CHAPTER 1
“The Colored man will fight,—not as a tool, but as an American patriot. He will fight most desperately because he will be fighting against his enemy, slavery, and because he feels that among the leading claims he has to your feelings as fellow-countrymen, is, that in the page of facts connected with the battles for liberty which his country has fought, his valor—the valor of black men—challenges comparison.”
—“‘The Colored Man Will Fight’ (1861),” in The American Mosaic:
The African American Experience, ABC-CLIO
The paths that black Medal of Honor recipients took to the battlefields of the Civil War were just as diverse as the colors of the unit flags they swore to uphold. Many of them came of age sometime between the years that marked the Dred Scott v. Sanford Supreme Court decision of 1857 and the presidential election of 1860. The Supreme Court’s ruling spelled trouble for all blacks, for it meant that they fell outside the bounds of United States citizenship and possessed no legal rights in federal courts. For many free blacks, the federal case concomitant with the presidential election that followed three years later intensified African-American calls for solidarity and resistance to the institution of slavery. Between 1857 and 1860, thousands of black men, women, and children rallied against the federal ruling across the North, and revered John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry. By the time the Southern states had seceded from the Union and Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumter, hundreds of young black men were discussing their status in the war effort.
By the beginning of 1862, African-American soldiers faced more than just the Confederate Army on the field. Employment in the Union Army also meant overcoming white commanders’ misgivings about the conduct and character of black soldiers in uniform. Black soldiers were paid less than their white contemporaries. Many white officers of the Northern United States Colored Troops (USCT) harbored deeply held racist prejudices against black soldiers.1 Loaded down with the long-standing baggage of class distinction, gender, background, generation, region, and upbringing, stereotypes and innuendoes played a large role in their thinking about the capabilities of black troops. In many ways, their attitudes paralleled their white Southern adversaries and Union commanders, like Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who preferred to place black soldiers in rear-guard assignments. “I won’t trust niggers to fight yet,” Sherman told his brother John, the sitting senator from Ohio.
As historian William Dobak points out, Sherman may have had other reasons for distrusting newly deployed troops on the battlefield.2 During the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, the venerated general had witnessed the disadvantages of rushing new recruits into combat. He had also discovered that draftees were especially prone to contracting measles, mumps, diphtheria, and other maladies present in camp areas. But his racist proclivities may have shaped his perceptions of the battlefield capabilities of black soldiers more than anything else. “I like niggers well enough as niggers, but when fools and idiots try and make niggers better than ourselves, I have an opinion. A large proportion of our fighting men would not tolerate blacks in the front line, for white soldiers and volunteers will not be placed on a par with the negro,” he observed.3
The question of using blacks as soldiers weighed heavily on the minds of government leaders throughout the spring and summer of 1862. The battle casualties of the Union Army began to climb in the wake of the Battle at Shiloh, during the Seven Days’ Battles outside of Richmond, and in the Battle of Antietam. As the initial enthusiasm for the fighting began to wane, many Northern Republicans began to seriously consider arming slaves and freed blacks. However, Lincoln advised his Cabinet members that a Union victory was essential before he could issue such a decree. So when the Union Army finally won a victory at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, the president issued a proclamation five days later. It not only contained the momentous clause, forever freeing all slaves in the rebellious states, but also permitted those newly freed to actively enlist in the Union Army. Six months later, the War Department issued General Order 143, expediting the recruitment of African Americans to fight for the army.4 With that, the stage was set for the acts of bravery performed by black soldiers who would later earn the Medal of Honor in the Civil War.
For most of the MOH recipients who entered the Union Army at the time, the battle flags representing their respective units came to epitomize the characteristics of valor and bravery more than anything else. In March 1863, Sgt. Milton Holland and the men of the 5th United States Colored Troops attended a flag presentation at Camp Delaware where John Mercer Langston administered an oath they would never forget. As Holland recalled, “Our company C—the color company—took the flag made by the kind citizens of Athens, and we pledged that we would ever be true to the flag; though it may be tattered or torn by hard service, it should never be disgraced.”
