Camp Dick Robinson - Change of Command

Change of Command

Brig. Gen. Robert Anderson had previously obtained permission to replace Lieutenant Nelson with a regular army officer, and on September 15, Brig. Gen. George H. Thomas assumed command at Camp Dick Robinson. Nelson received an appointment to Brigadier General of Volunteers with orders to raise another brigade and stop a Confederate incursion toward Lexington from eastern Kentucky. On September 19, Confederate troops under Brig. Gen. Felix Zollicoffer seized Barbourville, Kentucky, and made that a base of operations for an intended advance against Richmond and Lexington. Ten days later President Lincoln wrote to Indiana’s Governor Morton to say he hoped "Zollicoffer has left Cumberland Gap (though I fear he has not, because, it he has, I rather infer his dread of Camp Dick Robinson, reinforced from Cincinnati, moving on him, than because of his intention to move on Louisville."

There were some 6,000-8,000 Rebels at Barbourville, and Lincoln made a memorandum that he wanted a movement made about October 5 "to seize and hold a point on the railroad connecting Virginia and Tennessee near . . . Cumberland Gap." Thomas had 9,000 troops, and he ordered those previously assembled by Nelson beyond Crab Orchard and east into the Rockcastle Hills to keep the enemy from coming north on the Wilderness Road. On October 21, those Union volunteers defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Camp Wildcat. At the end of November, Thomas went in pursuit of Zollicoffer near Somerset, and Camp Dick Robinson continued to serve as a receiving area for new troops that joined in the Battle of Mill Springs on January 19, 1862. That victory enabled the Army of the Ohio to march into middle Tennessee and occupy Nashville in late February.