Posted on Feb 24, 2023
Black History Month: Archiving the Civil War service of Black soldiers and sailors
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Civil War buffs can take a hands-on role in preserving the legacy of the “United States Colored Troops” by serving as “citizen archivists,” making sure these soldiers’ military records, and other historical documents, are safeguarded and shared with the public.
“Since the time of the American Revolution, African Americans have volunteered to serve their country in time of war,” wrote National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) volunteer Budge Weidman in an article about the project. “The Civil War was no exception — official sanction was the difficulty.”
The project inviting citizens to help tag, transcribe and comment on the service records of those who served in the USCT grew out of a larger archival effort to microfilm the Civil War records of Union volunteer soldiers, Weidman said. (She noted that NARA records of those who served the Confederacy during the Civil War — which began April 12, 1861, and ended April 9, 1865 — are already on microfilm.)
Archivists estimate that 185,000 people served in the USCT, a figure that includes Black troops and officers who were not Black, according to Weidman.
From slavery to military service
Black History Month is an occasion to share the remarkable story of African American military service uncovered by this volunteer Civil War Conservation Corps and official NARA archivists. Thanks to them, these records are forever more accessible to any student of history, whenever they’re ready to unearth the unsung tales of Black service members’ bravery and sacrifice.
When they do, they’ll discover people like Charles Sprout, an African American born in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, who toiled in servitude on the slave-run farm of J. Horace Lacey.
A simple notation in Sprout’s file, “Free Apl 18/61,” indicates that he fled bondage at age 19 in 1861 — at the start of the war but two years before the 1863 issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.
At age 21, after just two years as a free man, Sprout on Dec. 12 arrived at Fort Monroe, Virginia, to volunteer for a three-year tour in the Union Army. He became a private in the 1st United States Colored Calvary and served until 1866, his records show.
After the war, Sprout moved to a place called Wilderness Tavern, Virginia, not far from the Fredericksburg plantation he fled in his late teen years, according to a NARA video about his story.
Sprout worked at the tavern and, in 1897, married Fannie Ward. The couple’s only child appeared to have been an adopted son, according to a listing on Find A Grave (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15938941/charles-sprout).
In the post-war years, Sprout received a small monthly pension of $6 as compensation for his service-related injuries and ailments, which included heart and back problems.
Sprout repeatedly submitted medical evidence to increase that sum, the records show (https://catalog.archives.gov/id/76061018). By 1908, as Sprout entered his 60s, his pension had doubled to $12 a month. By his seventies, he was receiving $50 a month in pension payments.
Following his death on Feb. 13, 1926, Sprout was buried in the Fredericksburg National Cemetery alongside over 15,000 other Union soldiers and sailors laid to rest there.
“I think it’s very important for us to have someone like Charles Sprout here,” a National Park Service ranger says in the video, “because he almost epitomizes what the Civil War was all about.”
Bringing service histories to life
Along with thousands of other African American service members who fought to preserve the Union, Sprout’s story — of fleeing slavery, putting his life on the line to end it, and living and working near where he was once enslaved — is told through original muster rolls, returns, books and morning reports, and medical files.
“To have a file of documents and information like that which exists for Charles Sprout is really integral for us to be able to go ahead and share those stories with the public,” the ranger says.
Learn more
Read more stories of USCT service in Weidman’s article: https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war/article.html
Search the main database of USCT records: https://catalog.archives.gov/search?page=1&q=uscotrp-ts1
Learn how to become a “citizen archivist”: https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/missions/history
Watch “Charles Sprout: A Civil War Soldier Revisited”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P07gWZEy_Zw&t=223s
“Since the time of the American Revolution, African Americans have volunteered to serve their country in time of war,” wrote National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) volunteer Budge Weidman in an article about the project. “The Civil War was no exception — official sanction was the difficulty.”
The project inviting citizens to help tag, transcribe and comment on the service records of those who served in the USCT grew out of a larger archival effort to microfilm the Civil War records of Union volunteer soldiers, Weidman said. (She noted that NARA records of those who served the Confederacy during the Civil War — which began April 12, 1861, and ended April 9, 1865 — are already on microfilm.)
Archivists estimate that 185,000 people served in the USCT, a figure that includes Black troops and officers who were not Black, according to Weidman.
From slavery to military service
Black History Month is an occasion to share the remarkable story of African American military service uncovered by this volunteer Civil War Conservation Corps and official NARA archivists. Thanks to them, these records are forever more accessible to any student of history, whenever they’re ready to unearth the unsung tales of Black service members’ bravery and sacrifice.
When they do, they’ll discover people like Charles Sprout, an African American born in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, who toiled in servitude on the slave-run farm of J. Horace Lacey.
A simple notation in Sprout’s file, “Free Apl 18/61,” indicates that he fled bondage at age 19 in 1861 — at the start of the war but two years before the 1863 issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.
At age 21, after just two years as a free man, Sprout on Dec. 12 arrived at Fort Monroe, Virginia, to volunteer for a three-year tour in the Union Army. He became a private in the 1st United States Colored Calvary and served until 1866, his records show.
After the war, Sprout moved to a place called Wilderness Tavern, Virginia, not far from the Fredericksburg plantation he fled in his late teen years, according to a NARA video about his story.
Sprout worked at the tavern and, in 1897, married Fannie Ward. The couple’s only child appeared to have been an adopted son, according to a listing on Find A Grave (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15938941/charles-sprout).
