University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XV
THE NEGRO SOLDIER'S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM

NEGRO soldiers have fought in every war,
I suspect, that has ever been waged
on the American continent. Negroes
fought at Bunker Hill and all through the Revolutionary
War. Before that time, Negroes are
known to have been engaged, in one way
or another, in most of the Indian wars.
They were conspicuous in the battles of New
Orleans and of Lake Erie, in the War of 1812.
They fought on both sides in the Civil War, and
from that time on they have been an important
part of the standing army of the United States. In
most of these wars, I may add, the Negro has
fought not merely in the interest of the country
and of the civilisation with which he has become
identified, but also, as in the Revolutionary and
Civil wars, to secure and maintain his own freedom.

It is impossible to tell just how many Negro
soldiers were engaged in the Revolutionary War.
In August, 1778, two months after the battle of
Monmouth, the official returns of Washington's
army showed that there were 755 Negroes scattered

among the different regiments. But this did not
include the Connecticut, New York, and New
Hampshire troops, in which large numbers of
Negroes, who had been slaves, had been allowed
to take their masters' places in the ranks. It did
not include, either, the regiment of Freedmen,
raised in Rhode Island, which fought so courageously
at the battle of Rhode Island, in August, 1778.[1]
Three years later, in May, 1781, when Colonel
Green, of this regiment, was surprised at Point
Bridge, New York, his black soldiers, a detachment
of whom accompanied him, defended their leader
until every one of them was dead.

As a rule, the Negro soldiers were not organised
in the Patriot Army into separate organisations,
but were scattered through the different regiments.
Hessian officer, writing under the date of October
23, 1777, in reference to his march through Massachusetts,
says: "The Negro can take the field
instead of his master; and therefore no regiment
is to be seen in which there are not Negroes in
abundance; and among them are able-bodied,
strong, brave fellows. Here, too," he adds, "there
are many families of free Negroes who live in good

houses, have property and live just like the rest
of the inhabitants."[2]

This statement is further confirmed by the official
roll of Massachusetts soldiers, which shows that
there were Negroes in the regiments of that state
from almost every Massachusetts town. Although
no Negro regiment was raised in Connecticut, still
in Meigs's, afterward Butler's regiment, there was
a company made up entirely of coloured men.
George W. Williams, in his "History of the Negro
Troops in the War of the Rebellion," after a careful
study of the rolls of the Continental Army,
reached the conclusion that there were no less than
3,000 Negro soldiers in the Continental army
during the Revolutionary War.[3]

Fewer Negroes were allowed to enter the Patriot
Army in the Southern colonies, although a strenuous
effort was made by Colonel John Laurens,
of South Carolina, and other patriots, to carry
out the provisions that the Continental Congress
had made for raising a Negro regiment. Free
Negroes enlisted in considerable numbers in the
Virginia regiments, although there was no law by
which their service could be accepted. In 1783,
however, the General Assembly passed a law
directing the emancipation of a certain number

of slaves who had served as soldiers in that state,
and particularly "of the slave Aberdeen," who had
worked for a long time in the state lead mines.

The Revolutionary War contributed, in several
ways, toward the emancipation of the slaves. In
the struggle of the colonies to secure liberty for
themselves the sentiments expressed by Thomas
Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence led
many people to feel that Negro slavery was wrong.
It was partly this sentiment and partly the needs
of the Continental Army that led several of the
states to pass laws which provided that slaves
might serve in the Patriot Army and that, at the
end of their service, they should go free. This
was the case in New York where, on March 20,
1781, a law providing for two regiments of Negro
slaves specified that, after three years of service,
these slaves should be free. The Rhode Island
law, which provided for a regiment of black men,
specified, also, that those who took part in the
struggle for freedom of the colonies should have
their own freedom. It was, no doubt, largely
as a result of the services of the Negro troops during
the war that, on February 23, 1784, the General
Assembly of Rhode Island passed a law making
free all Negroes and mulattoes born in that state
after March 1 of that same year.

