The 150th Anniversary of the United States Colored Troops
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.
From May 22 to 31, the digital collection will be free on
Fold3
.
(All National Archives collections on Fold3.com can always be viewed for free at any National Archives facility nationwide.)
Compiled military
service records (CMSRs) are part of Record Group 94, the Records of the
Adjutant General’s Office. They contain card abstracts of entries
related to an individual soldier such as muster rolls
and regimental returns.
Many CMSRs also contain
original documents called “personal papers,” which are especially
valuable to researchers looking for documentation on former slaves.
These papers include enlistment papers, correspondence,
orders, prisoner-of-war memorandums, casualty reports, or final
statements. Unique to the records of the USCT are deeds of manumission,
proofs of slave ownership, and bills of sale.
Starting in October
1863, a slave owner could offer his slave for enlistment in military
service and be entitled to compensation up to $300 upon filing a valid
deed of manumission and release, and making satisfactory
proof of title. These forms offer researchers rare information and
document the life of a slave person in the absence of other vital
records.
Edmund Delaney was a
slave who served in Company E of the 117th USCT Infantry. He was 25
years old when he enlisted in August 1864. Delaney’s owner, Harvey C.
Graves of Georgetown, Kentucky, filed a compensation
claim for his military service in December 1866. Graves stated that he
“purchased [Delaney] at private sale when he was quite a small boy and
owned him at the time of his enlistment.”
The claim form was
accompanied by a proof of ownership form to which Graves attached a rare
“likeness,” or photo of Delaney, and several of Delaney’s letters
written to him while serving in Brownsville, Texas.
The letters offer us a rare glimpse into his lonely soldier’s life,
especially when he laments that no friends have written back to him:
“somehow most of them seem to be very much afraid of their pens and ink.”
The USCT service records also reveal the social issues faced by
free blacks, such as the story of Fortune Wright, a soldier of
the 96th USCT Infantry. Wright was a free black man before the Civil War
began, and he enlisted in Louisiana in July 1862.
On October 23, 1865, a white doctor and another man
thought they observed Wright beating a black woman on a street in
Jefferson, Louisiana. When they attempted to reprimand Wright, a fight
ensued. Wright—fearing for his life—stabbed the
doctor, who was beating him with a cane. The doctor died.
Wright pleaded not guilty at his court-martial
trial but was found guilty of murder and sentenced “to be hanged by the
neck until dead” on January 5, 1866.
The accused offered his explanation while in prison
in New Orleans. He stated that he was approached by an “immoral colored
woman” who put her hand on his shoulder and was “acting her willingness
to prostitute her person.” The woman told
him to give her a dime. Wright said that he didn’t have a dime, and
that if he did have a dime, he would give it to his wife. Wright stated
that he was angry with the woman for her insulting conduct and language.
If she repeated her language, Wright told her,
he would slap her. She did repeat herself, and Wright slapped her.
The two white men appeared on the scene at this
point without knowing how the argument began. As Wright walked away, the
doctor followed and struck Wright on the head with a walking cane.
Wright reeled around and grabbed the stick while
the doctor cursed at him to let go. The doctor grabbed Wright by the
collar of his coat and then punched him in the face. The second white
man yelled to “kill the damned black yankee [since] there is no law for
him.” Wright warned that if they both jumped
him, he would cut one with his knife. When he was attacked, Wright
stabbed the doctor with his knife.
Wright’s captain and his attorney sent pleas for a
postponement of the sentence to Maj. Gen. Edward Canby of the Department
of the Gulf. They were hoping for time to appeal to President Andrew
Johnson for a pardon based on self-defense.
Several postponements were granted. The series of
the documents leading to President Johnson’s final decision reads like
the ultimate page-turner. On February 24, 1866, General Canby received a
telegram from the War Department in Washington,
DC, stating that President Johnson has ordered that “the [death]
sentence be duly carried into execution.” A copy of this message on
American Telegraph Company letterhead survives in the service record.
Wright was not notified of his fate until the
evening before his hanging. A week earlier, Provost Marshal A.M. Jackson
was warned in a letter from Eastern District headquarters in Louisiana
that “Precaution must be taken that the office
of hangman be confided to a capable person so that no disagreeable
results may ensue, and that the body be not disturbed until the hangman
has pronounced life to be entirely extinct.”
Jackson’s report of the execution dated the next day describes quite a different scene.
The knot on the rope was not soaped properly and
the knot slipped as Wright fell from the platform. Though he was
suspended, his neck was not broken and he could still breathe. Wright
was taken down and put on the platform a second time.
It took fifteen more minutes of strangulation before death took Fortune
Wright. Jackson claimed that though the circumstance was “unpleasant,”
Wright did not suffer “as he remained insensible from the time of the
first fall.”
The stories of the USCT soldiers will be available free to non-subscribers on
Fold3 from
May 22 to 31, and can be accessed for free at any time on computers at the National Archives.
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