Camp Greene was the site of a training camp for the 1st United States Colored Infantry Regiment and other Colored Troops on Mason's Island, now known as Theodore Roosevelt Island, in Washington, D.C. The island was also a refugee camp for freedom seekers. It is situated in the Potomac River. [1] It has been made an Underground Railroad site on the National Park Service's Network to Freedom.
Fleeing slavery, many escaped bondsmen and newly freed people made their way north, behind Union Army lines into northern cities. The people who fled slavery became known as "contrabands" and their numbers were so large that the United States government established contraband camps in 1861. The refugees were in need of shelter, medical care, clothing, food, and employment. In the metropolitan District of Columbia area, a camp called Freeman's Village was established on the Arlington Estate, but was soon overcrowded and disease-ridden. Mason's island then became a refugee camp. [1]
The Emancipation Proclamation was signed into law on New Year's Day, 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. It freed enslave people and it allowed for recruitment of African Americans in the Union Army. [1]
Army Chaplains W.G. Raymond and J.D. Turner, both of whom were white, recruited volunteers from temporary refugee camps, prisons, and hospitals. Most of the recruits came from the District of Columbia, including free men and freedom seekers, who had escaped slavery during the war. [1] [3] Two of the recruits were Henry Bailey and John Chen, who escaped slavery in Suffolk and Caroline County, Virginia. The camp established in May 1863 was called Camp Greene. [1]
The recruits marched through Washington, D.C., on May 15 and they were trained and located on Mason's Island (now Theodore Roosevelt Island) on May 19. They were stationed on an island due to the degree of animus against African Americans generally, which was heightened due to a major influx of African Americans into the city. It was common to see racially motivated violence. [3] There were people in the District of Columbia who did not want to see African Americans bear arms. There was fear in the military leadership of the reaction if they were to march within the city. [4] For their protection, the men were secretly moved to the island, known at that time as Mason's Island. [3] President Lincoln did not know where they were and the white recruiting officers were prevented from coming onto the island. A detachment of Massachusetts troops were brought in to protect the recruits after they were attacked in June by a gang who found out where they were located. [3]
The Bureau of Colored Troops was established on May 22, 1863. Blacks would serve as regular soldiers, not volunteers, and by June 30, ten more companies were formed with 700 men and stationed on the island. The 1st District of Columbia Colored Troops, the first black regiment formally mustered into service, was officially re-designated the 1st United States Colored Troops. [3] [1] There was the state-based 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment and informal groups of soldiers in South Carolina and Kansas, but the 1st United States Colored Troops was the first federal regiment. [4] The black troops received 77% of the amount paid to white soldiers, they were subject to much harsher punishment, and many had to drill with broomsticks. If a black soldier was caught, they were killed (versus taken to a prisoner of war camp). Even though there was disparity in the way people were treated based upon their race, a lot of black men enlisted in the Army. There were 178,000 black troops that fought in the war from 1863 until the end of the war in 1865. About 40%, or 68,000 men, were killed in the war from injury or disease. [4]
Camp Greene recruits, which grew to about 1,000 soldiers at any one time, attended the Israel Bethel Church within Washington, D.C. [4] Walt Whitman was one of the people that came to the island to visit the troops. [1]
Camp Greene was a training and residential center for the 1st regiment until September 1863. They then served in Virginia, North Carolina, and as part of Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's Campaign of the Carolinas (March – April 1865). [3]
The Camp Greene and Contraband Camp is a National Park Service Network to Freedom designated site. [5]
The 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment that saw extensive service in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The unit was the second African-American regiment, following the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment, organized in the Northern states during the Civil War. Authorized by the Emancipation Proclamation, the regiment consisted of African-American enlisted men commanded by white officers.
United States Colored Troops (USCT) were Union Army regiments during the American Civil War that primarily comprised African Americans, with soldiers from other ethnic groups also serving in USCT units. Established in response to a demand for more units from Union Army commanders, by the end of the war in 1865 USCT regiments, which numbered 175 in total, constituted about one-tenth of the manpower of the army. Approximately 20% of USCT soldiers were killed in action or died of disease and other causes, a rate about 35% higher than that of white Union troops. Numerous USCT soldiers fought with distinction, with 16 receiving the Medal of Honor. The USCT regiments were precursors to the Buffalo Soldier units which fought in the American Indian Wars.
Theodore Roosevelt Island is an 88.5-acre (358,000 m2) island and national memorial located in the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. During the Civil War, it was used as a training camp for the United States Colored Troops. The island was given to the federal government by the Theodore Roosevelt Association in memory of the 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt. Until then, the island had been known as My Lord's Island, Barbadoes Island, Mason's Island, Analostan Island, and Anacostine Island.
George Luther Stearns was an American industrialist and merchant in Medford, Massachusetts, as well as an abolitionist and a noted recruiter of black soldiers for the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Contraband was a term commonly used in the US military during the American Civil War to describe a new status for certain people who escaped slavery or those who affiliated with Union forces. In August 1861, the Union Army and the US Congress determined that the US would no longer return people who escaped slavery who went to Union lines, but they would be classified as "contraband of war," or captured enemy property. They used many as laborers to support Union efforts and soon began to pay wages.
