Glory! Glory! Ypsilanti’s Black Freedom Fighters Assault Fort Wagner!

We continue covering the sesquicentennial of the Civil War Today marking the anniversary of a milestone this day in the history of the black liberation struggle in the United States; the battle of Fort Wagner, July 18th, 1863. Though black troops had seen action in the west earlier, notably when they fought at the battles if Island Mound in Missouri, Port Hudson, Louisiana and just the day before at the battle of Honey Springs in Indian Territory on July 17th, 1863, it wasn’t until this day 148 years that black troops were widely seen to have joined the war as combatants.

The 54th Massachusetts saw horrific combat on this day leading a doomed assault on a Confederate fort protecting Charleston, South Carolina, Fort Wagner. Dispelling the racist notion that blacks would not fight, they fought like people fighting for their lives and the lives of their families. They fought for their own future, the future of blacks in America and the future of freedom around the world. And they fought ferociously.

The Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts was a pioneering black regiment largely staffed by white abolitionists and composed of free blacks form the North as well as some escaped slaves from the south. It was the first black regiment raised in the north and one of the few to retain its state designation throughout the war. Some of those enlistees included noted black abolitionists and activists including the sons of Frederick Douglass. It was, if such a thing might be said, the ‘elite’ black unit of the Civil War.

Some 1,500 Union soldiers, black and white, were counted as casualties that day. Of the 54th, only 315 men remained after the battle. thirty were killed in action, fighting which saw the 54th reach the parapet of the fort and engage the enemy with their very hands. The dead included regimental leader and abolitionist Colonel Shaw as well as Captains Russel and Simpkins. These white officers were buried in a mass grave with the black enlisted men where they remained until a storm washed the burials out to sea. Twenty-four later died of wounds, fifteen were captured, and fifty-two were reported missing after the battle and never reported again.

Massachusetts was the citadel of the abolitionist movement and the raising of black troops enjoyed the active support of the state government, then held by the more radical, if not The radical, wing of the Republican Party and attracted people from all over the North; from my small town, Ypsilanti, Michigan as well. Around twelve men, impatient with the lack of progress in raising a regiment in Michigan, joined some of the first regiments in the country to be raised: the deservedly famous 54th and 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. In several contingents, and organized by a network of black Masonic lodges, the men left from Ypsilanti for Camp Meigs in Readville, Massachusetts in the Spring of 1863. After the 54th was full the 55th Massachusetts was formed and also served with distinction throughout the war, including at the battles of James Island and Honey Hill. Three units with Ypsilanti men; the 54th, 55th and the Michigan raised 102nd USCT, which included over seventy Ypsilantians, would all serve together in the same operations from South Carolina to Florida and there is ample evidence that the men related across the regimental boundaries, including at memorials for fallen comrades from Ypsilanti.

Mostly young, mostly without families and mostly working as laborers and living as borders these men all had pasts, all of them were from somewhere else. Some lied about their pasts, some concealed them. Some were undoubtedly escaped slaves, others were exiles from racist communities. Many knew each other, others were recent arrivals. Only months after they enlisted their regiment would be decimated at Fort Wagner, their service a badge of honor for the rest of their lives, if they lived. What went through the minds of these men as they headed by steamers down the coast to slavery’s shores, guns in their hands and freedom on their lips?

They included Elias Rouse, an escaped slave from Kentucky who joined Company K of the 54th and was wounded in the arm in the assault on Fort Wagner.He would later marry the widow, Mary, of another volunteer, John Gay of the 102nd United States Colored Troops, who died of disease and is buried in South Carolina. Elias is buried in Ypsilanti’s Highland Cemetery.

John Bird a farmhand originally from Ohio, who joined the 55th and died of disease on Morris Island, South Carolina in January.

Nelson Wilson, a young hotel worker claiming to be from Canada though he was from Kentucky, also possibly an escaped slave, joined the 55th and was promoted to Full Corporal and later moved to Saint Louis.

James Wood originally from Indiana would join the 55th and serve through the war moving to Detroit afterward where he became a cook.

