Fort Negley

After Union Gen. William T. Sherman defeated Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood at Atlanta in September 1864, Hood led the Army of Tennessee northwest against Sherman’s supply lines and then north into Tennessee rather than contest the March to the Sea. Gen. John M. Schofield, detached from Sherman’s army, delayed Hood at Columbia and Spring Hill before falling back to Franklin, where the November 30 bloodbath crippled the Confederates. Hood then followed Schofield to the outskirts of Nashville and Union Gen. George H. Thomas’s strong defenses, and Thomas crushed Hood’s army on December 15-16, ending the campaign. After the Confederate defeat at Fort Donelson in February 1862, Nashville surrendered to Union forces, and Tennessee Military Governor Andrew Johnson insisted on fortifying the city as a key transportation and supply hub. On August 6, Union Capt. James St. Clair Morton began carrying out an elaborate design that made the capital the most heavily defended Unites States city outside Washington, D.C. More than 2,700 African American laborers built Fort Negley, the largest and most complex of Nashville’s five major forts. Soldiers occupied the fort in October while the laborers occupied the slope. The stronghold guarded Nashville’s southern approaches and delayed Confederate attacks, and on November 5 its guns helped drive off Confederate forces under Gens. Nathan Bedford Forrest and John Hunt Morgan. The Nashville Banner announced the fort’s completion on November 16. In spring 1863, Mary Overall, a young Confederate spy, used friendly relations between civilians and the military while attending a dance party there to gather information. Union Gen. Zebulon B. Tower proposed $20,000 in improvements in October 1864. On December 15-16, two newly installed Parrott guns provided artillery support during the Battle of Nashville, firing at targets more than three miles away. The 12th Indiana Light Artillery, along with soldiers from Illinois, Ohio, and Tennessee, as well as U.S. Colored Troops, occupied Fort Negley, which remained a federal post until 1867. In 1928, after recognition of Fort Negley as a national military park failed in Congress, the city took possession. The Works Progress Administration reconstructed the fort between 1936 and 1938, but it later fell into disrepair. The city eventually reopened the stabilized and interpreted fort as a Metro Park, and the visitors center was completed in December 2007.

Nashville-Davidson metropolitan government (balance), Tennessee · United States