Negroes not only served in the War of the Revolution,
but individual coloured men are still remembered,

in the tradition of that time, for the daring
exploits in which they engaged. In Trumbull's
celebrated historic painting of the battle of Bunker
Hill, one of the conspicuous figures is a Negro by
the name of Peter Salem, who is said to have been
responsible for the death of Major Pitcairn, of the
British Marines, who fell just as he mounted the
Patriots' redoubt, shouting, "The day is ours!"

Peter Salem was a private in Colonel Nixon's
regiment. He was born in Framingham, and was
held as a slave until the time he joined the army.
Colonel Trumbull, who, at the time of the battle,
was stationed with his regiment in Roxbury, and saw
the action from that point, has introduced the figures
of several other coloured men into his canvas.[4]

Another coloured man whose name has been
preserved in the records of the Revolutionary War
was Salem Poor, of Colonel Frye's regiment, Captain
Ames's company. He took part in the Battle
of Bunker Hill and so distinguished himself that
a petition, signed by some of the principal officers
who took part in that battle, was drawn up and
sent to the General Court of Massachusetts Bay

in order to secure recognition for his services.
This was less than six months after the battle in
which he had taken part had been fought.

Another incident, which illustrates a trait often
referred to, namely, the fidelity of Negro soldiers
to their officers, has been noticed in the memoir
of Major Samuel Lawrence, who took part in the
Battle of Bunker Hill. At one time, it is related,
Major Lawrence commanded a company, "whose
rank and file were all Negroes, of whose courage,
military discipline, and fidelity he always spoke
with respect." On one occasion, while he and
his company were somewhat in advance of the
other troops, Major Lawrence was surrounded
and on the point of being made prisoner by the
enemy. His men, discovering his peril, hurried
to his rescue "and fought with the most determined
bravery till that rescue was effectually secured"
His biographer says that Major Lawrence never
forgot that circumstance, and ever after took special
pains to show kindness and hospitality to every
individual coloured man who came his way. This
interest and friendship in the coloured man, which
began with Major Lawrence in the way described,
was continued to his distinguished grandson, Amos
A. Lawrence, who took a prominent part in the
struggle for freedom in Kansas, being a member
of the Emigrant Aid Society which did so much
to make Kansas free.

Negroes played a less conspicuous part in the
war in North and South Carolina and Georgia
than they did elsewhere. But in White's "Historical
Collections of Georgia," there is an account
given of a Negro soldier by the name of Austin
Dabney, which is so interesting that I am tempted
to relate the story here at some length.

Austin Dabney had been born, from all that I
can learn, of free parents, but in some way or other,
he had fallen into the hands of a man by the name
of Aycock, who lived in Wilkes County, Georgia.
This man was unable to serve in the Patriot Army
himself, and for that reason offered this slave boy
as a substitute and, after the circumstances of his
birth were explained, he was accepted. Dabney
proved himself a good soldier and took part in
many a skirmish with British and Tories, in which
he acted a conspicuous part. He was with Colonel
Elijah Clark at the Battle of Kettle Creek, February
14, 1779, where he was wounded and made a
cripple for life. He was unable to do further
military duty and was without means to obtain
proper medical attention. In this critical condition
he was taken into the house of a white man by
the name of Harris, where he was kindly cared
for until he recovered. So grateful was he to this
man, Mr. Harris, for taking him into his home at
a time when he was without friends and unable to
assist himself, that he afterward devoted a large

part of his life to working for and taking care of
Mr. Harris and his family.

After the close of the war, Austin Dabney acquired
property and became prosperous. He removed
to Madison County, carrying with him his benefactor,
Mr. Harris, and family. Here he became
noted for his great fondness for horses and the
turf. He attended all the races in the neighbourhood,
and, in the words of Mr. White's chronicle,
"his courteous behaviour and good temper always
secured him gentleman backers."

Dabney had been freed for his services in the
Revolutionary War. He was in receipt of a pension
from the Federal Government and in the distribution
of public lands by lottery among the people of Georgia,
the Legislature gave him a considerable amount
of land in the county of Walton. The Representative
from Oglethorpe, the Hon. Mr. Upson, was the
member who moved this passage of the law.