Napoleon Hamilton, originally from Alabama, joined the 54th and was promoted for his role at Fort Wagner later to have his rank reduced for ‘carelessness’.

William Casey, originally from Virginia, joined the 55th at the age of 48, though he lied and said he was 40. He injured his back doing fatigue-duty and was assigned to regimental duties after that, discharged for disability at the very end of the war.

Charles August, a black smith originally from Delaware was captured during the assault and died in the notorious Andersonville prison in September of 1864.

John Leatherman, a merchant marine, joined the 54th and was either killed in the assault on Fort Wagner or was captured and later died at Andersonville (the records say both). The thought of an experience of a captured black soldier is terrifying. Very few of the men captured at Wagner survived.

Charles Scott, a day laborer, joined the 54th and died of wounds received in one of the very last battles of the war, Boykins Mills, South Carolina in April, 1865.

Others from Michigan who fought with these storied regiments include Armistead Williams, a 36 year old laborer from Detroit, who joined the 54th and was captured two days before the assault on Fort Wagner, dying in July, 1864 of typhoid fever.

William Brown, a 19 year old merchant marine from Detroit died at Folly Island, South Carolina in December, 1864. He joined Company E and was in the thick of the fight at Wagner.

William Griffin, a twenty year old blacksmith from Detroit, had joined the 55th and was killed in action at the battle of Honey Hill on November 30th, 1864.

Richard Richie, a farmer from Greenville, Michigan joined the 55th as well. Originally from Mississippi, he was killed at the battle of Honey Hill as well.

Alfred Harris, a 28 year old sailor from Detroit, joined the 54th and was declared missing, never to be seen again, following the assault on Wagner.

Henry Steward, a 23 year old farmer from Adrian, joined the 54th and was promoted to Sergeant. He died of wounds received during the assault on Wagner in September of 1863 in a hospital in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

John Stevens, a farmer from Pontiac was 23 when he joined the 54th. He died this day, 148 years ago fighting for the liberation of his enslaved race on the walls of Fort Wagner.

These are the names of only some of the veterans of the 54th and 55th. There were many who answered freedom’s call from Ypsilanti and headed south in a war of liberation with other black units, mainly with the Michigan raised 102nd USCT. So many of their stories are lost forever, whatever we might do to rescue their legacy is not worthy of their sacrifice, yet we must do it. Remember their names comrades, they are heroes.

Below is a letter from Frederick Douglass’s son Lewis to his sweetheart Amelia, whom he would later marry, in the days following the battle that gives a sense of the assault and the men who made it.

Long live the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts! Freedom will be taken by the sword!

MORRIS ISLAND. S. C. July 20

MY DEAR AMELIA: I have been in two fights, and am unhurt. I am about to go in another I believe to-night. Our men fought well on both occasions. The last was desperate we charged that terrible battery on Morris Island known as Fort Wagoner, and were repulsed with a loss of 3 killed and wounded. I escaped unhurt from amidst that perfect hail of shot and shell. It was terrible. I need not particularize the papers will give a better than I have time to give. My thoughts are with you often, you are as dear as ever, be good enough to remember it as I no doubt you will. As I said before we are on the eve of another fight and I am very busy and have just snatched a moment to write you. I must necessarily be brief. Should I fall in the next fight killed or wounded I hope to fall with my face to the foe.

If I survive I shall write you a long letter. DeForrest of your city is wounded George Washington is missing, Jacob Carter is missing, Chas Reason wounded Chas Whiting, Chas Creamer all wounded. The above are in hospital.

This regiment has established its reputation as a fighting regiment not a man flinched, though it was a trying time. Men fell all around me. A shell would explode and clear a space of twenty feet, our men would close up again, but it was no use we had to retreat, which was a very hazardous undertaking. How I got out of that fight alive I cannot tell, but I am here. My Dear girl I hope again to see you. I must bid you farewell should I be killed. Remember if I die I die in a good cause. I wish we had a hundred thousand colored troops we would put an end to this war. Good Bye to all Write soon Your own loving LEWIS

