St. Cloud Hill

Transport yourself back to the 1860s for a moment. In the distance you would see the state capitol building, and just below you, on the northern slope of St. Cloud Hill, you would see a tent city, a few wooden buildings, and people congregated around campfires at night. This “contraband camp,” as it was called, made up the fort’s African American section. The term contraband was used by the U.S. government and provided them the legal justification to harbor runaway slaves behind Union lines. This authority was legally grounded in the language of property seizure during war time and, after 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation. The influx of former slaves and freedmen into Nashville was so great that it doubled the city’s Black population between 1862 and 1865. One formerly enslaved man, Joseph Fowley, recalled that the camps had to be guarded to "keep the rebels from carrying them back to the white folks." 

Many male laborers who lived here ultimately enlisted in the USCT regiments and served in the Union army. Others, like Minister Samuel Lowery, whose placard is just ahead, did not fight but served to aid Black soldiers and their families at Fort Negley. After the war, many African Americans put down roots near St. Cloud Hill—to the east of Chestnut Hill and Cameron-Trimble areas, to the south in present-day Wedgewood-Houston, and to the west in the Edgehill neighborhood. These working-class families took up jobs like lamp lighting, bricklaying, and laundering. Let’s continue our story of the men and women who lived here during the Civil War by walking up to the fort’s entrance.

Continue climbing the fort. You will see the Adventure Science Center’s pyramid on your right. At the fork in the road, turn LEFT. Walk up the path to the stone entrance labeled Sally Port.