The granting of this land to a coloured man was
strenuously opposed by a number of people and,
at the election of members of the Legislature of
Madison County, the people were divided into an
Austin Dabney and an anti-Austen Dabney party.
It was perhaps because he did not enjoy the results
of this controversy that Dabney soon after removed
to the land given him by the state in Walton County,
taking with him the Harris family, for whom he
continued to labour. Upon his death he left them

all his property. The eldest son of his benefactor
Harris sent to Franklin College and afterward supported
him while he studied law with Mr. Upson
in Lexington. In the account given in White's
"Historical Collections," it is stated that Dabney
was "one of the best chroniclers of events of the
Revolutionary War in Georgia."

As illustrating the character of Austin Dabney
and the good repute which he maintained among
his neighbours the following anecdote is related
in White's "Collections."

He drew his pension at Savannah, where he went once a year for
this purpose. On one occasion he went to Savannah in company
with his neighbour, Colonel Wyley Pope. They travelled together
on the most familiar terms, until they arrived in the streets of the
town. Then the Colonel observed to Austin that he was a man of
sense, and knew that it was not suitable for him to be seen riding
side by side with a coloured man through the streets of Savannah;
to which Austin replied that he understood the matter very well.
Accordingly, when they came to the principal street, Austin checked
his horse and fell behind. They had not gone very far before
Colonel Pope passed by the house of General James Jackson, who
was then Governor of the state. Upon looking back he saw the
Governor run out of the house, seize Austin's hand, shake it as if
he had been his long absent brother, draw him off his horse, and
carry him into his house, where he stayed whilst in town. Colonel
Pope used to tell this anecdote with much glee, adding that he
felt chagrined when he ascertained that whilst he passed his time
at the tavern, unknown and uncared for, Austin was the honoured
guest of the Governor.

It should not be understood from what has
been said here that Negroes were admitted at once

and without opposition into the Patriot Army.
There was at first considerable opposition to them,
particularly from the officers in the army. One
incident that hastened their entrance into the army
was the proclamation by Lord Dunmore, the
Royal Governor of Virginia, in November, 1775,
offering freedom to all such Negroes and indentured
white servants as might enlist for the purpose "of
reducing the colony to the proper sense of its duty."
Other proclamations inviting the Negroes to join
the King's armies and fight against their masters
were issued later by Sir Henry Clinton and Lord
Cornwallis. As a matter of fact a great many
slaves were carried off by the British troops during
the war. It is estimated that no less than thirty
thousand of them were taken from the plantations
and employed by the British troops in pioneer
work and in building fortifications, but the greater
part of these slaves died from fever and small-pox
in the British camps. The remainder were sent
to the West Indies, others to Nova Scotia, and
still others to the colony of Sierra Leone. Referring
to this matter in a speech in the United States
House of Representatives, December 12, 1820, the
Hon. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina says:

Although Negro soldiers had fought in the Revolutionary
War and in the War of 1812, it was
some time before the Federal Government was
prepared to enlist Negro soldiers to fight in the
Civil War against the people who were still holding
black men as slaves. As a matter of fact, it was
in the Confederate armies that the first Negro
soldiers were enlisted. During the latter part
of April, 1861, a Negro company at Nashville,
Tennessee, made up of "free people of colour,"
offered its services to the Confederate Government.
Shortly after, a recruiting office was opened for
free Negroes at Memphis, Tennessee. On November
23, 1861, there was a grand review of the Confederate
troops at New Orleans, Louisiana, one
of the features of which was a regiment of fourteen
hundred free coloured men. Some of these coloured
troops remained in the service of the Confederacy

until the close of the war, but in few cases did they
have an opportunity to participate in any of the
important battles.