Along the Ohio: Freedom Bound

I went down to southeast Ohio over the weekend for the Nelsonville Music Festival on the swollen banks of the Hocking River and had some tooling around time. That part of Ohio is an ancestral homeland of mine and place of innumerable childhood memories. Its byways and backroads are a perfect canvas for day-tripping. It was in full spring; the foothills of the Appalachians have every plant and every tree flowering and bursting forth and a sweet smell hangs over the valleys. The after-rain mist clinging to the green hills. A sublime place until one sees the ramshackle trailers and mining’s detritus, poverty and ecocide, that are ubiquitous in the hills and hollers of the region. Its history, from the end of the last Ice Age through the Adena and the Hopewell until now, a constant pull on my attention.

The poorest part of Ohio, this is also an area rich in the history of resistance. From the tenacious wars of the Shawnee to slaves fleeing the shore of bondage that was the south bank of the Ohio; from the organizers of utopian communities responding to the degradations of industry’s arrival underway in the nineteenth century to the repeated strikes and risings of coal miners in the early twentieth. Every community is both the official story and the story that negates the official story. Sleepy Ohio has also been a place of proud, occasionally fierce, rebellion.

A few miles north of Pomeroy, which sits on the Ohio, is a place hidden, purposely, deep in the hills of Morgan Township, Gallia County. The Lambert Land Settlement was established by slaves from Virginia (which then included what is now West Virginia and abutted Ohio) freed on the death of the of their ‘owner’ in 1839. His will stipulated that the slaves in his charge be given the means to set up in freedom, the land purchased to be held in common by the families in perpetuity. Thirty settlers arrived in 1843. The place they chose became a center of abolitionist activity and a refuge on the way to freedom for those escaping slavery. Well worth the trip there, and clearly rarely visited, the cemetery and church that mark the remains of the hamlet is a special place. Tucked away in time and place.

Being just miles from the Ohio River the settlement quickly became a stopping place by those fleeing north from slavery. Its location so close to the slave states Kentucky and Virginia also meant the threat from slave-catchers was very real as well. In 1850 Elijah Anderson, a Baptist preacher, ‘underground railroad’ activist and member of the settlement, was lured to Kentucky under the guise of assisting runaways. There he was captured and jailed in Frankfort. Members of the settlement were told that they needed $200 to bail their comrade from the jail. Duly raised, they were then told that Elijah Anderson had died in prison. On return to Morgan the casket was opened before burial where it was revealed that Elijah had been shot and his skull crushed.

From the Ohio River to this settlement, runaways would then be assisted to other communities and safe houses stretching north to the abolitionist stronghold that was the old Western Reserve in northeast Ohio. While many escaping slaves, at the height estimated (perhaps highly) by one participant of the time to be two hundred a year, only briefly stayed around in a place so perilously close to the River, some did stay on. Some white neighbors, like the abolitionists Benjamin and Susan Ward who lived down the road from the settlement, were allies, many others were not. There are many myths associated with the ‘underground railroad’, but it is inescapably true that many hundreds of slaves were helped to freedom by a series of networks, mostly ad hoc, organized primarily by free blacks and other slaves, escaped or still in bondage. Free black communities close to slavery were naturally at the center of such a movement, the Lambert Lands settlement epitomizes much in that dynamic.

The area had gained newly freed slaves in 1862, fleeing with the Union retreat from western Virginia in 1862. When the opportunity to return south in a war of liberation finally arrived in 1863 a large number of the men in the settlement joined the colored regiments that were forming. In Ohio this largely meant the 5th and the 27th United States Colored Troops regiments.  Several members of the settlement dying from disease or killed in battle, including at the battle of The Crater in Petersburg, 1864 where they would have been commanded by a distant relative of this writer, or at the battle of New Market Heights where the 5th received hundreds of casualties and the largest group of Medals of Honor given to black troops in the Civil War. One of those who answered the call was William P. Ellison, whose grave is pictured above. Joining the famed Mississippi Squadron of the US Navy, one of the few integrated institutions in the country, Ellison served on the US General Lyon.

