Fort Granger

After the Union army occupied Franklin, hundreds of enslaved African Americans fled neighboring plantations and farms for the Federal camps. Some of these self-emancipated former slaves, called contrabands, built and maintained much of Fort Granger. Working with white Union soldiers, African Americans dug the fort’s deep moat, used its solid soil to build the interior and exterior earthen walls, and excavated long ditches containing three-foot-long sharpened stakes angled outward to repel attack. A report of March 11, 1863, said that Silas N. Jones, Sergeant Co. C, 125th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, had charge of more than 250 contrabands able for duty with pick, axe, and shovel. Enslaved people from Williamson County also fled to the fortifications in Nashville, and a newspaper on April 3, 1863, reported large numbers from Williamson County and the vicinity of Franklin, of both sexes and all ages, leaving their owners’ service daily. Freedom came with severe hardship, as many in the camps suffered violence, hunger from food shortages, poor sanitation, and disease including smallpox, causing many deaths. By the spring of 1863, the Franklin contraband camp stood a few hundred yards north of the fort. These camps later helped lay the foundation for postwar African American neighborhoods in Franklin, including the community along 1st and 2nd Avenues near the former encampments northwest of Fort Granger, where emancipated African Americans found work in mills, cotton gins, and factories.

Franklin, Tennessee · United States