In the summer of 1862, General Butler organised
a regiment of free coloured people in the city of
New Orleans, under the title of the "First Louisiana
Native Guard." This was the first coloured regiment
to be mustered into the Federal Army.
General Butler has related in his autobiography,
the circumstances under which this regiment was
formed. It seems that two regiments of free Negroes
called "Native Guards, Coloured," had been
organised in New Orleans, while General Butler
was at Ship Island. After the fall of New Orleans,
many of these coloured soldiers left the city, but
some remained. General Butler learned the names
and residences of some twenty of the coloured
officers of these regiments and sent for them to
call upon him at headquarters. In talking the
situation over with them, he called their attention
to the fact that if the Federal armies were successful
Negro slavery would be abolished, and then asked
them if they would be willing to organise two
regiments of free coloured people to fight for the
freedom of their race. After some further consultation,
they readily agreed to do this, and fourteen
days later, on August 22, 1862, when General
Butler went down to the place where he had ordered
the recruits to gather, he says he saw such a sight

as he had never seen before: "Two thousand
men ready to enlist as recruits and not a man of
them who had not a white 'biled shirt' on."

Thus the first regiment of coloured troops was
mustered into the service of the United States. A
short time after this, three regiments of infantry
and two batteries of artillery were equipped and
ready for service. General Butler says of these
soldiers, "They were intelligent, obedient, highly
appreciated their position, and fully maintained
its dignity."

Previous to this time, General Hunter, who was
located at Beaufort, and the Sea Islands, off the
coast of South Carolina, had formed a regiment
from the slaves which he had found on the abandoned
plantations in that district. When this regiment
was first organised the Federal Government was
not prepared to accept the Freedmen in the positions
of soldiers, so that it was not until January 25, 1863,
that the "First South Carolina" regiment was
actually mustered into service, though it had
been in existence as an organisation for some time
before this.

Although these were the first Negro regiments
organised by the Federal Government, they were
not the first coloured soldiers to engage in battle
on the side of the Federal Government. In August,
1862, a coloured regiment, composed partly of
fugitive slaves from Missouri, was recruited in

Kansas. Although this regiment was not mustered
into the service of the United States until January,
1863, a detachment of it was attacked by Confederate
soldiers at Island Mound, Missouri,
October, 28, 1862, but after considerable fighting
the coloured troops succeeded in beating off their
opponents. This was the first action in which
Negro troops were engaged in the Civil War.

After the emancipation proclamation was issued
on January 1, 1863, the work of enlisting coloured
soldiers was taken in hand in more serious fashion.
Early in the year 1863, Governor John A. Andrews
secured permission to organise a regiment of coloured
troops. On April 12, of that year, the Fifty-fourth
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, composed of
"persons of African descent," had completed its
quota, and shortly after this two other coloured
regiments were organised. These were the first
soldiers recruited from among the free coloured
people of the North. To complete these regiments,
coloured people were summoned from all of the
Northern states. Governor Andrews was greatly
assisted in the work of recruiting the coloured
people to fill these regiments by Frederick Douglass
and the coloured abolitionists, William Wells Brown
and Charles Lenox Remond. Among the coloured
soldiers who sailed for South Carolina with the
Massachusetts regiments were two sons of Frederick
Douglass, Lewis H. and Charles R. Douglass.

Among the coloured people who enlisted in the
Federal army at this time there was a large number
who afterward distinguished themselves in some
way in public life. Among others I recall two
bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
and several men who afterward became prominent
in politics, among them P. B. S. Pinchback, who
was in the First Volunteer Louisiana Infantry, and
afterward became Lieutenant, and for a time,
Acting Governor of Louisiana during the stormiest
days of the Republican rule in that state. Charles
E. Nash, who was afterward Representative from
Louisiana in the Forty-fourth Congress, enlisted
as a private in the United States Chasseurs
d' Afrique, and afterward rose to the position of
Acting Sergeant-major of his regiment.

