Introduction

“Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told
until they are believed to be true.”
—Ulysses S. Grant

More than a century after the War of the Rebellion, the African American writer Ralph Ellison observed that most United States military actions have been “wars-within-wars.” He explained that blacks, despite their previous contributions, had to repeatedly fight for the right to participate in military service. Ellison concluded that they did so because they sought access to the socially defined ideals of manhood and citizenship. So it was for many men during the Civil War. The 1989 motion picture Glory successfully conveys the meaning of Ellison’s comments to present-day Americans by telling the story of the 54th Massachusetts, a regiment of United States Colored Troops (USCT). Approximately 179,000 blacks served in the Union army during the American Civil War. They fought in every theater of the conflict, participated in over 440 engagements, and with almost 38,000 deaths, suffered an estimated 35 percent greater loss than white troops. Close to three-quarters of all black men of military age who resided in the Union’s free states served, approximately 20 percent of all USCT. While they made a significant contribution to the Union victory and helped to bring about the end of slavery, many fought for their own causes. As a result, black Northerners, in a period of only a few years, experienced a radical transformation in their relationship with the federal government. Although the inclusion of blacks in the U.S. Army occurred due to military necessity, by virtue of their toil and blood they contributed to extraordinary modifications of their political status and helped to expand the rights for all African Americans. During the decades that followed, at a time when their martial support was no longer needed, their individual actions and collective efforts to obtain and keep the benefits of citizenship earned by military service proved more challenging and rewarding than the Hollywood version, as blacks struggled in the long and difficult fight for full equality and civil rights.¹

This was as true for the tens of thousands of free Northern blacks, including the men who served in the 27th United States Colored Troops, as it was for the slaves who sought freedom from bondage for themselves and their families. Early in 1863 Massachusetts governor John A. Andrew sent recruiters for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts regiments to the Buckeye State. By May of that year, Ohio’s governor, David Tod, sought federal approval to solicit black recruits after he realized that he could count the enlistees toward the state’s draft quota. In November the 5th USCT, the first black unit organized in Ohio, left for Fort Monroe, Virginia. The 27th USCT, the only other authorized black regiment from the state, began recruiting in late December 1863. In The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, the War Department credits 5,092 African Americans to the state of Ohio. These men served in the USCT largely due to their own choices: to prove their worthiness as men, to seek recognition as citizens, to preserve the Union, and to abolish slavery. Ohioans served in several other regiments as well, and the combined number of enlistees placed Ohio second only to Pennsylvania in the number of black troops furnished by a Northern state.² Although it took perseverance, and despite their lack of military experience, free blacks contributed to Ohio’s role in the Civil War.

The 27th USCT served in the Union army from April 1864 to September 1865 in Virginia and North Carolina. Most of the men who joined the regiment were not slaves but had been free for years, some all their lives. While the majority of the soldiers volunteered, a significant number of the men were enticed by local and federal bounties, others served as substitutes, and some were drafted into service. For most it was the first time they had traveled so far from home. Few had ever been in a situation that offered such opportunities for themselves and their families, but their excitement did not always withstand the realities of war. They suffered from the physical difficulties of military life, the horrors of warfare, and homesickness. They also worried about loved ones left home with little support. And while military service became a source of pride, and the institutional organization of the Union army provided an “equality of treatment for men of equal rank” unknown previously to most of the men, there was also much racial prejudice and discrimination against them. For one thing, the U.S. Bureau of Colored Troops allowed only white men to serve as commissioned officers for the segregated troops. Then, until June 1864 African American soldiers were paid less than whites and many were used exclusively for heavy labor and other menial duties. Although the men of the 27th participated in the Petersburg mine explosion debacle that was known as the Battle of the Crater, and played a key role at the second assault on Fort Fisher, they saw limited combat duty.³ Despite the unfavorable circumstances, however, most of the soldiers realized the significant victory they had achieved as a result of their choice to provide military service. The enlistment of black men offered the promise of much more to the individual soldiers as well as to the black population in Ohio.