Later that spring, the men of the 54th Massachusetts left Camp Meigs, boarding railcars heading for Boston. As soon as they reached the city, companies of the unit passed through the downtown streets before arriving at the Boston Commons, where the Massachusetts governor presented them with four flags. In addition to the American flag, they received the regimental colors featuring a banner with the state emblem of the Goddess of Liberty. While handing the colors to the 54th Massachusetts commander, Governor John Andrew told the men, “From the beginning of this rebellion to the present day, that banner has never been surrendered to the foe; fifty-three regiments have marched from the Bay State, but we have yet to learn that they ever surrendered that noble banner. Hold on to the staff; if every thread is blown away, your glory will be the same.”5
We pledged that we would ever be true to the flag; though it may be tattered or torn by hard service, it should never be disgraced.
Given the numerous examples of distinguished action exhibited by black MOH recipients later in the war, Governor Andrew’s exhortation accurately points to the tremendous importance the colors would play in their performances on the battlefield. The flag, along with the dress blue uniforms and Enfield rifled muskets, celebrated an identity that enlarged black claims to freedom and equality while negating the inferences of slavery and black inferiority that proliferated throughout white-dominated society at the time. While the flag itself was not meant as a direct political statement, the social context in which it was presented and the meaning that was attached to it rendered it so. For many of the MOH recipients and their uniformed contemporaries, the flag, whether federal, regimental, or otherwise, symbolized honor, duty, and country—the vivid symbol of American patriotism and loyalty.
William H. Carney and the Battle of Fort Wagner, South Carolina, July 18, 1863
William H. Carney, born a slave in 1840, was taught to read and write by a minister at an early age. His father, William Sr., and mother, Ann Dean, had worked as slaves in the Hampton Roads Region of Norfolk, Virginia, for decades prior to the Civil War. During the late 1850s, the couple moved toward freedom, using the Underground Railroad to successfully escape through Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York before eventually ending up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Frederick Douglass’s hometown. Like Douglass, Carney and his father worked as seamen and performed odd jobs there prior to the Civil War. They were encouraged by the fiery antislavery movement found in the pages of Douglass’s Monthly, advocating for the Union cause.
During the spring of 1861, William Carney established a friendship with a pastor of a local church and began studying to become a minister. After the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, the twenty-one-year-old flocked to the colors. He was told his services were not required. At that moment, Carney linked God’s call to the altar to the cause of black freedom. As he recalled, “When the country called for all persons, I decided I could best serve my God by serving my country and my oppressed brothers. The sequel is short—I enlisted for the war.”6
“I decided I could best serve my God by serving my country and my oppressed brothers.”
In January of 1863, Carney gained his chance following the Emancipation Proclamation. With the passage of the measure, Governor John Andrew of Massachusetts received permission from the War Department to create a regiment of free Northern blacks that would be commanded by twenty-five-year-old abolitionist Robert Gould Shaw. Designated as the 54th Massachusetts, the unit holds the distinction of being the first Northern black regiment to fight in the Civil War. Over the course of the next few months, more than one thousand free blacks from Boston and other Northern cities enlisted. By April, Carney stood among the first twenty-five volunteers recruited from New Bedford. After training at Camp Meigs in Readville, a neighborhood in Boston, the 54th marched to the city proper, where hundreds of onlookers watched them march off to war.
Less than three months later, on July 18, they received orders to lead an attack on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, as the leading element of a Union assault. Fort Wagner held strategic value for Union Army and Navy commanders. As a major enemy stronghold, it rested at a strategic point in Charleston Harbor. Composed of palmetto logs and sandbags, the beachhead fortification was capable of withstanding the fiercest naval bombardment and could house over one thousand garrison troops.