Bishop Henry M. Turner is said to have been the
first coloured chaplain to receive a commission from
the Federal army. Bishop Turner was living at this
time, in 1863, in Washington, District of Columbia,
where he was serving as pastor of Israel Church.
Bishop William B. Derrick, the other A. M. E.
bishop who served in the war, was born in the
Island of Antigua, British West Indies, July 27,
1843, a decade after England had granted freedom
to the slaves in the West Indian colonies. He was
educated in a Moravian school at Graceland. It
was intended that he should be a blacksmith, but
he took to the life of the sea, and became a sailor

on vessels travelling between the West Indies and
New York. This led him to enlist in the war
for the freedom of the coloured people in the United
States. He served on the flagship of the North
Atlantic Squadron, the Minnesota, and at the close
of the war became a citizen in the United States.

Among the other coloured men who enlisted
in the Civil War was George Washington Williams,
who afterward served as an officer of artillery
in the Mexican army. Mr. Williams was born in
Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania, October 16, 1849.
After the Civil War was over he studied law for a
time in the office of Judge Alphonso Taft, father
of President Taft, and in the Cincinnati Law
School. In 1879 and 1881, he was a member of
the Ohio Legislature. From 1885 to 1886, he was
Minister to Haiti, and in 1888, was a delegate to
the World's Conference of Foreign Missions at
London. He was a writer and a newspaper man
of some note and is the author of a "History of
the Negro Race in America," to which I have
frequently had occasion to refer, in the preparation
of this book.

Joseph H. Rainey, who was a member of the
Forty-second, Forty-third, the Forty-fourth, and the
Forty-fifth Congress, as Representative from South
Carolina, served for a time in the Confederate
Army. Joseph Rainey was born in Georgetown,
South Carolina, June 21, 1832. His father and

mother had been slaves, but had purchased their
freedom. When the war broke out Mr. Rainey
was working at his father's trade of barber.
Being a free man he was drafted into the service
of the Confederate Army and compelled to work
upon the fortifications, until he succeeded in
escaping to the West Indies, where he remained
till the close of the war.

A small number of coloured men, probably as
many as seventy-five, were granted commissions as
officers in the latter part of the war. Major Martin
R. Delany, and Captain O. S. B. Wall, both of
whom were detailed in the Quartermaster's Department,
attained the highest rank of any of the coloured
officers in the Army. Dr. A. T. Augusta, who afterward
became one of the leading coloured physicians
of Washington, District of Columbia, and Dr. Charles
B. Purvis, a son of Robert Purvis, the coloured
abolitionist of Philadelphia, were the best known
of the coloured army surgeons during the Civil
War. Dr. Purvis has been for many years a teacher
and officer in the School of Medicine at Howard
University.

From first to last no less than 178,975 Negro
soldiers were mustered into the United States
Volunteer Army during the course of the Civil
War. Of this number, 36,847 were reported killed,
wounded, or missing. The coloured troops did
not have an opportunity to participate in many

of the great battles of the war. They did, however,
serve in nearly every military department
in the United States and took part in four hundred
and forty-nine battles. In addition to the large
military force mentioned there were at least 150,000
Negro labourers employed in the Quartermasters'
and Engineering Department. They were employed
as teamsters and as cooks or in the building of
fortifications.

The first general engagement in which coloured
soldiers took part was the assault upon Port Hudson,
Louisiana, made by the troops under General
Banks, May 27, 1863. There were eight regiments
of coloured troops among the forces that took
part in this assault, and among them was the first
Louisiana Native Guard, organised by General
Butler. This regiment is said to have suffered
heavier losses than any other regiment engaged
in the assault, losing in all one hundred and twenty-nine
officers and men.

The soldiers in this same Department did some
desperate fighting a few days after, June 6 and 7,
1863, at Milliken's Bend. This post was defended
by about fourteen hundred men, all of them newly
organised and undisciplined black soldiers, with
the exception of one hundred and sixty men of
an Iowa regiment which chanced to be there. The
battle lasted for eight hours, during which the
soldiers came to close quarters and fought hand

to hand with bayonets and clubbed muskets.
Although the attacking force was said to have been
considerably superior to that of the black troops,
the latter succeeded in repelling the attack and in
driving off the enemy.

