Published: May 07, 2009 12:03 pm      

Civil War historians visit Camp Wildcat

Eighty-five Civil War historians visited Laurel County’s Camp Wildcat Civil War Battlefield on April 24.

The event was hosted by the Camp Wildcat Preservation Foundation and led by Ed Bearss, noted U.S. Park Service Historian (ret.) and Wilson Greene, president of the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier. The visit was part of the Chicago Civil War Roundtable’s tour entitled “Kentucky and Lincoln”. The group was made up of educators, authors and historians from Chicago and elsewhere in the Midwest. The Chicago Civil War Roundtable was founded in 1940 and was the first group of its kind to exclusively study the war and Lincoln. There are now over 300 Roundtable groups in the United States, Great Britain, Canada and Australia.

In addition to Camp Wildcat, the group toured Perryville, Mill Springs, Richmond and Tibbs Bend battlefields and Lincoln’s birthplace and boyhood home. Many of the visitors said they would likely return to spend more time at Camp Wildcat and visit other attractions in the area. “It was a privilege to have a prestigious group like this visit our site” said John Strojan, president of the CWPF. Judge Lawrence Kuhl and the Laurel County Fiscal Court ensured the road was in good shape to allow the buses provided by RTEC easy access to the battlefield. “The tour would not have been a possible without the Fiscal Court’s help” said Strojan.

According to Roger Bohn, the group’s logistics coordinator, “Camp Wildcat is fantastic and the interpretation of the site is exceptional.” When asked why the group would want to come to a relatively small battlefield he stated “… it helps tell the story of Kentucky’s strategic importance in the war. And on top of all that, it is a beautiful intact site”. Kentucky was an important part of President Lincoln’s war strategy. Lincoln wrote, “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor, I think, Maryland. The war can never be brought to a close until that key, Kentucky, is in our pocket.”

The Camp Wildcat Preservation Foundation is a volunteer organization dedicated to the preservation, protection an interpretation of the Camp Wildcat Civil War Battlefield site. For more information on the organization and battlefield, visit www.wildcatbattlefield.org.