That Ellison joined the fight is no surprise; he had joined that struggle many years before. Named by the chronicler of the area’s anti-slavery movement, the white abolitionist Nelson Banks Sisson, as a leading ‘conductor’ on the U.G.R.R., Sisson relates the time when, at the home of James and Martha Howell (main ‘underground railroad’ activists in the settlement), Ellison successfully fought off slave-catchers with a chair. Born into slavery in Virginia, Ellison’s family were among the first members of the settlement.

Up to thirty other Colored Troops veterans are buried here, some of them clearly arriving after the Civil War, many of them lie in unmarked graves. Along with the 27th and 5th USCT, which were raised in Ohio, those buried here were also members of the 15th and 16th USCTs as well as the 44th and 88th Heavy. One man, William Norman, seems to have ‘passed’ as white and joined the 36th Indiana which fought in the Western Theater throughout the war eventually destroying Hoods army in Tennessee under General George Thomas.

The women were no less involved in the struggle, though with much less of a paper trail to follow. A look through the Census records shows a majority of the households led by women, unsurprising given the strains and obstacles the slave system and virulent racism placed on the black family. Women are often written into the shadows of history, but they were at the center of the settlements activity. Sisson describes another incident on the nearby Raccoon Creek where a female fugitive was hiding from pursuit. The woman was defended by four other women, described as being brave and ‘used to guns’, who sat at the door and announced to the men approaching as they leveled their weapons, ‘The first man that comes through that gate is a dead man’.  Apparently the slave catchers took them at their word and retreated from the home.

Morgan’s Raid in July, 1863 passed right by the Lambert Lands settlement, with Morgan’s troops taking over nearby Vinton. The area’s activity in assisting slaves to freedom was hardly news to Morgan and his raid was something of an extension of the border war that had been going on long before the outbreak of the Civil War. Morgan’s men captured blacks, sending them into slavery south during their trek north of the Ohio, striking terror into black communities of the region before the raid was broken up to the southeast of Morgan Township at Buffington Island on the Ohio.

There is much more to know on the community’s history. For example, I’d love to know the story of the above. Who was”Miles”? Other than tracing the benefactor of the monument, the aforementioned NB Sisson, I have been unable to get a hint. It certainly is an interesting monument and is one of the many stories to only partially reveal themselves. How many more are completely hidden? The Lambert Lands settlement was a communal one, made up almost entirely of farmers, and was held by the descendents of the original freed slaves for well over a century until, unable to pay the property taxes, the state took over the land and sold it off in the the early 1970s.

A working community the settlement had a school and a church, but it would be wrong to see it as a town. A farming settlement comprising fifteen or so families on two hundred and fifty acres with links to the other communities around it, both white and black, but with a strong identity of its own, many of the families that began the settlement would stay on and marry among each other for generations. Self sustaining rural black communities existed in Ohio well into the twentieth century and while the history of black folks in the north is largely seen as an urban one, born of southern migrations in the twentieth century, there remain significant traditions of black life, much of it rural and pre-dating the Civil War, outside of that experience. That tradition is kept alive to this day by some of the descendents of the Lambert Lands.

In 2002 the central monument was dedicated as well as markers produced for some of the graves, mainly those of Colored Troops veterans, by a group including descendents of the original families in nearby Gallipolis, an Ohio river town with a strong black and free slave tradition (including the longest running celebration of Emancipation in the entire country).

Hardly unique, the Morgan Township settlement was one of many that nestled in the Appalachian foothills of southeast Ohio, indeed southern Ohio is on the front line of freedom’s fight. Along with the “Gist settlements” that were established in Brown, Adams and Highland counties there was Payne’s Crossing in Hocking County, the Pee Pee colony in Pike County, the Stillguest settlement in Ross, Berlin Crossroads in Jackson county (home to the Woodson family, prominent black anti-slavery activists said to be descendents of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves, who lost two men, beaten to death by slave-catchers, in the 1850s), Huston Hollow in Scioto County, the Macedonia, Pokepatch and Black Fork settlements in Lawrence County are the names of some of them. While most were made up of farms some found work in the newly opened iron and coal mines of the region. All of them lived on the border of bondage and the promise of liberty, all of them played a role in the struggle for freedom.