Carney and the men of the 54th were eager to join the battle. The moment to strike a blow against slavery and free their brothers and sisters in bondage was finally within their reach. But their euphoria proved to be short-lived. Intense enemy shelling from the walled fortification stymied their initial approach, making each advance more costly as crucial minutes stretched into hours. In the face of a withering barrage of enemy fire, Private Carney dropped his rifle and seized the regimental colors when Sgt. John Wall, the unit’s regimental flag bearer, was wounded. Carrying the flag, Carney continued to march forward to the fort’s entrance as his comrades fell around him. Despite being severely wounded in the chest, right arm, and in each leg, Carney never dropped the flag. When a soldier with another regiment offered to carry the colors, he responded, “No one but a member of my regiment should carry them.” His fellow soldiers cheered, and Carney could be overheard saying to them, “Boys, the old flag never touched the ground.”
While the flag may have signified the exact location of the front line on the battlefield, black troops like William Carney also saw the rectangular piece of fabric as a symbol of African-American determination to seize their freedom from the vestiges of bondage that had held them for centuries. To give an inch of ground was to relinquish their present and future claims to citizenship.
Although the assault on Fort Wagner was deemed a failure, news about the outstanding performance of William Carney left an indelible mark in the minds of his contemporaries. For his performance on the battlefield, the New Bedford native was promoted to sergeant. In a letter home to the New Bedford Mercury, Cpl. James Gooding trumpeted the 54th’s actions during the offensive, but he also recognized Carney’s conduct in battle:
The men of the 54th behaved gallantly on the occasion—so the Generals say. The color bearer of the State colors was killed on the parapet. Colonel Shaw seized the staff when the standard bearer fell, and in less than a minute after, the Colonel fell himself. When the men saw their gallant leader fall, they made a gallant effort to get him out, but they were either shot down, or reeled in the ditch below. One man succeeded in getting hold of the State color staff, but the color was completely torn to pieces. It is not for us to blow our horn, but when a regiment of white men gave us three cheers as we were passing them, it shows that we did our duty as men should.7
For his heroic performance, William Carney was accorded the nation’s highest military medal, the Congressional Medal of Honor. But while he was the first African-American soldier to receive the award, he would have to wait nearly four decades to receive public recognition of his deed.8
Christian A. Fleetwood and the Ordeal at Chaffin’s Farm, Virginia, September 29, 1864
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1840 to Charles and Anna Fleetwood, both free persons, Christian Fleetwood received a public education from the Maryland State Colonization Society and attended the all-black Ashmun Institute (later named Lincoln University) in Pennsylvania. Fleetwood was a budding singer, musician, and choirmaster in the church, and was known for engaging in spirited discussion on topics ranging from religion and politics to physics and literature.9 Prior to the Civil War, he published editorials for the Episcopal Church’s Christian Recorder, and founded and published the Lyceum Observer, known by many observers as the region’s first black-owned and -operated newspaper.10
But public espousal of freedom and citizenship was not enough for the young Baltimore resident. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Fleetwood and thousands of other black volunteers from Maryland rushed to sign up for the army, determined “to assist in abolishing slavery and to save the country from ruin.”11 However, as he and others quickly discovered, to their chagrin, President Abraham Lincoln and the War Department were not ready for blacks to help save the country. As Fleetwood bitterly recounted years later, “The North came slowly and reluctantly to recognize the Negro as a factor for the good in the war. ‘This is a white man’s war’ met the Negroes at every step of [their] first efforts to gain admission to the armies of the Union.”12
Nearly two years later, Fleetwood got his wish when Congress passed the Second Confiscation and Militia Act in July of 1862. While the first confiscation measure issued in 1861 only seized property (including slaves) that the Confederates used to execute the war effort, the second congressional act authorized the president to enroll “persons of African descent” for war service. The measure was of great significance to Fleetwood and other young black men, for it allowed free Northern blacks to enter the army as soldiers.
In August of 1863, the Maryland native ventured to nearby Camp Birney, where he entered the ranks of Company G of the United States Colored Troops’ 4th Regiment as a sergeant major. Fleetwood and his compatriots participated in some of the fiercest fighting of the Civil War. In late September of 1864, Fleetwood distinguished himself in the face of enemy fire during the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm, located southeast of Richmond. Fleetwood earned the Medal of Honor for saving the regimental colors “without a scratch” after the color-bearer and most of the company had been killed or wounded, delivering a pivotal victory for the Union Army.