Two of the most desperate battles of the war
in which coloured troops were engaged were the
assault of Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, in which
the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, the first regiment
of coloured soldiers to be recruited in the North,
was engaged, and the battle of Honey Hill, South
Carolina, November 30, 1864, in which the Fifty-fifth
Massachusetts, the second coloured regiment
raised in the North, was engaged. It was in the
assault of Fort Wagner that the gallant Colonel
Robert G. Shaw fell dead at the head of his Negro
regiment and mingled some of the best blood of
New England with that of these black men whom
he had volunteered to lead in the fight for the
freedom of their race. It was in this same battle
that Sergeant William H. Carney of the Fifty-fourth
Massachusetts, though wounded in the head and
in the shoulder and in both legs, carried the National
flag of his regiment across the open field which
separated him from safety, where he handed it
over with the words which made him famous:
"Dey got me boys, but de old flag neber touched
de groun!"

After the war, Sergeant Carney returned to

Massachusetts, and for a number of years, up to
the time of his death, in the early part of December,
1908, was employed at the Massachusetts State
House in Boston, where the torn flag that he had
kept flying upon the battlefield at Fort Wagner
is still preserved among the other colours of the
Massachusetts regiments.

Following the death of Sergeant Carney, in
Boston, Mr. N. P. Hallowell wrote a communication
to the Boston Transcript in which he gave so accurate
and concise a description of this battle and
the part that Sergeant Carney had in it that I
have ventured to reproduce it here. Mr. Hallowell
wrote:

It is fit that the last act, the act which cost his life, should be
one of courtesy. In stepping aside to make room for another his
leg was caught and crushed. Sergeant William H. Carney was a
gentleman. Peace to him.

Coloured troops took part February 20, 1864, in
the disastrous battle of Olustee, Florida, in which
the losses were quite as severe, it is said, as in
any other battle of the Civil War. Speaking of
this battle, Colonel J. R. Hawley, who commanded
the First Brigade in this engagement, says: "Old
troops finding themselves so overmatched would
have run a little and reformed with or without
order. The black men stood to be killed or
wounded, losing more than three hundred out of
five hundred and fifty." In the battle of Nashville,
the coloured troops were under a life-long
Democrat, General James B. Steedman, who was
one of the delegates in 1860 to the Charleston
Convention which nominated Breckenridge for
president. It is related that as he rode over the
field immediately after the battle, he said with a
grim smile: "I wonder what my Democratic

friends over there would think if they knew I were
fighting them with 'nigger troops.'"

Coloured troops took part in the campaign which
resulted in the fall of Richmond. June 15, 1864,
they captured seven guns in front of Petersburg
and, on July 30, they took part in the disastrous
attack at the "crater" in which 4,000 men were
lost, wounded or captured in a fruitless and
hopeless assault.

Finally, when General Weitzel took possession
of Richmond on April 3, 1865, he was in command
of a corps made up entirely of Negro soldiers. It
was a Negro soldier who hauled down the
Confederate
flag and it was Negro soldiers who assisted
in quenching the fires which had been started,
when the Confederate soldiers evacuated the city,
thus saving the helpless citizens who were left
behind much loss and suffering. It illustrates
to what extent the Negro soldiers had won the
favour of the Federal officers who commanded
them that black troops were called upon to maintain
order in the confusion and anarchy which reigned
at this time in the abandoned capital of the Confederacy.
Two years before, the same General
Weitzel, who was in command of the Negro troops,
who at this time took possession of Richmond, had
written to General Butler to be relieved of his
command in Louisiana because, as he said, he
"could not command Negro regiments." At that

time he believed that to employ Negroes in the
army was to bring about a servile insurrection for
which he did not care to be responsible.

The services which the Negro troops performed
in the Civil War in fighting for the freedom of
their race not only convinced the officers who commanded
them and the white soldiers who fought
by their side that the Negro race deserved to be
free, but it served to convince the great mass
of the people in the North that the Negroes were
fit for freedom. It did, perhaps, more than any
other one thing to gain for them, as a result of
the war, the passage of those amendments to the
Constitution which secured to the Negro race the
same rights in the United States that are granted
to white men.