After setting up in Gallia County the newly freed slaves shed the name ‘Lambert’ of their master; among the families of the community were the Minnis, the Andersons, the Jones, the Millers, the Ellisons, the Howells, The Randalls, the Evens, the Burkes, the Hammonds, the Stevens, the Johnsons and the James. Their names are deserving of remembrance. Below are some photos of their graves, these freedom fighters and farmers of Ohio’s foothills.

A Fall Walk Among Ypsilanti’s Soldiers of Black Liberation

These are my heroes.  A few years back I took a bike ride through Ypsilanti’s Highland Cemetery.  I had heard that there was a monument to Civil War soldiers, it was a nice day and I ended up there more as a destination for a ride rather than as a destination in of itself.  I got to the monument pictured above and read on its base “They Died To Make Our Country Free”.  What a remarkable thing I thought.  It didn’t say to restore the Union or to make or country freer, or to live up to its constitution (which itself helped to codify slavery), or anything like that. It said to make free, meaning it was unfree.  Not a popular thing to say, even today, when we would like to think that slavery was endorsed only by the Southern states rather than by the whole of the Federal Government.

I looked around at the graves and noticed some with the marking “102 USCT”.  I knew that meant “United States Colored Troops”, but more than that I did not know.  Also remarkable, they were buried among the white veterans on the Civil and other wars.   What was the 102 USCT?  Why were they buried here under this statue among other, white, soldiers.  Above all, who were these men?  So began an investigation, perhaps an obsession, into the black men of Ypsilanti who would join in, what they surely viewed as, a war of liberation to destroy slavery and free their people.

Since then I have spent untold hours in archives, deeds offices, newspaper stacks, libraries and searching the streets to see if any of their homes still stand.  Whatever tangible connection I could find to them.  Over 70 black men from Ypsilanti, or around 80% of the listed adult male black population (which was surely higher than recorded), would join after the army was opened up to blacks in the Spring of 1863 (Louisiana, Missouri and South Carolina had earlier, local, recruitments).  Almost all of them the First Michigan Colored Infantry, later 102nd United States Colored Troops.

Around twelve men, impatient with the lack of progress in raising a regiment in Michigan, joined the first regiments in the country to be raised: the deservedly famous 54th and 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Massachusetts, the seat of abolitionism with a Radical Governor, refused to add “colored” to the name of the regiment.  These men would see and endure the unimaginable.  Including two who would be sent to the dreadful Andersonville Prison, one of whom, Charles August, would die there.  The heroic, but doomed assault on Fort Wagner was the  defining public moment for black participation in the war.  Men who lived not three blocks from me would storm its parapets only to be driven back with huge losses.

There is so much more to say on who these men were, where they came from and what it says about how some blacks viewed the war. For me it has been a window onto world I had heard of, but could never really define.  Now I see it, if not clearly, than in more detail than I thought possible.  My curiosity has been peaked and I don’t know how to stop. Any one who knows me, often to their annoyance, knows it can be my favored topic of conversation.

I would like to rescue these men from the obscurity racism pushed them into, from the obscurity of time  and class as well.  They deserve to be known, to be understood.  They are a vital, vibrant link in the revolutionary tradition of the United States.   They are genuine heroes; soldiers of black, of human, liberation.

I went to Highland again last Thursday.  A perfect late fall day.  The leaves have peaked and everywhere among the trees a golden snow was falling.  A quiet day in the cemetery after the tumult of the election’s final week.  I found myself wishing I could have told them that on Tuesday the United States elected a black President.  I wonder what they would have said.

Jeremiah Snively joined the Regiment at the age of 19 in January, 1864.  He lived in Ypsilanti after, working as a day laborer.  His grave marker is one of several new markers bought by a kind individual to replace the deteriorated originals.

Elias Rouse most probably came from a slave family in Kentucky, listed as a mulatto, he may have been the child of his mother’s Master or one of his children.  What I know about his early life is sketchy.  He would end up in Chatham, Ontario which along with Buxton was a center for runaway slaves, free blacks who could no longer abide the racism in the “free states” and radical black abolitionists organizing to strike a blow against slavery.  It was in Chatham that John Brown met with people like Martin Delaney and John De Baptiste (who would go on to lead recruitment to the 102nd) hoping to win support in the colony of exiles for his armed foray into the South.