But other soldiers lauded the Baltimore native’s actions under fire in a somewhat different way. Maj. Augustus Boernstein honored the performance of the men who served with the 4th United States Colored Troops (USCT) at New Market Heights, specifically mentioning the distinguished actions taken by black noncommissioned and enlisted men in his unit. “Sergeant Major Fleetwood and Corporal Veale have always been good, obedient, faithful soldiers. Sergeant Fleetwood is a highly educated gentleman and is one of the many instances of what the African race is capable of being brought to by patient persistent effort,” Boernstein exclaimed. For their efforts, Fleetwood and nearly two hundred other black soldiers received medals for gallantry in battle.13
Years later, the battle-tested noncommissioned officer placed his own value on his service that day: “Before the colors could touch the ground, Corporal Charles Veale, of Company D, seized the blue flag, and I, the American flag, which had been presented to us by the patriotic women of our home in Baltimore.”14
The Leadership of Milton Holland at Chaffin’s Farm, Virginia, September 29, 1864
Milton Holland was born in 1844 on a farm near Carthage, Texas. Like William Carney, Holland and his two brothers were slaves, until fate intervened. Their owner, Bird Holland, was a longtime state official and former secretary of state who harbored serious misgivings about the institution of slavery. He believed in self-improvement through education, so acting on this idea, he freed the Holland brothers in the late 1850s, before sending them to Athens County, Ohio, where they attended Albany Enterprise Academy. There, young Milton Holland debated with his peers about the issues affecting his brothers in bondage while taking classes in history, literature, civics, and economics.
In 1861, seventeen-year-old Milton attempted to enlist, but was turned away based on his race. Undeterred, he accepted entrance into the quartermaster corps and worked as a servant with Col. Nelson H. Van Vorhes, an officer with several of the Ohio regiments. Later Milton was mustered into the army in June of 1863.15 Milton Holland, along with three hundred other men from the Buckeye State, traveled to Massachusetts to join an Ohio regiment of the USCT. Holland and his comrades had no sooner arrived at Camp Delaware than they received disappointing news. The War Department had reneged on Massachusetts governor John Andrew’s promise to provide the volunteers with the same pay and clothing as their white counterparts. When the men of the 5th Ohio Regiment threatened to leave the camp, demanding the pay due them, Holland persuaded the group to remain in camp.
John Mercer Langston, an influential Ohio educator and a prominent recruiter of black troops during the period, actually visited the camp during the dispute. He was so moved by the selfless efforts made by Holland and the men during the crisis that he wrote years later, “They were decided and manly at once in their course. Such was the conduct of the men coming to camp, and their reputation for considerate behavior, aptness and attention to drill, and soldierly advancement, that all over the camp, young colored men were moved to the emulation of their example.” Holland was promoted for his inspiring leadership and charisma to the rank of sergeant, a position he would hold with great distinction the following year.
Milton Holland’s true test of leadership and heroism came in 1864 at the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm. Marked by the yawning open fields that lay south of the Confederate capital, Chaffin’s Farm was part of an elaborate system of enemy defenses that surrounded Richmond. In the eyes of Union strategists, capture of the Confederate railroad supply lines in the area would greatly hamper Lee’s ability to reinforce his army in the Shenandoah Valley. In late September a contingent of the USCT, commanded by Maj. Gen. David Bell Birney, was ordered to lead an attack against a Confederate line of defense along the New Market Road. Unknown to Holland and other advancing soldiers, battle-tested Texas veterans led by Brig. Gen. John Gregg were among the infantrymen defending the heights. They were accompanied by the 3rd Richmond Howitzers and the 1st Rockbridge Artillery, and these units were reinforced by a well-trained cavalry brigade. When USCT soldiers moved up to the Confederate line, they drew heavy fire from well-fortified enemy pits. The incessant enemy shelling and the screams of wounded soldiers punctuated the smoke-covered battlefield. As the commanders and junior officers fell with severe wounds and the unit stood on the brink of collapse, seasoned black troops like Texas’s own Milton Holland stepped into their fallen leaders’ roles, barking orders and commanding the remaining troops forward.