Cleveland, Ohio was an important Northern city during the American Civil War. It provided thousands of troops to the Union Army, as well as millions of dollars in supplies, equipment, food, and support to the soldiers. The city was also an important national center for the abolitionist movement.
Camp William Penn was a Union Army training camp located in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania from 1863 to 1865, notable for being the first training ground dedicated to African American troops who enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Some 11,000 free blacks and escaped slaves were trained here, including 8,612 from Pennsylvania, the most black troops recruited during the war from any northern state. It was the largest training camp for African American soldiers.
The 102nd United States Colored Infantry was an African American infantry regiment of United States Colored Troops in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The unit was organized as the 1st Michigan Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment before being redesignated as the 102nd Regiment USCT.
The Grand Contraband Camp was located in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, on the Virginia Peninsula near Fort Monroe, during and immediately after the American Civil War. The area was a refuge for escaped slaves who the Union forces refused to return to their former Confederate masters, by defining them as "contraband of war". The Grand Contraband Camp was the first self-contained black community in the United States and occupied the area of the downtown section of the present-day independent city of Hampton, Virginia.
In the American Revolution, gaining freedom was the strongest motive for Black enslaved people who joined the Patriot or British armies. It is estimated that 20,000 African Americans joined the British cause, which promised freedom to enslaved people, as Black Loyalists. Around 9,000 African Americans became Black Patriots.
The Skirmish at Island Mound was a skirmish of the American Civil War, occurring on October 29, 1862, in Bates County, Missouri. The Union victory is notable as the first known event in which an African-American regiment engaged in combat against Confederate forces during the war.
African Americans, including former slaves, served in the American Civil War. The 186,097 black men who joined the Union Army included 7,122 officers and 178,975 enlisted soldiers. Approximately 20,000 black sailors served in the Union Navy and formed a large percentage of many ships' crews. Later in the war, many regiments were recruited and organized as the United States Colored Troops, which reinforced the Northern forces substantially during the conflict's last two years. Both Northern Free Negro and Southern runaway slaves joined the fight. Throughout the course of the war, black soldiers served in forty major battles and hundreds of more minor skirmishes; sixteen African Americans received the Medal of Honor.
William Henry Singleton gained freedom in North Carolina and served as a sergeant in the United States Colored Troops during the American Civil War. After its end and emancipation, he moved North to New Haven, Connecticut. There he became literate and a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, serving also in Maine and New York.
Camp Nelson National Monument, formerly the Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park, is a 525-acre (2.12 km2) national monument, historical museum and park located in southern Jessamine County, Kentucky, United States, 20 miles (32 km) south of Lexington, Kentucky. The American Civil War era camp was established in 1863 as a depot for the Union Army during the Civil War. It became a recruiting ground for new soldiers from Eastern Tennessee and enslaved people, many of whom had fled their living conditions to be soldiers.
The Freedmen's Colony of Roanoke Island, also known as the Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony, or "Freedman's Colony", was founded in 1863 during the Civil War after Union Major General John G. Foster, Commander of the 18th Army Corps, captured the Confederate fortifications on Roanoke Island off North Carolina in 1862. He classified the slaves living there as "contraband", following the precedent of General Benjamin Butler at Fort Monroe in 1861, and did not return them to Confederate slaveholders. In 1863, by the Emancipation Proclamation, all slaves in Union-occupied territories were freed.
Slavery played the central role during the American Civil War. The primary catalyst for secession was slavery, especially Southern political leaders' resistance to attempts by Northern antislavery political forces to block the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Slave life went through great changes, as the South saw Union Armies take control of broad areas of land. During and before the war, enslaved people played an active role in their own emancipation, and thousands of enslaved people escaped from bondage during the war.
The 55th United States Colored Infantry Regiment was a United States Colored Troops infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It was first organized as the 1st Alabama Volunteer Infantry Regiment (African Descent) in May 1863, serving on garrison duty at Corinth, Mississippi and Memphis, Tennessee. It was redesignated as the 55th United States Colored Infantry in March 1864, continuing its garrison service in Tennessee and fighting at the Battle of Brices Cross Roads. After the end of the war, the regiment was mustered out in late 1865 after garrison duty in Louisiana.
Peter or Gordon, or "Whipped Peter", or "Poor Peter" was a self-emancipated formerly enslaved man who was the subject of photographs documenting the extensive scarring of his back from whippings received in slavery. The "scourged back" photo became one of the most widely circulated photos of the abolitionist movement during the American Civil War and remains one of the most notable photos of the 19th-century United States.
William Dominick Matthews was an African-American abolitionist, Civil War Union officer and Freemason. He was leader in Leavenworth, Kansas, as well as nationally.
William Gould (W.G.) Raymond (1819–1893), a pastor, chaplain and American soldier in the Union Army during the American Civil War, played a prominent role in the initial recruitment of the first federal African American regiments of the Union Army. In the period between the Emancipation Proclamation and the establishment of the Bureau of Colored Troops in 1863, Raymond, along with J.D. Turner, received authorization from President Abraham Lincoln to recruit and command the first federal African-American Union Army troops from the District of Columbia. Prior to this, African-American troops were raised at the state level only, without the direct authorization of Lincoln. The troops recruited by Raymond and Turner would become the 1st United States Colored Infantry Regiment and the first regiment of the United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T), enduring threats and significant obstacles, but ultimately serving with distinction.