Enslaved and Free Laborers of the US Army in Civil War Nashville: Supplemental Materials and Claims-Making, 1862-1879

The Battle of Nashville was the pivotal conflict of the Civil War. The Union troops required an extraordinary amount of labor to build a system of fortifications, trenches, redoubts and other wartime infrastructure to successfully capture and defend the city. With a mix of enslaved and free laborers, some of whom were impressed and others who volunteered their time and expertise, Nashville became the most fortified city in the war. Previously, the number of laborers necessary to complete such a monumental task was estimated at just under 3,000. The team used two different types of documents to add to this number: One, we extracted information about additional unlisted laborers from military correspondence regarding their claims and the claims of their widows, wives, and descendants. Two, we merged multiple lists created by various Federal officers that kept track of the Black laborers with whom they worked at various sites in and around the city in the Spatial Historian program. Through comparing these lists with the original labor rolls generated by General Morton, the team was able add an additional ~2,000 people to the toll, for a total of ~5,000 laborers who worked on Nashville’s defenses during the Civil War. This article expands on the process of extracting community-sourced data and linking it to previous datasets in order to create the most complete and recent count of enslaved and free Black laborers whose labor and craftsmanship in Nashville’s defenses helped bring the Civil War to its end.纳什维尔战役是美国内战中的关键性战役。为成功夺取并守卫纳什维尔，联邦军队需投入大量劳力构建防御工事、战壕、棱堡及其他战时基础设施。当时参与施工的劳工涵盖被奴役者与自由民，其中既有被强制征召者，亦有自愿贡献时间与专业技能者，纳什维尔也因此成为内战期间防御工事最为完备的城市。此前，完成此项宏伟工程所需的劳工数量预估不足3000人。研究团队通过两类不同的文献资料修正了这一估算数值：其一，从军事信函中提取未被计入名录的额外劳工信息，这些信息来自劳工本人及其遗孀、配偶与后代的索赔申请；其二，整合多位联邦军官所创建的多份名单，这些军官曾通过空间历史分析（Spatial Historian）程序，追踪记录在纳什维尔市内及周边各工地劳作的非裔劳工。研究团队将上述名单与莫顿将军最初编制的劳工名册进行比对后，新增了约2000名劳工，使得内战期间参与纳什维尔防御工事建设的劳工总规模达到约5000人。本文详述了提取社区共享数据并将其与已有数据集整合的全过程，旨在构建迄今最为完整、最新的非裔劳工统计数据——这些被奴役与自由的非裔劳工通过其劳作与技艺参与纳什维尔防御工事的建设，为美国内战的终结贡献了力量。