Milton Holland’s true test of leadership and heroism came in 1864 at the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm.
As the fog cleared that morning, many of the men of the USCT were heartened by the leadership abilities shown by Holland and the victory they had won. As Milton Holland noted in a letter to the Athens (OH) Messenger at the time: “To our great surprise, we found that the boasted Southern chivalry had fled. They could not see the nigger part as the man on the white horse presented it. I have never heard anything to equal it before or since; for a while whole batteries discharged their contents into the Rebel ranks at once. The result was a complete success.”
Black heroism in rural Virginia led to a turning point in white opinion regarding whether African Americans could be effective combat soldiers. On October 11, Gen. Benjamin Butler addressed the soldiers of the Army of the James and praised their efforts during the successful campaign: “All these gallant colored soldiers were left in command, all of their company officers being killed and wounded, and led them gallantly and meritoriously through the day.”
But their victory came at a tremendous cost. Of the 3,291 Union troops killed at New Market Heights, 1,773 were black soldiers, constituting more than 50 percent of all battlefield casualties. For his gallantry, Holland received the award for valor in April of 1865.
Andrew Jackson Smith and the Battle of Honey Hill, South Carolina, November 30, 1864
Andrew Jackson Smith was born in Lyon County, Kentucky, in September of 1843. The child of a slave woman and a wealthy slave owner, Smith was introduced to the hardships of involuntary servitude at an early age, working as a ferryman carrying people and commerce across the Cumberland River. Little did the nineteen-year-old realize at the time, but the outbreak of war would alter his life in several important ways.
Days after the Battle of Fort Sumter, his father (and owner) left and enlisted in the Confederate Army, where he found himself in the midst of some of the fiercest fighting during the opening stages of the war. After spending a short period of time away from the family, his father returned home and announced that he was taking Smith with him to serve with the Confederates. Determined to take his fate into his own hands, Smith and another slave walked twenty-five miles northwest to Paducah, Kentucky, where they presented themselves to the 41st Illinois. Shortly afterward, Smith became a manservant to the unit’s regimental officer, a role he maintained until the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.16
Smith’s first taste of war came as the collapse of Atlanta and other areas of the Deep South left the Confederacy in shambles. Conducted by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, the scorched-earth style of the Savannah Campaign represented a new form of warfare, setting the bar of valor higher than before. For Smith and other men with the 54th and the 55th Massachusetts Infantry, the Battle of Honey Hill, South Carolina, would prove to be most costly.
Under the command of Col. Alfred S. Hartwell, transports carrying the all-black force steamed up the Broad River, heading to Boyd’s Neck on the night of November 28. The units had just spent an extended period of time performing garrison duties at Hilton Head, South Carolina. Their orders were to cut off enemy access to the Charleston and Savannah Railroad as a way of facilitating Sherman’s march to the sea. Nothing went as planned. The troops ran headlong into a dense fog that slowed them down to a mere crawl. In the cornfield-dotted area, the troops were further slowed by poorly detailed operational maps and unreliable guides.
On the morning of November 30, elements of the 55th launched an attack at Honey Hill against Confederate troops composed of militia and Regular Army units. Union forces battled the enemy and the elements as they fought valiantly for nearly seven hours. The thickly wooded area made it next to impossible for Federal troops to see the heavily armed enemy earthworks until they literally stood right in front of them. The skirmish between the two combatants raged on until Union forces decided to withdraw later that evening. As night descended on the battlefield, nearly 140 men had been killed, and 108 wounded. Among those killed were eight commissioned officers; a Vincennes, Indiana, resident named John Posey; and the commander of the 55th, Colonel Hartwell, who was wounded after being trampled by his dying horse.17
Yet the high rate of casualties and the steadily rising number of wounded men did not overshadow the acts of valor performed by the men that day. When flag-bearer Robert King was struck down by an enemy shell, Cpl. Andrew Jackson Smith heard his commander give the order, “For God’s sake, Smith, save the flag!” After watching King’s lifeless body fall near the parapet, the twenty-two-year-old former boatman felt himself move forward. “When King was killed, I caught him with one hand and the flag with the other,” Smith described years later. “I brought the National flag from the field of Honey Hill. Beside me was Comrade John H. Patterson, who carried the State flag. When his arm was broken by a bullet, I carried both flags.”
