Camp Andy Johnson, established at Barbourville in August 1861 and named for Senator Andrew Johnson of Greenville, Tennessee, served briefly as a refuge where loyal men of East Tennessee could join the United States army, and in less than a month more than one thousand Union men enlisted there under Lieut. Samuel P. Carter, who organized the 1st East Tennessee Volunteer Infantry. To stop Unionists from escaping Tennessee, Confederates guarded major mountain gaps, but many still crossed into Kentucky and reached Barbourville. Carter's poorly armed men lacked proper weapons and supplies, and after Lieut. William "Bull" Nelson at Camp Dick Robinson refused to send them and retained two companies sent to collect them, Carter marched his growing command from Barbourville to Camp Dick Robinson at the end of August, delaying his hopes of moving against Cumberland Gap and East Tennessee. After Kentucky's neutrality ended in September 1861, Confederate commander General Felix Kirk Zollicoffer, fearing Unionist activity centered at Barbourville, sent Col. Joel A. Battle with 800 men from Camp Buckner to break up Camp Andy Johnson. On September 19, 1861, Battle's force advanced through fog toward the bridge over Town Spring Branch, unaware that Camp Andy Johnson had already been abandoned nearly three weeks earlier, and encountered instead a small Knox County Home Guard led by Capt. Isaac Black. The Home Guard had removed the bridge floor to hinder the advance, and when Battle tried to bluff them by shouting, "Make way for the artillery!" though he had none, the Confederates pushed on and the Home Guard opened fire, killing Lieut. Robert Powell of the 19th Tennessee Infantry; before the fight ended, Pvt. John Hendrickson of the Home Guard was also killed. Although most accounts place the Home Guard at between 30 and 50 men, they held their ground for a time until Confederates found a way across the branch and cavalry moved behind them, forcing a retreat. With two men killed and others wounded, the engagement at Town Spring Branch became the opening fighting in Kentucky in a war there that lasted four more years, and Barbourville was later recognized in a 1992 Civil War Sites Advisory Commission report as one of the nation's most significant and endangered Civil War battlefields.