The participation of free men was an important event for African Americans, and the veterans returned to the North with a higher status than most other blacks could achieve in the late nineteenth century. But after the soldiers in the 27th USCT received their final pay, they were simply discharged. The former soldiers returned to their home towns and the second-class status they dared to believe had passed with the death of slavery. Few parades welcomed the men in September 1865, and Northern citizens failed to build any monuments in their name. And during the late 1860s the black veterans and their communities watched as some Ohio legislators and many white citizens fiercely opposed black citizenship and suffrage.⁴ The men of the 27th must have wondered what kind of victory they had helped to win.

But martial participation did provide a significant advantage for Northern blacks who sought some control over their position in postwar Ohio society, especially their claim to the citizenship rights that they believed they had earned. Over time their military service provided a tool that allowed many of the former soldiers to demand social acceptance and acknowledgment of their Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment rights. Change occurred slowly, as the men and their families took advantage of the opportunities that resulted from the dramatic political and economic changes in late nineteenth-century Ohio. But many members of the 27th USCT did leave evidence that they and their communities viewed the men as Americans, soldiers, and veterans who deserved the benefits owed to them. And their families sought all that was due as their heirs.

The Union’s decision to use black men shaped how the nation reconciled and reunited in the decades following the four years of rebellion. This study of the 27th United States Colored Troops provides a glimpse into the black Civil War experience in a way that recognizes the active role the men and their families played in the choices, decisions, and consequences related to being soldiers and veterans. Although theirs is not a major part of the story, the role of free Northern blacks did affect how the nation came to understand the conflict, both during and afterward. Therefore it is beneficial to expand the locus of discussion beyond the battlefield to explore the repercussions for the free black Northern population through the experiences of the soldiers who participated and the communities they returned home to after the war. This requires us to no longer depend solely on the accounts of prominent black voices, such as those of Frederick Douglass and George Washington Williams, or on published soldiers’ reports in newspapers as evidence of how the African Americans recognized, reacted to, or were affected by the Civil War. While the views expressed are eloquent and significant, their carefully scripted commentaries provide an unbalanced account. We cannot fully understand the impact of the American Civil War on Northern society unless we closely explore the lives of the black men as soldiers and veterans, as well as their families.

We find, for example, that in the last years of Mary Shoecraft’s life she had no income but a pension based on the service of her husband, Allison, who had served as a private in Company A of the 27th USCT. The Dayton widow read the National Tribune, the newspaper for the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), to learn of changes to pension legislation that enabled her, at age seventy-five, to get an increase to $50 a month. Likewise, in the summer of 1937 Simpson Younger spoke with “soldierly dignity” as he discussed his life with a Works Progress Administration interviewer, who was impressed with the pensioner’s “college education and soldierly training.” But while he did speak at length of his war service in Company A of the 27th USCT he never mentioned that while attending Oberlin College in 1867 he had become the first black college baseball player. And in an August 2005 telephone interview, Catherine Bowman shared her family’s military history. In World War II her brother Eugene served in the 711th Medical and Sanitation Battalion, and another brother, Mickey, attended the Tuskegee Air School. When Eugene told the family he had enlisted, their aunt Carrie proudly reminded everyone present that the patriarch of the family, Champion Bowman, had been a sergeant in Company I of the 27th USCT.⁵

This history of the 27th seeks to provide a more inclusive account of the United States Colored Troops with a focus on the free Northern soldiers’ experiences, like those of Shoecraft, Younger, and Bowman, something few black regimental studies have done. It will further our understanding of Ohio’s African American participation in the Civil War by building on the more traditional regimental history written by Versalle F. Washington. His monograph explores the wartime service of the 5th USCT, a regiment that shared many similarities with but also had distinct differences from the 27th. Both Ohio regiments were composed mostly of free men; both units trained at Camp Delaware; the white leadership in both included a combination of antislavery advocates or abolitionists, indifferent personalities, and inadequately trained officers; and the soldiers from each spent most of their time in Virginia and North Carolina. But the men in the 5th, being in Ohio’s first black regiment, served for a longer period in the Union army when pay was still less than what white men received. And the soldiers of the 5th USCT had the distinction few black troops experienced: they played a significant role and were recognized for their actions at New Market Heights in September 1864. Several of the regiment’s sergeants took command of four companies after their white officers fell in battle. As a result, Powhatan Beatty, James Bronson, Robert A. Pinn, and Milton M. Holland received the Congressional Medal of Honor, four of the sixteen awarded to enlisted black soldiers during the Civil War.⁶