“When King was killed, I caught him with one hand and the flag with the other.”
Smith’s moment of glory at Honey Hill would be shrouded in the fog of war and largely forgotten by the public. While his performance earned him a promotion to sergeant and color-bearer, some of his comrades in arms failed to legitimize his test of courage while under fire. Official recognition of his battlefield exploits in the form of the Medal of Honor would not take place until nearly a century and a half later.18
John H. Lawson and the Battle of Mobile Bay, August 5, 1864
Black sailors serving with the Union Navy during the Civil War faced different challenges on the open sea from those that foot soldiers experienced. But unlike their armed contemporaries who stood in the ranks, their tests of valor often revolved around their abilities to load guns, tug shell whips of full powder boxes to the gun decks, and quickly troubleshoot disastrous problems in the face of seemingly hopeless situations.
Among the lesser-known heroes who displayed their talents on the water during the summer of 1863 was African-American landsman John Lawson, at the Battle of Mobile Bay. A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Lawson served with sailors working aboard Rear Admiral Farragut’s flagship USS Hartford during successive attacks against Fort Morgan.
In August, the ship advanced too quickly and ran headlong into Confederate gunboats. Lawson and several other sailors were thrown violently against the side of the USS Hartford when it was struck by an enemy shell. Lawson was knocked unconscious and thrown into the hold. After regaining consciousness, Lawson’s attention was drawn to the severe shrapnel wounds in his leg. Although he could barely stand, this did not deter the young sailor. He soon regained his composure and remained at his workstation, tugging powder box after powder box onto the berth deck during the fighting. For his selfless effort, Lawson, along with several other landsmen, was awarded the Medal of Honor years later.19
Black Medal of Honor Recipients after the Civil War
Black leaders and members of the press used MOH recipients like John Lawson, Christian A. Fleetwood, and other African Americans to draw national attention to black demands for freedom and equality. Throughout October of 1864, the Cleveland Daily Leader, Boston’s Liberator, and Columbus’s Daily Ohio Statesman carried stories on the performance of the United States Colored Troops at Chaffin’s Farm. At the front, Philadelphia Press correspondent Thomas Morris Chester filed colorful dispatches about the heroic activities of noncommissioned officers like Christian Fleetwood and Milton Holland at Chaffin’s Farm. Chester claimed that the regiment “covered itself with glory, and wiped out effectually the imputation against the fighting qualities of the colored troops.”
How did the newly decorated African-American heroes feel about their postwar prospects? For that matter, how comfortable were they with being treated as representatives of their race and exemplars of liberation for blacks everywhere? How, and to what degree, were they cognizant of their role as living reminders of humiliation and defeat for Southern whites, and as moving targets for white reprisal? While black MOH recipients received the same recognition as their white counterparts, the legacy of their valor in combat did not automatically grant them honor and respect in the collective memory of the white public.
As the war drew to a close, members of the United States Colored Troops and volunteers from the 54th Massachusetts entered Richmond in the crisp winter air filled with pride and hope. Elsewhere, as Confederate president Jefferson Davis and members of his cabinet withdrew from the city for points south, black soldiers with the 9th USCT marched through the streets to the deafening cheers of spectators and well-wishers. The soldiers strode under the Stars and Stripes past the seemingly endless onlookers who lined the battle-stricken pathways. Many of them had been born and raised during the horrors of slavery, had reached adulthood in the uncertain years of the 1850s, and had rushed to the Federal colors after the Emancipation Proclamation. They had participated in the suicidal assault on Fort Wagner, the Union Army’s debacle at the Crater, and the heroic charge at New Market Heights and Fort Fisher. With the surrender of Richmond, they were buoyed by the Union victory and ecstatic about returning to hearth and kin. Most of all, black soldiers saw themselves fulfilling the roles they had originally imagined that military service would provide them: They were liberators of slaves, and protectors of their families. Combat performance on the battleground was the measuring stick for the freedom and equality they had earned, and that they now planned to use to challenge notions of race and citizenship.
