Appalachian History
On a foggy September morning in 1861, the American Civil War arrived in Knox County. About 800 Confederates under Colonel Joel A. Battle, sent forward by Brigadier General Felix Zollicoffer, marched toward a small Unionist training ground called Camp Andrew Johnson on the edge of Barbourville. There they met a much smaller force of Knox County Home Guards commanded by Captain Isaac J. Black, posted at a bridge over Town Branch. Within minutes, the county’s attempt to stand neutral in a sectional crisis had been shattered by rifle fire.
Today the fight at Barbourville is remembered as the first significant Civil War engagement in Kentucky and the only named battlefield in Knox County. The skirmish was brief, but the county’s wartime story did not end at the bridge. It continued in the muddy camps at Flat Lick, in recruiting grounds like Camp Garber, in county courtrooms where alleged traitors were indicted, and in the public markers that still explain the war to visitors along the Wilderness Road.
Knox County on the Edge of Neutrality
In the spring and summer of 1861 Kentucky’s leaders tried to keep the state officially neutral. Legislators and Governor Beriah Magoffin struggled to balance competing Unionist and Confederate sympathies while both governments eyed Kentucky’s rivers, railroads, and mountain gaps.
Even before open war reached Knox County, the Commonwealth was quietly preparing for it. In October 1859, after John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Kentucky reorganized its militia as the Kentucky State Guard. The state appointed county military inspectors with the rank of major to encourage drilling and readiness. Knox County’s inspector was Major John G. Eve of Barbourville, named to the post on May 29, 1861.
That appointment anchored Knox County within the state’s militia system. At the same time, Unionist leaders in the mountains were organizing their own networks. Along the Wilderness Road, Barbourville was a key crossroads between Cumberland Gap, the Cumberland River, and the interior of Kentucky. Those same roads that carried drovers and migrants would soon carry columns of blue and gray, along with refugees from East Tennessee.
Camp Andrew Johnson and the Home Guard
By summer 1861 Union sympathizers had established Camp Andrew Johnson near Barbourville as a recruiting and training camp for pro Union men from both Kentucky and East Tennessee. The Kentucky Historical Society’s highway marker for Knox County and the National Park Service’s battlefield survey agree on the basics. Several hundred Unionist recruits cycled through Camp Andrew Johnson that summer, drilling under officers connected to the federal effort to secure Kentucky.
Alongside those new soldiers stood the local Home Guard. Captain Isaac J. Black, a Knox County farmer and community leader, commanded roughly 300 Home Guardsmen mustered from the surrounding countryside. Later documents in the Civil War Governors of Kentucky collection show Black as both a military man and a county official, a reminder that the same men who kept court dockets and tax rolls often commanded the armed companies that defended their neighbors.
By early September, as Confederate columns moved toward the Cumberland Gap, Kentucky’s neutrality was coming apart. On September 14 Zollicoffer’s brigade pushed through the Gap and down the old road toward Barbourville, aiming to break up the Unionist presence at Camp Andrew Johnson and to threaten the federal position at Camp Dick Robinson farther north.
Fog on Town Branch: The Battle of Barbourville
Just after daybreak on September 19, 1861, Zollicoffer sent about 800 men under Colonel Joel A. Battle toward Barbourville. Most of the Camp Andrew Johnson recruits had already been moved to Camp Dick Robinson, so the Confederate detachment found an almost empty training ground. The fight came instead at a bridge over Town Branch, just outside the town center, where Captain Black’s Home Guards tried to block the road.
Contemporary and near contemporary accounts agree that a heavy fog hung over the hollow. Black’s men tore up the planking on the bridge, forcing the approaching Tennesseans to pick their way forward under fire. Zollicoffer later reported only a skirmish between pickets, but other descriptions emphasize the intensity of the close range firing in the ravine around the bridge.
In his official report, Captain Black listed his losses as one man killed, one wounded, and thirteen captured. Confederate casualties are usually given as about seven killed. The Kentucky marker summary uses slightly different combined figures, a reminder that even small actions could leave a tangle of numbers depending on who was counting and when.
Whatever the exact totals, the outcome was clear. The Confederates forced the bridge, drove the Home Guards back through town, seized the abandoned camp, burned its buildings, and captured whatever arms and equipment remained. The National Park Service’s Civil War Sites Advisory Commission later designated the action as battle site KY001 and noted that, “for all practical purposes,” it was the first encounter of the war in Kentucky.
From Barbourville to Camp Wildcat
The skirmish at the bridge was only the opening move in a wider campaign. After Barbourville, Confederate detachments moved against other Unionist outposts in the region. A force struck at Laurel Bridge in neighboring Laurel County, scattering another Home Guard camp, while a separate detachment moved to Clay County and destroyed the Goose Creek Salt Works, seizing hundreds of barrels of salt that were vital to the Union war effort and to local households.
