to restore it. Visitors can find the fort, logically enough, on a hill south of Broadway. You can get there from I-40 take Exit 210C, or, from downtown, Take 8th Avenue South to Chestnut. Turn left onto Chestnut and proceed about 300 yards crossing over the interstate overpass bridge. Turn left onto Ft. Negley Boulevard.