As the war drew to a close, members of the United States Colored Troops and volunteers from the 54th Massachusetts entered Richmond in the crisp winter air filled with pride and hope.
But their combat performance also allowed the soldiers to validate and refine their ideas about honor and manhood. As the 54th’s acting commander, Luis Emilio, later recalled, “The courage and fidelity of the blacks, so unmistakably demonstrated during the Civil War, assures to us, in the event of future need, a class to recruit from now more available, intelligent, educated, and self-reliant, and more patriotic, devoted, and self-sacrificing, if such were possible, than thirty years ago.”20 Appointed commander after Col. Robert Gould Shaw was killed in action during the assault on Fort Wagner, Emilio had witnessed the gallantry of black soldiers firsthand through the final months of the war. His recollections proved insightful after the war when the nation’s historical memory of black soldiers’ valiant service in the Civil War began to fade.
For most black Medal of Honor recipients, the road home included mustering out of the service, getting paid, saying farewell to comrades, and contemplating reunions with loved ones. But they also knew that the battle for first-class equality and citizenship was just beginning.
Throughout September of 1865, large crowds assembled in Boston to greet the men of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments. The soldiers had just been mustered out of the service, receiving their final pay near Charleston before being discharged at Gallops Island, located near Boston Harbor. As the train pulled into the station, a celebrated drill club performed a series of maneuvers while marching to the music of the New Bedford Brass Band. The men assembled into formation along Commercial Wharf and marched to Boston Common. There they listened to speeches by Massachusetts senators Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson before being disbanded by their unit commander. Shortly afterward, the black veterans boarded trains heading for their different points of destination.21
Among the soldiers returning home that day was Andrew Jackson Smith. After the Battle of Honey Hill, Smith stayed in Boston for a short time before leaving for Kentucky to visit his mother and three sisters. Like so many other black volunteers, Smith wished to pick up a new life, only to discover that it would not be easy. “I saw all of my former playmates, many of whom were ex–Confederate soldiers. I then saw my former owner, who came to me and gave me good advice. He told me that he was as poor as I.”22
Other returning MOH recipients expressed the desire to return to civilian life as soon as possible. Some, like Aaron Anderson, Robert Blake, Joachim Pease, and Charles Veale, disappeared from the historical record after they were mustered out of the USCT and the navy in 1865 and 1866. James Lawson left the navy in December of 1864 and returned to Philadelphia, where he landed work as a barber and a night watchman for a local firehouse. After being honorably discharged in June of 1864, William Carney returned home to New Bedford, married Susannah Williams, and worked as a streetlight repairman. Carney had a restless spirit, however, and left Massachusetts in 1866, in search of better opportunities. After spending nearly two years in California, he returned to New Bedford and eventually was hired by the local post office.
Some men found the military to their liking and wished to parlay their service in the USCT and their acts of valor into new opportunities in the Regular Army. After serving with the 4th USCT, 1st Sgt. Christian Fleetwood offered his services in the spring of 1865, in hopes of landing a coveted position as a company officer. The Baltimore native had witnessed the carnage of war firsthand. In the wake of his brilliant action at Chaffin’s Farm, Fleetwood was recognized by his fellow enlisted men not only as one of the most capable soldiers in the army, but also as a man of character and integrity.
But Fleetwood faced a personal dilemma: Prior to his unit’s participation in the Union siege on Petersburg the previous year, a bishop in Kentucky had offered him a position as rector of an Episcopal church. He considered the offer, but, believing that a commission in the army would allow him to do much more for African Americans everywhere, he declined. Fleetwood’s aspirations for rank and respect were short-lived. Not only did his superiors turn down his application for a Regular Army officer’s commission, but they also denied his request to leave at the end of his enlistment. Disillusioned with the army, Fleetwood harshly criticized its treatment of black troops, and wrote an angry letter from the front (see appendix).
