[Nfbk] New in Fred's Head Army Captures Kentucky School for the Blind!

[Joey Couch]

This was posted in the FredsHead blog earlyer today and I thought some
of you all might like to give this a read.
The link for the FredsHead blog is http://www.fredshead.info.

How are you commemorating the impact of the Civil War on the schools
in your state? Few were left untouched by the terrible conflict. In
the autumn of 1862, as the tides of combat rolled across Kentucky,
Louisville was in a constant state of turmoil. Confederate armies had
entered Kentucky that summer, determined to capture the city and
destroy the Union army’s most important western supply depot. On
Frankfort Avenue, a series of entrenchments were constructed, and for
a time, it looked like war would halt the start of the school year at
the Kentucky Institution for the Education of the Blind (KIEB). Union
army officers had their eye on the school buildings, planning to
convert the modern main building into a hospital. But the board of
visitors at the Institution was well connected and, for a time, used
their influence to stave off moves to seize the campus.

After the battle of Perryville on October 8th, however, thousands of
wounded were flooding into Louisville. Although their superiors had
encouraged them to use other buildings, federal doctors used the
crisis to order the blind students and their faculty out within
twenty-four hours. The students were carted off to the Alexander House
on Workhouse Road on land that later became part of Cherokee Park. By
the second week in November, there were 270 sick and wounded patients
in classrooms and dormitories converted into hospital wards and
operating rooms.

Other residential schools suffered similar fates, in Tennessee,
Virginia, and Mississippi. In Kentucky, however, the KIEB board
decided to fight. Led by their president, William F. Bullock, who also
served as president of the board at APH for many years, the board
first appealed to the generals in charge of the city’s defense. When
that failed, they went to Washington. Within days, orders came by
telegraph to return the building to the control of the board. Drs.
John Head and Middleton Goldsmith countered, however, that other
hospitals were unfit, that squads of wounded in scattered homes was no
way to run a hospital, and that they could not believe the War
Department intended for them to put 300 wounded soldiers out in the
road for a few blind children.

In the end, the KIEB board produced an order from somewhere—three were
judges and the fourth a prominent physician—giving them authority to
command a troop of soldiers, which they used in early January to evict
the federal doctors. The campus was a mess. Board reports noted that
fences and other wooden structures on the property had been destroyed
and the halls were cluttered with hospital beds and equipment. It
would be June 1863 before things at the school approached their
pre-crisis normality.

If you would like help learning about the Civil War and life at your
own state school for blind and visually impaired kids, contact Mike
Hudson in our museum at mhudson at aph.org or 502-899-2365.


-- 
Joey Couch
phone 606-216-8033.
email ki4vjd at gmail.com
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