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By Paul A. Tenkotte, PhD
Special to NKyTribune
The Civil War was the nation’s worst disaster. Too often it has been romanticized in history books and in films, but the dreadful truth was that more than 600,000 people — North and South — died as the result of the nation’s bloodiest war, two-thirds of them from disease.
Medicine was still primitive, the germ theory of disease had not yet been discovered, and sanitary conditions were poor. Yet, the war lived on for years afterward, in the memories of those who lived through it, and in the lives of widows and orphans who never saw their loved ones again.
On May 30, 1868, the United States held its first observance of Memorial Day, established to honor the Union dead of the Civil War. Since that time, Memorial Day has evolved into a national day of remembrance to reverence the heroic efforts of all those who died in defense of the United States.
By 1860 Cincinnati was the seventh largest city in the United States and the most populous along the Ohio River. With 161,044 residents, it was slightly smaller than New Orleans (168,675) at the delta of the Mississippi River and St. Louis (160,773) near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Covington, Kentucky, directly across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, had a population of 16,471.
Like Cincinnati, Covington was a major commercial and manufacturing center of the Ohio River valley. In addition, it was the northern terminus of an important railway connection south, the Kentucky Central Railroad (also called the Covington and Lexington Railroad, or C&L).
The residents of Cincinnati and Covington depended heavily upon a vast network of trade between the North and the South. Not surprisingly—whether or not they supported states’ rights—they were reluctant to see the Union torn apart. Further, by 1860, slavery was a dying institution in Covington. In 1850, the US census had counted 281 enslaved people in the city versus 197 in 1860, a decrease of nearly 30% in ten years. In fact, Covington—along with Cincinnati and Newport, Kentucky—was a center of the Underground Railroad, that is, of the long network of stations aiding the flight of African Americans to freedom.
Covington’s most anxious moments during the Civil War occurred in late summer 1862, when 8,000 Confederate forces under General Henry Heth advanced northward toward Northern Kentucky, intending to lay siege to Cincinnati. In reality, the Confederate forces would have never been able to hold a city the size of Cincinnati, but they could have emptied its warehouses of needed supplies and even demanded a ransom from its residents. Neither occurred, however, as Union forces quickly went into action.
Union General Lew Wallace assumed command. Thousands of troops crossed a pontoon bridge across the Ohio River to construct an eight-mile-long series of fortifications along the hillsides of Kenton and Campbell Counties to protect the region from invasion.
The Cincinnati Black Brigade, one of the first examples of black soldiers serving the Union, assisted in the building of the defensive line. Union gunboats patrolled the Ohio River, and martial law was declared in Covington, Cincinnati, and Newport. The Confederates withdrew, and the three cities only sporadically worried about rebel raiders, like John Hunt Morgan, thereafter. Rebel uprooting of railroad tracks, the burning of trestles, and the cutting of telegraph lines along the Kentucky Central Railroad proved particularly annoying and expensive, leading to the detachment of Union troops to guard this important supply line.
During the course of the Civil War, Covington and Newport must have seemed like armed camps. Across the Licking River from Covington was Newport Barracks, a major Union army installation. South of the Covington city limits, Camp King mustered in Union soldiers along the Licking River (in the area of present Meinken Field), and kept a regiment posted for maintenance of the city’s defensive line. In 1862, near 20th and Greenup Streets, the Union Army opened Covington Barracks, composed of 41 frame structures, with the capacity to house up to 2,000 troops temporarily.
In the same year, the government built three large stables on Banklick Pike south of the city, capable of holding as many as 4,500 horses and mules. Untold thousands of Union soldiers passed through the city, arriving and departing at the Kentucky Central Railroad terminal at Pike and Washington Streets. Trains laden with army provisions regularly left the city, and Covington’s industries, stores, and bakeries worked to supply the army’s needs. For instance, Covington’s Busch and Jordan Rolling Mill manufactured axles for government wagons.
Meanwhile, runaway enslaved people, as well as refugees from the South, especially those from Eastern Tennessee, passed through Covington. So too did newly-released Confederate prisoners-of-war on their way home. And newly captured Confederate prisoners-of-war were housed temporarily at the Odd Fellows Hall, and later at a new prison near Covington Barracks. A hotel on Main Street in Covington, formerly called the Elliston House, became Covington’s largest Union army hospital, with 402 beds. So too did the former Western Baptist Theological Institute on West 11th Street, with 218 beds, and the old Bridge Hotel at Front and Greenup Streets. At times, steamboats filled with hundreds of casualties arrived in Covington. Without a doubt, the city was one of the major national centers to receive and treat wounded soldiers. Sadly, its funeral directors also supplied untold numbers of caskets for those who died.
In the presidential election of 1864, Abraham Lincoln garnered 55.5% of the vote of Kenton County. In April 1865, with the end of hostilities, war-weary residents of Covington celebrated with the ringing of church bells, the firing of cannon, and bonfires at night. The Covington fire department joined a celebratory parade in Cincinnati, proudly displaying its fire engine called the U.S. Grant. After Lincoln’s assassination, Covington businesses closed on the day of his funeral (April 19, 1865), bells tolled, and residents attended church services in his memory.
Portions of this articleoriginally appeared in Paul A. Tenkotte PhD, James C. Claypool PhD, and David E. Schroeder’s Gateway City: Covington, Kentucky, 1815–2015 (Covington, KY: Clerisy Press, 2015).
Paul A. Tenkotte, PhD is Editor of the “Our Rich History” weekly series and Professor of History at Northern Kentucky University (NKU). To browse ten years of past columns, see: https://nkytribune.com/category/living/our-rich-history/. Tenkotte also serves as Director of the ORVILLE Project (Ohio River Valley Innovation Library and Learning Engagement). He can be contacted at tenkottep@nku.edu.