Undaunted, Fleetwood finished out the war and continued to serve in the District of Columbia’s National Guard, commanding the unit at the rank of major until the end of the century. Although he never relinquished his quest to command troops on the battlefield, the venerable war hero would feel the sting of the American military’s racial discrimination for the rest of his life. He would never forget the bittersweet lessons of bravery and betrayal he had learned during the Civil War. Fleetwood wrote about the military legacy of black soldiers in American wars for the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition: “After each war, of 1776, of 1812, and of 1861, history repeats itself in the absolute effacement of the gallant deeds done for the country by its brave black defenders and in their relegation to outer darkness.”23
More than fifty years after the Civil War, sympathetic white officers like Benjamin Butler, George Sherman, Luis Emilio, Charles Fox, and Burt Wilder used their own personal diaries and letters, along with official correspondence left by Union and Confederate officials, to write histories of their regiments in which they consecrated the heroic activities of Christian Fleetwood, William Carney, and Andrew Jackson Smith to public memory. Soon, local, regional, and even national veterans’ organizations joined their cause.
In 1866, Dr. Benjamin Stephenson and a coterie of Civil War veterans met in Decatur, Illinois, and formed the Grand Army of the Republic. The GAR promoted the role of black soldiers who served in the Civil War, and supported black voting rights throughout the 1870s and 1880s. In April of 1890, surviving Civil War veterans gathered in Boston to organize the Medal of Honor Legion to attract greater public attention to individuals whose acts of bravery on the battlefield had not been recognized by Congress. Formed as a local society, members of the Legion nationalized their organization during the twenty-fourth annual encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic.
Throughout the 1890s, the MOH Legion members assembled to discuss the well-being of their comrades. After marching through the streets of the nation’s capital, thousands of veterans representing GAR posts from all over the country would gather for dinner and to hear speeches by civic leaders, elected officials, and businesspeople. Most of all, they reinvigorated remembrances and rekindled sentiments of long-lost brotherhood. Among the ex-servicemen groups that attended the reunion were associations of naval veterans, the Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac, former prisoners of war, Sons of Veterans, survivors of the US Colored Troops, and Medal of Honor recipients.24
They reinvigorated remembrances and rekindled sentiments of long-lost brotherhood.
Among those active with the GAR who stood among living Medal of Honor Legionnaires were Milton Holland and Christian Fleetwood. During the 1890s, both men had firmly established themselves as astute businessmen, rising to prominence in their local communities. Holland became chief of the checking division in the US Treasury Department before his death in 1910. He had also created the Alpha Life Insurance, Real Estate, and Banking Company, where Fleetwood served as secretary and cashier. For his part, Fleetwood’s long-standing interest in the military led to his appointment as drill instructor of the Washington Colored High School Cadet Corps. There, he established a unique esprit de corps and a tradition of excellence among several generations of young men, many of whom would become commissioned officers at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, in 1917.25
The battlefield acts of valor performed by Milton Holland, Christian Fleetwood, and other black heroes were hardly atypical, and did not occur in a vacuum. Among those whose Civil War exploits are not described in this narrative are Bruce Anderson, William Barnes, Powhatan Beaty, Robert Blake, James H. Bronson, Wilson Brown, Clement Dees, Decatur Dorsey, James Gardner, James Harris, Alfred B. Hilton, Miles James, Alexander Kelly, James Mifflin, Joachim Pease, Robert Pinn, Edward Ratcliff, and Charles Veale. Their bravery and sense of honor set a lofty standard for their heirs to attain that would take generations to realize.
Meanwhile, a new storm was brewing in the waning years of the nineteenth century—one that would involve the thoughts and energies of a new cadre of black Medal of Honor recipients. They would develop their own understanding of valor in battle, but this consciousness would also encourage new ideas about citizenship and rights.