Today is the 160th anniversary of the Battle of the Crater, which is the subject of my first book. What follows is an article that I published in America’s Civil War magazine in 2006. The article offers an overview of the battle and focuses in on the massacre of United States Colored Troops committed by Confederates both during and after the battle.
My great grandfather served in the cavalry in the Civil War, a fact I grew up knowing. What I didn't know was that his regiment was scorned and denigrated..When the war ended they were ordered to go to Texas to guard the border to stop any confederates that might try to escape. They were beaten threatened and physically dragged to the border. The war was over they wanted to go homebecause of this they got a bad name. They were in the only African American Cavalry formed in the North.
My ancestor was Charles Henry Tyler a Private in company F, 5th Regiment Massachusetts Cavalry.
First, thanks so much for upgrading to a paid subscription. I really do appreciate your support. Thanks for sharing the story of your ancestor. There was a total of six Black cavalry units raised during the Civil War. Here is a photograph of Tyler. https://suvcw.org/past-photos-charleshenrytyler
You know those Lost Causers who try to weasel on the actual history by declaring that "most southern soldiers didn't own slaves"--that they fought only to repel invaders? Kevin's essay here contains what I see as this nice distillation of why that argument is colossally bogus:
"Fighting black soldiers for the first time served to remind Lee’s men of exactly what was at stake for the Union in the war—nothing less than an overturning of the racial hierarchy of their antebellum world."
That is indeed one of the insights that I took away from doing this research. Most of the men that I reference in the book on this subject were not slaveowners, though a few came from slaveowning families. From the perspective of most white slaveowners, the sight of Black soldiers in uniform fit neatly into the long history of slave rebellions going back into the early antebellum period.
> For many years, even as late as the Civil War centennial celebrations in the early
> 1960s, any mention of the importance of emancipation or the recruitment of
> 180,000 African Americans in the Union Army and their impact on the outcome
> was minimized. Only in the last few decades have historians worked to challenge
> long-standing assumptions concerning the central themes of the Civil War.
Amen to that. It's why--even if you join Allen C. Guelzo in rejecting self-emancipation as central in the political evolution of emancipation--national memory to this day scants the gumption and bravery of the Civil War's hundreds of thousands of enterprising slavery escapees. (Self-emancipation has two meanings: the individual escapes and those escapes' often-debated political effect.) I think that that scanting exposes a textbook example of systemic racism--that is, racism that's so deeply built in that the perpetrators don't even realize they are perpetrating it. The perps are us.
And yes, early 1960s indeed. Consider a film from ca. 1960, concerning Fort Monroe at Point Comfort, Virginia--where slavery began in 1619 and began to crumble when self-emancipators started, in effect, a national movement within weeks of Fort Sumter. The Army did a first-class 26-minute documentary on the history of Fort Monroe, with its moated stone citadel built largely by enslaved Americans (supervised in part by Lt. Robert E. Lee). Near the beginning, a four-star general mentions that Fort Monroe is on Point Comfort. Not once does this history film contain, by word or even just implication, a mention of slavery.
My great grandfather served in the cavalry in the Civil War, a fact I grew up knowing. What I didn't know was that his regiment was scorned and denigrated..When the war ended they were ordered to go to Texas to guard the border to stop any confederates that might try to escape. They were beaten threatened and physically dragged to the border. The war was over they wanted to go homebecause of this they got a bad name. They were in the only African American Cavalry formed in the North.
My ancestor was Charles Henry Tyler a Private in company F, 5th Regiment Massachusetts Cavalry.
Hi Beverly,
First, thanks so much for upgrading to a paid subscription. I really do appreciate your support. Thanks for sharing the story of your ancestor. There was a total of six Black cavalry units raised during the Civil War. Here is a photograph of Tyler. https://suvcw.org/past-photos-charleshenrytyler
You know those Lost Causers who try to weasel on the actual history by declaring that "most southern soldiers didn't own slaves"--that they fought only to repel invaders? Kevin's essay here contains what I see as this nice distillation of why that argument is colossally bogus:
"Fighting black soldiers for the first time served to remind Lee’s men of exactly what was at stake for the Union in the war—nothing less than an overturning of the racial hierarchy of their antebellum world."
That is indeed one of the insights that I took away from doing this research. Most of the men that I reference in the book on this subject were not slaveowners, though a few came from slaveowning families. From the perspective of most white slaveowners, the sight of Black soldiers in uniform fit neatly into the long history of slave rebellions going back into the early antebellum period.
> For many years, even as late as the Civil War centennial celebrations in the early
> 1960s, any mention of the importance of emancipation or the recruitment of
> 180,000 African Americans in the Union Army and their impact on the outcome
> was minimized. Only in the last few decades have historians worked to challenge
> long-standing assumptions concerning the central themes of the Civil War.
Amen to that. It's why--even if you join Allen C. Guelzo in rejecting self-emancipation as central in the political evolution of emancipation--national memory to this day scants the gumption and bravery of the Civil War's hundreds of thousands of enterprising slavery escapees. (Self-emancipation has two meanings: the individual escapes and those escapes' often-debated political effect.) I think that that scanting exposes a textbook example of systemic racism--that is, racism that's so deeply built in that the perpetrators don't even realize they are perpetrating it. The perps are us.
And yes, early 1960s indeed. Consider a film from ca. 1960, concerning Fort Monroe at Point Comfort, Virginia--where slavery began in 1619 and began to crumble when self-emancipators started, in effect, a national movement within weeks of Fort Sumter. The Army did a first-class 26-minute documentary on the history of Fort Monroe, with its moated stone citadel built largely by enslaved Americans (supervised in part by Lt. Robert E. Lee). Near the beginning, a four-star general mentions that Fort Monroe is on Point Comfort. Not once does this history film contain, by word or even just implication, a mention of slavery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el4IYxv-bIk