An evaluation of the 27th USCT provides the opportunity to explore a more representative example of Northern black participation, one in which there was a preponderance of fatigue duty but limited battle experience and even less recognition. It is significant that the regiment was raised in Ohio and was composed largely of men who lived in the state before and after their time in the United States Colored Troops. As J. Matthew Gallman explains, by 1860 southern Ohio had become the “midpoint” of population in the United States. Therefore, Ohio provides the geographic locus in which to view the vast changes to “markets, technology, and communication” that Americans adjusted to at the same time the Civil War forced them to reevaluate their relationship with the federal government. Once black men joined the Union army, responses to the economic, political, and cultural changes in Northern society included how and to what degree to include African Americans. This was especially true as leaders at the national and state level wrangled over the meaning of citizenship. Americans did not share an articulate definition or understanding of the concept before the war, and most understood that it was tied to one’s state, not federal government. In 1868 that changed when the Fourteenth Amendment legally established the meaning of citizenship in the United States “and of the state wherein they reside.” The men who served in the 27th provide evidence that blacks, in addition to those of prominence and with access to national audiences, participated in how Northern society shaped and adjusted to these changes in mid- and late nineteenth-century America.⁷

Historians have analyzed, and will continue to analyze, the battles and campaigns of the Civil War, including the Petersburg front, the Battle of the Crater, Hatcher’s Run, and the fall of Fort Fisher. Scholars have already offered enough evidence to agree on a consensus that militarily blacks did not make significant contributions to battles per se, but their support undeniably helped to turn the tide of war in the Union’s favor. And we should never lose sight of the permeating issues of racism and discrimination during the war and after, when the United States government and citizenry failed to fully protect the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment rights that came as a direct result of the Union victory. But wars are about more than generals and battles, or winners and losers.

In A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, Ronald Takaki asks his readers to consider the long-term effect when some of the American people are left out of their history. This has too often been the case for black Civil War soldiers, who when included are grouped together, slave and free, rural and urban, as a seemingly homogeneous group. But men in the 27th and other Northern USCT regiments do not fit into one neat category. They had multiple and varied experiences that were affected by geography, age, and, over time, social and political practices and legislative changes. Furthermore, their objectives at times differed from Ulysses S. Grant’s desire to win battles, Abraham Lincoln’s need to preserve the Union, and Frederick Douglass’s demands to abolish slavery and provide rights for black citizens. Therefore, it is important that they be included in the historical record. This study attempts to contribute to the void in literature Maris A. Vinovskis pointed out twenty-five years ago, that the impact of a national conflict extends far beyond the battlefield and state. Uncovering the fullest account of the soldiers’ experiences and consequences of their service will help us to better understand the influence of the Civil War on the everyday life of individuals and their communities, during and after the most critical event of the nineteenth century. Therefore, this study will go beyond the wartime service of the 27th USCT and follow the veterans during Reconstruction and into the early twentieth century. The lives of the men from the Ohio regiment and their families provide the opportunity to explore how blacks free before the war used their service to participate in what Ian Michael Spurgeon in his history of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry called “a vital part in helping to begin the long and painful process of countering white prejudice by defying stereotypes.” Although Spurgeon’s work focuses on a regiment composed largely of former slaves, the men in the 27th USCT faced similar challenges.⁸