Elias would then end up in Ypsilanti where, with William Scott, he would leave for Massachusetts to join Company K of the 54th Massachusetts in May, 1863.  Meaning as soon as he was able to join a regiment he went.  He had, perhaps, been waiting for that day all of his life.  Elias was wounded in the assault on Fort Wagner but stayed with the “Glory” Regiment through its entire service.  William Scott would, like so many others, fall ill and was discharged within six months of joining.  Many more members of the 102 and other black regiments died of disease than of combat.

Elias returned  to Ypsilanti after the war where he would marry the widow of his comade John Gay of the 102 USCT, Mary Gay.  The Ypsilanti men who had gone to join the 54th and 55th would see their Ypsilanti friends of the 102 later in the war.  All these Regiments were stationed together in Florida and South Carolina at one time or another.  They would fight together at Deveaux Kneck, Boykon’s Landing and Honey Hill there.  Several raids would destroy hundreds of miles of Confederate rail and infrastructure.

John Gay died of disease in South Carolina in 1865.  He is buried there.  Elias would raise John’s children with Mary and they would have some of their own.

He died in 1899, and is listed in the records as a peddler and day laborer.  His house with Mary still stands, she may have bought it with her Widow’s Pension in the 1870’s.  I would love to know more about Elias and will continue to try to track down what I might about him.  To see a photograph of him, to see his face, would be a deeply satisfying thrill.

Comrades in life and in death.

Henry Thornton is mostly a mystery.  I know he joined the Regiment later, in October 1864, at the age of 38.  But other than that I don’t know much about him.  This is a Grand Army of the Republic marker from the time of his death.  He would probably have been a member.  There were two black GAR branches in Michigan, one of them named after John Brown.

Either this is David York’s grave with his brother George York’s death date or it is George’s grave with David’s name on it.  Both had come to Ypsilanti with their family from Kentucky in the 1850’s.  George enlisted at the age of 15 with his 18 year old brother David in October 1863.  George fell ill and died tragically without ever leaving Ypsilanti.  David would return to Ypsilanti where he married a women named Mary, have half a dozen children and lived a couple of blocks from where I live now.  A laborer he died after the turn of the century.

Benjamin Harper, originally from Indiana joined the Regiment in November, 1863 at the age of 20 and served the life of the unit.  He saw battle in Florida and participated in raids into the Carolina interior that destroyed plantations, skirmished with Confederates and liberated slaves.  His comrade of the same company was Jesse Oliver from Ypsilanti.  He would die of wounds received at the Battle of Honey Hill.   After the war Benjamin would live next to the Yorks and marry a woman named Martha from Canada.  He would die around the turn of the century.

Percival Murphy joined the Regiment at the age of 39 in February, 1864.  Originally from Ohio he is listed as “mulatto”.  Percival had come to Ypsilanti some years before the war.  The town had for many years, since the Second Great Revival, had a reputation as relatively tolerant.  Its proximity to Canada would mean that it would also be a way stop for black folks on their journey to that, more hospitable, country.  Many young black men show up on the records before the war as single farm laborers boarding on white farmsteads.  Percival also lived not far from me where he raised a family with his wife Catherine, originally from Delaware.

Thomas Davis joined at the ripe old age of 44 near the end of the war.  Originally from Virginia he had also come to Ypsilanti some years before the war where he worked on farms with his brother Daniel.  He would marry Margaret who would die young.  He would later marry Elizabeth and work as a peddler.  He died on April 13, 1895.

There are many more names and stories to share.  These are just a few of the men who would join the freedom struggle from Ypsilanti.  Others, like William Casey and Edmund Lowe, would become leaders of their community.  Many more came home from victory to the harsh reality of an unfinished revolution; continued racial discrimination and violence and the exploitation inherent to their class.  All of them deserve mention.  Surely, none were angels and just as surely very few of us will ever do more for freedom than they.