First South Carolina Soldiers
First South Carolina Volunteers, taken at the former J. J. Smith Plantation in Beaufort, South Carolina
FORT CLINCH’S
United States Colored Troops With the Militia Act of 1862, the Union Army enlisted African American freedmen and escaped slaves as soldiers and they played an important role in the American Civil War. BY KAREN MILLER AND FRANK OFELDT, III
W
military skills, got their start on May 7, hen the U.S. Congress passed the 1862. Under the command of Colonel Confiscation Act of 1862, it freed Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a slaves whose owners were in rebellion prominent Massachusetts abolitionist, against the United States. In the same the First South Carolina, like all black year, the Militia Act of 1862 empowered regiments during the war, were led by President Lincoln to use former slaves in white officers. any capacity in the Union Army. The African American soldiers of the “During the war, the army actively First South Carolina were the first United recruited men of color,” says Frank States Colored Troops (USCT) to serve Olefdt, local historian and Fort Clinch on Amelia Island. Colonel Higginson State Park’s Park Service Specialist. would go on later to write a book about “Although men of color served in the his experience leading the First South War for American Independence and the Carolina called Army Life in a Black War of 1812, the organization of African Regiment. “We, their officers, did not go American regiments for the Federal army Thomas Wentworth Higginson there to teach lessons, but to receive them,” was truly birthed during the Civil War. Higginson wrote. “There were more than a hundred men in the The United States Navy, however, had allowed free men of ranks who had voluntarily met more dangers in their escape color to serve long before the Civil War, allowing escaped from slavery than any of my young captains had incurred in all slaves to serve in the Navy. The Navy was the first branch of their lives.” the military to be integrated.” Higginson, a Unitarian minister, did not countenance the FIRST SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEERS powerful racial prejudices that disfigured many of his peers in ON AMELIA ISLAND that period. Later, following the war, Higginson devoted much The First South Carolina Volunteers, an assemblage of a of the rest of his life to fighting for the rights of freed people, small group of ex-slaves who were organized and trained in women, and other disfranchised peoples. 11 AMELIA ISLANDER MAGAZINE •
FEBRUARY 2022
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