"The war was over, and Memorial Day had been founded by African-Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. The war, they had boldly announced, had been about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders’ republic. They were themselves the true patriots."
From May 22 to 31, the digital collection of the USCT Service Records will be free on www.Fold3.com.
On May 22, 1863, the War Department issued General Orders 143, establishing a Bureau of Colored Troops in the Adjutant General’s Office to recruit and organize African American soldiers to fight for the Union Army. With this order, all African American regiments were designated as United States Colored Troops (USCT).
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the USCT, and the National Archives is pleased to announce the completion of the USCT Service Records Digitization Project. In partnership with Fold3, the project provides online access to all service records—more than 3.8 million images—of Union volunteers in USCT units.
Remember: All National Archives collections on Fold3.com can always be viewed for free at a computer at any National Archives facility nationwide.
The photo and paperwork above come from the compiled military service records of former slave Edmund Delaney. Read his story on the Prologue blog.
(via todaysdocument)
Contrabands of War
Contraband school, ca. 1860 - ca. 1865
Created by the War Department, Office of the Chief Signal Officer
National Archives and Records Administration (ID: 524418)
(Source: arcweb.archives.gov)
Contrabands of War
Freed slaves at the Headquarters of General Lafayette,” photographed by Mathew Brady
Yorktown, Virginia, ca. 1862
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University
The term ‘Contraband’ was coined by General Benjamin F. Butler to describe escaped slaves. It was used to describe the thousands of slaves who sought refuge behind Union Army lines during the Civil War. Many of these men and women became laborers in support of the army’s efforts and, for the first time in their lives, earned wages.
Beaufort, South Carolina. Group of men, women and children on J.J. Smith’s plantation, 1862
Timothy H. O’Sullivan, photographer
Civil War glass negative collection, Library of Congress
When President Abraham Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, the men, women and children on J.J. Smith’s cotton plantation were among the first slaves to be liberated.
Next on my reading list…
Portrait of Charles Remond Douglass, 1864
Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Charles Remond Douglass was born on October 21, 1844, the third and youngest son of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. As a child, Charles learned the publishing business and helped produce his father’s newspapers.
In 1863, Charles became the first African American in the state of New York to enlist in the Army to fight in the Civil War. He served in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry and the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry.
After serving in the military, Charles held jobs in several federal government departments and the Freeman’s Bureau. In 1875, he was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant as U.S. Consul to Santo Domingo and in 1882, he was appointed an examiner in the Pension Bureau. He also became a real estate developer.
Charles married twice, and had seven children. He died on November 24, 1920. At the time of his death, two of his sons survived, Joseph, an internationally acclaimed violinist, and Haley, an Harvard-educated teacher.
A fellow Tumblr blogger noted that Susie King Taylor was the only known African American woman to publish a memoir of her Civil War experiences. I did a quick search and found her book, and it’s available via Barnes & Noble and Amazon. It should be a fascinating read.
As a young slave girl, Susie King Taylor secretly learned to read and write. Her skills proved invaluable to the Union Army as they began to form regiments of African American soldiers. Hired by the 1st South Carolina Colored Volunteers as a laundress in 1862, her primary roles were to nurse to wounded soldiers and to teach those who could not read or write. Taylor served for more than three years, working alongside her husband, Edward King, a sergeant in the regiment.
Photo: Susie King Taylor, 1902, courtesy East Carolina University
Norfolk, Virginia native Mary Smith Peake (1823 -1862) was an American teacher and humanitarian. In the fall of 1861, Peake started a school for the children of former slaves under what became known as the Emancipation Oak tree in Hampton, Virginia. The site is located on the grounds of present-day Hampton University. When the American Missionary Association began building schools for freed slaves— or “contraband”— during the war, Peake was the first teacher the organization hired. A sudden illness struck her, however, and she only lived five months after her appointment. Peake taught from her sick bed until her final days.
Image courtesy of the Hampton University Museum Archives
William D. Matthews was born a Maryland slave, so information about his early years remains elusive. By 1854, Matthews was a Black pioneer in Leavenworth, Kansas, a stop on the Underground Railroad. He opened a restaurant that soon became the head station on the underground railway system, with Matthews the “general passenger traffic manager.”
Mustered into the Federal service on July 7, 1864 as a second lieutenant in the Independent Battery, U. S. Colored Light Artillery at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, becoming one of the 120 African-Americans commissioned as officers during the Civil War. He was promoted to first lieutenant on February 27, 1865, and assumed command of the battery when its captain became ill. He was mustered out of service on July 15, 1865.
Image Courtesy KansasMemory.org
Rare Photo Of Slave Children Found In NC Attic, Nicole Norfleet, Associated Press,
A haunting 150-year-old photo found in a North Carolina attic shows a young black child named John, barefoot and wearing ragged clothes, perched on a barrel next to another unidentified young boy. Art historians believe it’s an extremely rare Civil War-era photograph of children who were either slaves at the time or recently emancipated.
The photo, which may have been taken in the early 1860s, was a testament to a dark part of American history, said Will Stapp, a photographic historian and founding curator of the National Portrait Gallery’s photographs department at the Smithsonian Institution. “It’s a very difficult and poignant piece of American history,” he said. “What you are looking at when you look at this photo are two boys who were victims of that history.”