Federal commanders reacted quickly. Brigadier General George H. Thomas ordered troops under Colonel Theophilus T. Garrard to fortify a commanding ridge near London, soon known as Camp Wildcat. That position barred the Wilderness Road farther north and set the stage for the Battle of Camp Wildcat on October 21, 1861, where Zollicoffer’s men suffered a bloody repulse.
For Knox County, the important detail is where Zollicoffer fell back after that fight. In late October he reported from “Camp Flat Lick, Knox County,” describing to his superiors an entrenched enemy camp in front of him, exhausted forage for fifteen miles behind, and Confederate casualties of more than forty wounded and eleven killed or missing. His men had captured prisoners and weapons, but the mountain roads and thin supplies forced him to retreat.
That report places Confederate headquarters at Flat Lick, a rural community southeast of Barbourville. For several weeks in 1861, the same county that had sent Home Guards to the bridge now hosted thousands of Confederate soldiers trying to push deeper into Kentucky.
Union Camps at Flat Lick and Camp Garber
The war did not leave Knox County once Zollicoffer’s brigade withdrew. The same geography that had drawn Confederates in 1861 drew Union forces and refugees in 1862. Flat Lick and its surroundings became an important staging area for East Tennessee Unionists who slipped across the mountains to enlist under the United States flag.
The regimental history of the First Tennessee Cavalry (Union) notes that companies of the regiment organized at Camp Garber, “near Flat Lick, Kentucky,” in the spring of 1862. Men from East Tennessee made their way north through Cumberland Gap or over rougher trails and mustered into federal service on Knox County soil.
Together with the earlier Confederate encampment at Camp Flat Lick and the Unionist training ground at Camp Andrew Johnson, Camp Garber shows how Knox County’s farms and crossroads became military real estate. For local families the presence of thousands of soldiers meant the loss of forage, timber, and privacy, but it also made the county a symbol of refuge for Unionists in the upper South, especially those from the divided counties just over the Tennessee line.
Loyalty on Trial in Barbourville
The Home Guard and the early battles are the visible side of Knox County’s Civil War, but the war also unfolded in its courthouse. Decades after the guns fell silent, historian Clinton Congleton combed the Knox County court records and published a series of “Indictments for Treason During the Civil War at Barbourville, Kentucky” in The Knox Countian. Those indictments and related minutes reveal how county authorities tried to police loyalty in a community where neighbors had chosen opposite sides.
The indictments charged men with offenses ranging from enlisting in Confederate units to aiding guerrillas. Even when the cases never reached a full trial, the very act of indictment marked certain residents as suspect in the eyes of their Unionist neighbors. The records remind us that the war in Knox County was not simply a clash of outside armies. It was also a struggle among locals over whose version of loyalty would define the community.
Other documents in the Civil War Governors of Kentucky project hint at the postwar efforts of men like Isaac J. Black to seek compensation or legal relief for losses incurred while serving the Union cause. Those petitions and legislative acts show how the memory of the Home Guard’s stand at Barbourville continued to shape politics long after the smoke cleared from Town Branch.
Finding the Bridge and Building a Park
For many years local tradition pointed vaguely to a “Civil War bridge” near Barbourville, but not everyone agreed on which crossing of Town Branch had seen the fighting. In the early 2000s local researchers Michael C. Mills and Charles Reed Mitchell turned to Knox County land records and old surveys to narrow down the possibilities. Their article “Finding Barbourville’s Civil War Bridge,” published in The Knox Countian, used deed descriptions and maps to match wartime accounts to a specific crossing, probably just south of the modern courthouse square.
At about the same time, the city and the Knox Historical Museum worked with historian Joseph E. Brent to create the Barbourville Civil War Interpretive Park near the likely bridge site. Brent’s work on the interpretive panels drew heavily on the Official Records, the Kentucky Historical Society markers, and local research, while the park itself gave physical form to stories that had previously lived mostly in books and family lore.
The Kentucky Historical Society’s highway markers for Knox County, “Civil War 1861–1865 in Knox County” and “Barbourville Civil War Actions,” frame the September 19 battle as both the county’s only named Civil War engagement and one of the first skirmishes in eastern Kentucky. They also note later wartime occupations of Barbourville and Flat Lick, including Confederate General Kirby Smith’s headquarters there during his 1862 invasion.
Today, visitors can walk the interpretive park, read those marker texts, and look across the ravine that once separated Home Guards from advancing Confederates. The quiet of Town Branch belies the noise it heard in 1861.
