Spring Haven, the home of Joseph Edwards during the war, stood in the path of Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan in August 1862 as he led a raid on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad and burned trestles to slow the Union army's movement toward Gallatin. According to local tradition, as Morgan's men passed the house, someone inside shot at them, and several mounted troopers allegedly surged through the front door and out the back but failed to find the bushwhacker. After the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in January 1863 and slaves fled their homes in search of assistance and protection, Federal forces established a contraband camp nearby in Gallatin. The business records of a previous owner, John Armfield, later helped former slaves as they searched for family members who had been sold south. In 1849, Armfield bought the house from Dr. John P. Wagnon, who had built it about 1825, and Andrew Jackson, a friend and patient of Dr. Wagnon, had been a frequent visitor. Armfield and his business associate Isaac Franklin had created one of the largest slave-trading operations in the antebellum South, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia. After Franklin's death in 1846, Armfield moved here to settle Franklin's estate for his widow. In 1855, after buying property near Beersheba Springs and its healing waters, Armfield sold Spring Haven to Edwards.