This is for the most part a chronological study. The first chapter begins by examining the second-class status experienced by the larger black community in Ohio before Southern secession. This continued when African Americans attempted to assist in the preservation of the Union early in the war. Even when Ohio finally raised its first black regiment, the 5th USCT, the men received inequitable treatment. The second chapter discusses the men who joined the 27th USCT and their mustering in at Camp Delaware. Chapter 3 follows the 27th in its role with the IX Army Corps along the Petersburg front and its participation in the Battle of the Crater. Despite discriminatory practices that led to a preponderance of fatigue duty, the overall daily experience of soldiering proved to be somewhat similar to that experienced by white Ohioans in the Richmond area. The next chapter follows the 27th from their dangerous work in the back lines and their short membership in the historic all-black XXV Corps to their pivotal role at the fall of Fort Fisher. Their glory for the most part unrecognized, they served the remainder of the war in North Carolina as part of the occupational forces.

The final chapters use a topical approach. Chapter 5 looks at the daily life of the citizen soldiers, specifically their health, pay, and martial experiences away from the battlefield. The Ohioans had to deal with military justice, some became prisoners of war, and some deserted the army. Similar to white Ohioans, they used religion, music, and ties to their families and communities for support. Chapter 6 explores the lives of the men of the 27th USCT as veterans in Ohio. As national leaders attempted to redefine the relationship between the state and its citizenry, the black men dealt with personal issues related to familial obligations, the struggle for economic parity, and their declining heath. They used their status as veterans, as men who had proved their manhood and allegiance to the nation, to obtain federal benefits unavailable to Ohioans who had not served in the military, including pensions and domiciliary care. And they took their place as veterans in specific areas of public space and commemoration with white Ohioans. Their choices and actions helped them to maintain their national citizenship but at times placed the men in a separate sphere from other Northern African Americans.⁹

In an attempt to understand the impact of the Civil War on American society, particularly the important contributions and consequences of African American participation, this study focuses on a specific group of men and their families. Although many were born elsewhere, including some into slavery, most spent a significant part of their lives in Ohio. Written documentation for nineteenth-century blacks, even free Northerners, is often difficult to obtain. In the past, historical societies and archives rarely attempted to collect their personal papers or manuscript collections. Nonetheless, primary sources on the individuals and the 27th as a regiment are extensive and largely unexplored. Quotations included from these sources retain the original spelling and punctuation as written by the soldiers, their families, and the white officers.¹⁰

The United States Army Collection held by the National Archives and Records Administration is voluminous. Record Group 94, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, includes the compiled military service records (CMSR) for each individual soldier, as well as regimental record books and unbound papers. The CMSR are especially helpful, providing details about the military activities of the men as well as their lives before the outbreak of hostilities. In January 2007 Footnote.com, which became Fold3 in August 2011, began to place high-quality scans of the original documents online. All CMSR for the 27th USCT are now available with a paid subscription. Record Group 15, Records of the Veterans Administration, includes the pension case files for veterans and their families. These records can be extensive, and they often include affidavits from the soldiers, their families, and comrades concerning wartime participation, postwar activities, health issues, and marriage and family records. Some of these files include the personal wartime correspondence the applicants provided as evidence for claims. Fold3 has scanned the individual soldier’s cards from the “Organization Index to Pension Files of Veterans Who Served Between 1861 and 1900,” which includes the 27th. They are currently scanning the entire collection of applications for “Civil War ‘Widows’ Pensions,’” but only a limited number for the 27th are available so far.¹¹

Family genealogical research and census records are used to supplement CMSR and pension files to provide the fullest explanations possible. Two officers of the 27th USCT have manuscript collections in Ohio archives. The Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland has the papers of Adj. Albert G. Jones. The Ohio History Connection in Columbus has the transcribed diary of Capt. Albert Rogall, which was reprinted by Frank Levstik in Polish American Studies in 1970. Diaries and Letters of Francis Minot Weld, M.D. with a Sketch of His Life, about the regiment’s surgeon, is the only book-length printed source on the 27th USCT. Census records, once only available on microfilm with limited indexing, are now available online and searchable through several commercial sites.¹²