Why Knox County’s Small Battle Matters
Measured against the titanic clashes at Shiloh or Chickamauga, the Battle of Barbourville was tiny. Fewer than a thousand men were engaged on either side, and the casualties were counted in tens rather than hundreds. Yet the fight and the encampments that followed are central to understanding Kentucky’s Civil War and the war in the Appalachian borderlands more broadly.
First, Knox County illustrates how local initiative shaped the war’s early course. The existence of Camp Andrew Johnson and a sizable Home Guard under Isaac J. Black showed that Appalachian Unionists were not passive observers. Their organizing helped push the state toward a firmer Union stance and drew Confederate attention to an otherwise remote county seat.
Second, the county’s geography made it a corridor rather than an isolated backwater. Confederate reports from Camp Flat Lick and Union regimental histories from Camp Garber both emphasize the same challenges: rough roads, scarce forage, and the strategic value of the Wilderness Road and the approaches to Cumberland Gap. Knox County was not a sideshow. It was a gateway that both armies sought to control as they fought over Kentucky.
Finally, the legal and commemorative record shows how the war’s memory was contested long after 1865. Treason indictments, petitions for relief, highway markers, and interpretive parks all tell us which stories local people chose to preserve. By bringing together official records, local newspapers, land deeds, and family memories, Knox County’s Civil War story becomes richer and more complicated than a simple tale of a morning skirmish at a bridge.
In that sense, Knox County is a microcosm of Appalachia in the Civil War. A small place where neutrality collapsed, loyalties split, and ordinary communities found themselves standing at the crossroads of a national conflict.
Sources & Further Reading
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, especially Volume 4, for correspondence on Zollicoffer’s 1861 Kentucky operations and Captain Isaac J. Black’s casualty report from Barbourville. Civil War+1
F. K. Zollicoffer to W. W. Mackall and to Adjutant General Cooper, reports from Camp Flat Lick, Knox County, October 24 and 26, 1861, describing the advance toward Camp Wildcat and the logistical strain on his brigade. Civil War+1
“Eyewitness Accounts of the Battle of Barbourville, First Civil War Conflict in the State of Kentucky,” and “Indictments for Treason During the Civil War at Barbourville, KY,” in The Knox Countian, published by the Knox Historical Museum, printing and summarizing county level testimonies and court records.
Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition, entries relating to Isaac J. Black and other Knox Countians, including legislative acts and court documents that illuminate local military and civil roles. Civil War Governors+1
History of the First Regiment of the Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry in the Great War of the Rebellion, passages on the organization of the regiment at Camp Garber near Flat Lick, Kentucky, with details on East Tennessee Unionists mustering in Knox County.
The Kentucky Historical Society highway markers “Civil War 1861–1865 in Knox County” and “Barbourville Civil War Actions,” as compiled in Armando Alfaro, The Paper Trail of the Civil War in Kentucky 1861–1865, summarizing the Battle of Barbourville and later wartime occupations. KY National Guard History
Barbourville Civil War Interpretive Park panels, transcribed and discussed by Joseph E. Brent and colleagues for The Knox Countian and preserved online through entries on the Historical Marker Database. Facebook
“Battle of Barbourville,” National Park Service Civil War Sites Advisory Commission battle summary KY001, for an overview of the engagement and its place in Eastern Kentucky operations. National Park Service
“Battle of Barbourville,” Wikipedia, for a concise synthesis of the battle, casualty figures, and links to broader works on Kentucky’s Civil War. Wikipedia
Brian D. McKnight, Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia, for wider context on the Cumberland Gap corridor and its divided communities. Wikipedia+1
Lowell H. Harrison et al., Kentucky’s Civil War 1861–1865, a foundational survey tying the Barbourville action to the collapse of neutrality and early campaigning in the Commonwealth. Wikipedia
Stuart W. Sanders, The Battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky, especially the opening chapters that treat Zollicoffer’s 1861 offensive from Barbourville through Camp Wildcat and on toward Mill Springs. Wikipedia+1
Larry J. Daniel, Days of Glory: The Army of the Cumberland, 1861–1865, for how Union commanders interpreted early Kentucky skirmishes like Barbourville when planning troop deployments. Wikipedia
Douglas K. Hurt, “Kentucky in the Civil War 1861–1862,” Essential Civil War Curriculum, for a concise overview of Kentucky’s political break with neutrality and the early campaigns in which Knox County figured. Legends of America+1
David Helton, Clinton Congleton, Michael C. Mills, Charles Reed Mitchell, and Joseph E. Brent, various articles in The Knox Countian on the Civil War in Knox County and the creation of the Barbourville Civil War Interpretive Park, for detailed local research on sites, records, and memory.
“The Battle of Barbourville: Kentucky’s First Clash of the Civil War,” AppalachianHistorian.org, for a focused narrative of the September 19 fight and its place in the wider Kentucky Confederate Offensive. appalachianhistorian.org