First African American soldiers strike a blow for freedom as early as 1862

This post was inspired by Angela Y. Walton-Raji

The First South Carolina Volunteers
The first black soldiers to serve in the Union army during the Civil War were enrolled in March 1862 at Union-occupied territory on the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina. One-hundred men from that unit became members of the First South Carolina Volunteers. LC. 
The photograph was taken at the former J.J. Smith Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina. USMHI. 


(Florida History Online)

In May 1862, General David Hunter commanded a regiment of soldiers comprised of former slaves to be formed.  President Lincoln and Congress were opposed to admitting them into the army.  They were known as Hunter's Regiment.  General Hunter disbanded the regiment on August 10, 1862, however, 100 of the men first enrolled were allowed to stay in Union service to protect the freedmen and woman in refugee camps.  Also a "company of thirty-eight men was sent to St. Simons Island, Georgia, where they helped to defend themselves against Confederate attack." See "Black Troops in Civil War Georgia."

There is evidence that these soldiers were gathering under General David Hunter's command even before May.  Before the Confederates surrendered Fort Pulaski at Savannah on April 11, 1862, Abraham Murchison, an escaped slave  preacher was already assisting General Hunter by recruiting 150 other former slaves to join Hunter's Regiment at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.


Some may ask, "Why Hilton Head?"  Hilton Head fell to Union forces as early as 1861.  In 1862, Union General Ormsby Mitchel (1805-1862) organized Mitchelville, a community sustainable and governed by freed slaves.  Abraham Murchison became the mayor of Mitchelville.  See more in the video, Mitchelville, SC: The Town that Time Forgot. Also see Gullah Heritage: less traveled, not forgotten.

Two weeks after Hunter's Regiment was disbanded, President Lincoln changed his mind and authorized a regiment of African American soldiers to be trained.  They became known as The First Carolina Volunteers, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911), an abolitionist minister.  I find some of the highlights from the life of  Higginson to be very interesting.

He went to Harvard at the age of 13 and graduated second in his class in 1841. He took graduate courses at Harvard Divinity in 1n 1847 and later served as a nondenominational minister for the Unitarian First Religious Society who forced him to resign after two years because the congregation  disagreed with his abolitionist ideas.  

Higginson was criticized for nominating Susan B. Anthony for the World Temperance Convention.  He was among the party that attacked the Boston Courthouse to free a slave, Anthony Burns who was returned to his master.  Higginson participated in John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and the charges against him were later dropped.  

He remained in command of The First South Carolina Volunteers from 1862 until 1864 when they were renamed as the 33rd United States Colored Infantry which did not disband until January 31, 1866.  It became the longest African American military unit that served in the Civil War.  

In 1886, he volunteered to edit Emily Dickinson's poems upon her death.  He was criticized for making those edits.  We are very fortunate to have the account of his experience with the African American men who served in The First South Carolina Volunteers.  

His account written in 1870 is below, and we will review his stories throughout the next few posts where we can get to know his soldiers a little better.

"We the people," not "We the states"

We the People of the United States,
in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare,
and secure the Blessings of Liberty
to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution
for the United States of America. Preamble

This is the Preamble of The United States Constitution. It is the first evidence that the Founding Fathers meant that government was established by the people and for the people, not by the states or for the states.

There is no mention of state's rights or confederacy. In the letter below to the London Times, American historian and diplomat, John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877) details the chaos that existed before the ratification of The Constitution by the supreme power (the people, not the states). He said there always existed two parties, "one who advocated states rights and local self-government," and another who "favored national government (see page 9).

"A permanent, consolidated government was established, a single commonwealth" (not a confederacy).
Motley claims that states had not right to secede because The Constitution was not a compact (a promise) but law, and it is worded as such. It specifies what shall and shall not be done (law). In this commonwealth, more states could be added, but the Union was not meant to be dissolved, hence, "for ourselves and our posterity."

Any move to overthrow the Union or to take Federal property would be considered treason.

Secession is, in brief, the return to chaos from which we emerged three-quarters of a century since. No logical sequence can be more perfect. If one state lias a right to secede to-day, asserting what it calls its sovereignty, another may, and probably will, do the same to-morrow, a third on the next day, and so on, until there are none to secede from. Granted the premises that each state may peaceably secede from the Union, it follows that a county may peaceably secede from a state, and a town 'from a county, until there is nothing left but a horde of individuals all seceding from each other. The theory that the people of a whole country in their aggregate capacity are supreme is intelligible; and it has been a fact, also, in America for seventy years. But it is impossible to show, if the people of a state be sovereign, that the people of a county or of a village, and the individuals of the village, are not equally sovereign, and justified in "resuming their sovereignty" when their interest or their caprice seems to impel them. The process of disintegration brings back the community to barbarism, precisely as its converse has built up commonwealths—whether empires, kingdoms, or republics—out of original barbarism. See page 13.

Motley also asserts that there was no wrongdoing to warrant rebellion only because Abraham Lincoln had won the election in 1860, and there was a fear that he would end slavery even though he had not campaigned on the premise of ending slavery.

The great secession, therefore, of 1860-61 is a rebellion, like any other insurrection against established authority, and has been followed by civil war as its immediate and inevitable consequence. If successful, it is a revolution; and whether successful or not, it will be judged before the tribunal of mankind and posterity according to the eternal laws of reason and justice.
Time and history will decide whether it was a good and sagacious deed to destroy a fabric of so long duration because of the election of Mr. Lincoln; whether it were wise and noble to substitute over a large portion of the American soil a confederacy of which slavery, in the words of its Vice-President, is the corner-stone, for the old republic, of which Washington with his own hand laid the corner-stone. See page 33.

It should be noted that South Carolina was the first to secede from the Union in December 1860, and the following states suceded: Mississippi, Jan. 9; Florida, Jan. 10; Alabama, Jan. 11; Georgia, Jan. 19, Louisiana, Jan. 26; Texas, Feb. 1.