The overall emphasis of this monograph on the 27th USCT is to explore the lives of the black men as soldiers and veterans. This is supported at times with numerical data in order to place their experiences in context with other Civil War soldiers, white and black. I used several sources to corroborate who and how many men actually served in the regiment, as the numbers reported by officials vary greatly. I began with the National Park Service’s online database, “The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System.” A search for the 27th USCT provides a list of 1,749 black soldiers, once 50 white officer names are removed. I created a spreadsheet with these soldier’s names. Unfortunately, there are a significant number of names that are duplicates, as well as of those who never served with the regiment. For example, Robert D. Boe is also listed as Robert DeBoe, and Thomas A. Hartwill is also included as Thomas A. Hortwell. Archie Hogan, a blue-eyed, red-haired Irishman enlisted in August 1864 in Columbus, was included on muster-in cards for the 27th but never joined the regiment. Peter M. Simpson, a shoemaker born in Guernsey County, enlisted on September 3, 1864, but since the 27th was fully manned, officers at Camp Delaware sent him to Camp Foster, Tennessee. He died in October before he could muster into another infantry regiment.¹³

I compared the list of 1,749 names with the Ohio Roster Commission’s Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1866. The governor, William McKinley, the secretary of state, and the adjutant general compiled the names of all soldiers and officers who served for the state of Ohio “in the War with Mexico, and in the War of the Rebellion.” The general assembly approved the publication in May 1884. In the introduction, the editors explain the difficulties faced due to the improper spelling and inaccurate muster rolls. In addition to the 27th USCT, the first volume includes the entire 5th USCT, 263 men who served in the 16th USCT, 117 recruits sent to the 72nd USCT, 36 soldiers in the 5th United States Heavy Artillery, and 29 under the United States Heavy Artillery. Additionally, there were 1,115 black men under the heading “Unassigned Recruits, U.S. Colored Troops.” The pages for the 27th include ten companies and a section “Unassigned Recruits.” Not counting white officers, there are a total of 1,471 men attributed to the regiment, 179 of whom were unassigned, that I added to my spreadsheet. Almost 200 of the men in the Official Roster have “no further records found.” In his GAR deposition for membership, Alexander Hornberger described how he had attempted to enlist in the 27th USCT, but it was full. Officials sent him and other recruits to join the 15 USCT, Company E. He never did serve with the 27th, yet he is listed with the unassigned troops.¹⁴

I then went through all of the CMSR available on Fold3. These are listed under the regiment, then alphabetically. Because of the online search capabilities, it is possible to find duplicates that research using the paper files and microfilm made time prohibitive. In addition to misspelled names that create duplications, there is also a separate set of “miscellaneous card” files. As a result there are almost 3,000 CMSR, not counting white officers, listed under the 27th USCT. I compared the names with those on my spreadsheet, and after removing duplicates and the men who never served with the regiment my total came to 1,281 black soldiers. To be included, the men had to volunteer, join as substitutes, or be drafted, be sent to Camp Delaware or to the field, either in Virginia or North Carolina.¹⁵ I included other information for these 1,281 men on my spreadsheet, including the method for joining the regiment, their race, where born, and their age and occupation at enlistment. Additional notes were made for wounded, killed, disability discharges, amputations, hospital stays, prisoners of war, missing in action, desertions, transfers, arrests, courts-martial, and furloughs. And last, using the Civil War Pension Index files available on Fold3, I updated my list of soldiers or family members who applied for a pension after the war. Again, the ability to use the online search tools allowed me to find misfiled application numbers and duplicates. On my spreadsheet I included every soldier who filed an application, or had a family member who did, and then marked those that were successful as either invalid, widow, mother, father, or dependent. Of course, the numbers that come from this spreadsheet can tell us only so much about the black soldier’s service in the Union army and his life as a veteran in the post–Civil War United States.

