Decline and Restoration of Fort Negley - Nashville, Tennessee
Posted by: 
BruceS
N 36° 08.694 W 086° 46.564
16S E 520145 N 4000043
Marker giving history of decline and restoration of Fort Negley in Nashville, Tennessee.
Waymark Code: WMGCX1
Location: Tennessee, United States
Date Posted: 02/15/2013
Views: 4
Text of marker:
Decline and Restoration of Fort Negley
Renamed near the end of the war in honor of Union Brigadier General Charles Harker who was killed at Kennesaw Mountain (GA), the fort was occupied by Federal troops till 1867. Military redistricting in the remaining Confederate sates began in 1867 as part of teh federal government's Congressional Reconstruction plan. Tennessee rejoined the Union in 1866, avoiding many of the excesses of Reconstruction. Nashvillians, however, continued to remember the fort named for Brigadier General James Negley.
The contraband camp at the base of St. Cloud Hill lingered after the war for refugees, eventually becoming the foundation for Edgehill's African American community. In 1867, Ku Klux Klan activity at the site began, but use of Fort Negley as a meeting place for the clan was quelled by government pressure on the organization. They disbanded in late 1867. The Fort deteriorated in the years that followed and in 1928, St. Cloud Hill was purchased by the city of Nashville amid proposals to create a military park.
In 1936 the Work's Progress Administration (WPA) recreated part of Fort Negley - the dry-stacked limestone walls you see today at the site - and built the stone entrance gates. The wooden stockade was also rebuilt, and a small museum was added in the north main works underground magazine. Eight hundred men worked on the project at a cost of $84,000. The fort remained open until 1945 until 1945 when the deteriorated stockade was removed and the site was closed to the public.