Although the presence of black men in uniform became a somewhat accepted and “normal part of the war,” it is irrefutable that race shaped, and in some cases may have dominated, the experiences of African American men in the regiment. Many black leaders and soldiers shared their frustrations and anger over the second-class status and treatment of the USCT. But the most glaring omission in the letters and pension affidavits of members of the 27th is any discussion of the discriminatory and unequal treatment they endured as black men in a white man’s army. There are many possible reasons for the soldiers’ silence, but the fact is that without their own words we can never know how it personally affected them as individuals. The information available is therefore at times representative of their lives and at other times offers an exception to or an edited version of their experiences. As a result, this study is sometimes like a silent movie. We can observe from their point of view the actions taken by the men and their families, and we can watch the consequences unfold. But too often their thoughts about the experiences remain “unheard.” As Richard M. Reid explains, there is “a difficulty in constructing exciting stories from the boredom of war without combat or from the marginal contribution of units whose services were at best only average.”¹⁶ But that does not mean that the experiences of these men should be ignored or lost. Their service did have an impact, on them and on their families and communities. It is therefore important to include the daily minutia of their lives, placed within the context of nineteenth-century Ohio and the United States during the Civil War and the decades that followed. It is the best way to come close to recovering what the written documents fail to include.

The daily events and concerns recorded by and about the men of the 27th USCT look in some ways like the common experiences of Ohio’s white soldiery. Their wartime service consisted of hard marching, poor food, and the shortage of clothing and shelter. They suffered from disease, homesickness, and the lack of adequate medical care. After the war, the soldiers returned home broken, some with permanent physical and mental infirmities. Similar to white privates, only a few of the African American veterans individually noticed a significant elevation in their social, political, or economic status. But as John David Smith argues, the USCT “ultimately helped to fashion both Union victory and the war’s meaning.”¹⁷ As a result, black military service provided opportunities unavailable to other Northern men who did not serve during the Civil War. This is the most important aspect about their service and later recognition as veterans. They achieved this despite the significant implications of ever-present racial tensions, second-class status, and the inferior treatment that made their participation critically dissimilar to white soldiers.

African Americans, by virtue of their wartime contributions, should have earned citizenship and equality. They helped to remake the United States, and while not directly affected by the Thirteenth Amendment, free black veterans witnessed revolutionary changes to their status within the reconstructed nation.¹⁸ Their attempts to assert their rights were quickly challenged, though, as white Ohioans attempted to deny blacks access to many areas of mainstream American society in much the same way that the soldiers had often been relegated to the back lines of military duty during the Civil War. Yet this does not mean that African Americans failed to gain anything from the experience. Most blacks understood the significance of their martial participation. The former soldiers believed that their Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment rights would be upheld and protected and that they deserved and would receive the recognition and rewards of a veteran’s status.

As historian Mitchell Snay stated at Kent State University’s 13th Annual Symposium on Democracy, “Democracy and the American Civil War,” the national crisis of 1861–1865 needs to be seen as the “ripple” created after throwing a pebble into a pond. These men came home from the war with access to previously denied choices and the opportunity to benefit from them. The creation and service of free black regiments such as the 27th USCT transformed Ohio society in the postbellum years, albeit slowly and unevenly. The significance of African American participation lies not as much in the actual wartime experience but more so in the black veterans’ use of their service to obtain the benefits and rights of citizenship. In their postwar fight for social and political equality, prominent black leaders used the USCT as evidence of the African American’s worthiness.¹⁹ Ultimately, though, the actions of Ohio veterans reflected a desire for personal and familial improvement more than advocacy for larger societal or political change. Their concrete gains, as they understood them, altered many of their lives for the better. And the wartime service and postwar opportunities available to Northern black veterans help to explain why African Americans continued to serve in later wars for a country that did not extend the benefits to all.

The soldiers and veterans of the 27th United States Colored Troops had little reason to believe that the changes that they helped bring about during the last decades of the nineteenth century would not be permanent and expanding. Their lives clearly show otherwise. The history of the 27th USCT challenges many of the long-held biases about nineteenth-century blacks. The failure to recognize the full experience of black participation as they understood it is as detrimental to our understanding of the Civil War as when Americans, in the past and in the present, attempt to exclude the significance of slavery and emancipation and the three constitutional amendments born out of America’s greatest tragedy.