In the post-war years, Sprout received a small monthly pension of $6 as compensation for his service-related injuries and ailments, which included heart and back problems.
Sprout repeatedly submitted medical evidence to increase that sum, the records show (https://catalog.archives.gov/id/76061018). By 1908, as Sprout entered his 60s, his pension had doubled to $12 a month. By his seventies, he was receiving $50 a month in pension payments.
Following his death on Feb. 13, 1926, Sprout was buried in the Fredericksburg National Cemetery alongside over 15,000 other Union soldiers and sailors laid to rest there.
“I think it’s very important for us to have someone like Charles Sprout here,” a National Park Service ranger says in the video, “because he almost epitomizes what the Civil War was all about.”
Bringing service histories to life
Along with thousands of other African American service members who fought to preserve the Union, Sprout’s story — of fleeing slavery, putting his life on the line to end it, and living and working near where he was once enslaved — is told through original muster rolls, returns, books and morning reports, and medical files.
“To have a file of documents and information like that which exists for Charles Sprout is really integral for us to be able to go ahead and share those stories with the public,” the ranger says.
Learn more
Read more stories of USCT service in Weidman’s article: https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war/article.html
Search the main database of USCT records: https://catalog.archives.gov/search?page=1&q=uscotrp-ts1
Learn how to become a “citizen archivist”: https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/missions/history
Watch “Charles Sprout: A Civil War Soldier Revisited”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P07gWZEy_Zw&t=223s
American History
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The Black Politicians of Reconstruction | The History You Didn't Learn
When we learn about the Reconstruction Era in school, it’s often taught as a dark period in American history, a time of upheaval and unrest right after the C...
https://youtu.be/YfgNdOCdowE
Voter suppression was spark that ignited Ocoee Massacre. A century later, Florida’s Black voters are still facing obstacles
By DESIREE STENNETT
ORLANDO SENTINEL
OCT 22, 2020 AT 5:41 AM
SOURCE : https://www.ucf.edu/pegasus/the-truth-laid-bare/
SOURCE : https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/ocoee-massacre/os-ne-black-voter-suppression-ocoee-20201022-z6kwn5xuafdevlhkvy6g6effui-htmlstory.html
COLLECTION
Civil Rights History Project
Voting Rights
https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/voting-rights/
They dared to register blacks to vote, and the KKK killed them: A 52-year-old case is closed — unsolved
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-doj-civil-rights-20160621-snap-story.html?_amp=true
Two Murders That Ignited Passage of the Voting Rights Act
https://www.thedailybeast.com/two-murders-that-ignited-passage-of-the-voting-rights-act
Voter suppression was spark that ignited Ocoee Massacre. A century later, Florida’s Black voters are still facing obstacles
By DESIREE STENNETT
ORLANDO SENTINEL
OCT 22, 2020 AT 5:41 AM
SOURCE : https://www.ucf.edu/pegasus/the-truth-laid-bare/
SOURCE : https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/ocoee-massacre/os-ne-black-voter-suppression-ocoee-20201022-z6kwn5xuafdevlhkvy6g6effui-htmlstory.html
COLLECTION
Civil Rights History Project
Voting Rights
https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/voting-rights/
They dared to register blacks to vote, and the KKK killed them: A 52-year-old case is closed — unsolved
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-doj-civil-rights-20160621-snap-story.html?_amp=true
Two Murders That Ignited Passage of the Voting Rights Act
https://www.thedailybeast.com/two-murders-that-ignited-passage-of-the-voting-rights-act
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1 of my favorite courses at Park U. was Behavior Science. Our Prof. would always remind us that there is 2 main behavioral traits in people, as well as critters on earth. 1 is innate, the other is learned. For those of U that dont know the difference. example 1 = animals migrate without knowing why. that's innate. example 2=what knowledge you gain throughout life OJT so to speak. Thats learned behavior. Those kids in the vehicles, and the ones standing, have my prayers, and sympathy, because they were led down the wrong path.
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The 1964 Murders of the Civil Rights Workers: An FBI Investigation | Real Stories
The Horrible Mississippi Massacre | True Crime Story | Real StoriesThe FBI investigates the nationally known case of the 1964 murders of three civil rights w...
https://youtu.be/G8cVY-E5eyg
1.) State Studies and the Whiteness of White-on-White Lynching
Published online by Cambridge University Press:
04 December 2020
SOURCE : https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-gilded-age-and-progressive-era/article/abs/state-studies-and-the-whiteness-of-whiteonwhite-lynching/9A9EBA253D [login to see] 26C4E67A7654#
2.) Many whites were lynched for fighting racism :
“While some whites were lynched for murder or stealing cattle, there is another important reason many were lynched. Many whites were lynched for helping blacks or being anti-lynching. According to David Barton’s extensively well-documented book, "Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White," the original targets of the Ku Klux Klan were Republicans, both black and white.
The Klan terrorized both black and white Americans not to vote for Republican tickets. “Of all forms of violent intimidation, lynchings were by far the most effective.”
Republicans often led the efforts to pass federal anti-lynching laws and their platforms consistently called for a ban on lynching. “Democrats successfully blocked those bills and their platforms never did condemn lynchings.”
SOURCE : Lynchings by state and race in the U.S. 1882-1968 | Statista
SOURCE : https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/opinion/2017/09/25/many-whites-were-lynched-fighting-racism-opinion/700690001/
SOURCE : https://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america/
"The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States, 1880-1950" states that, contrary to present-day popular conception, lynching was not a crime committed exclusively against black people. Between the 1830s and the 1850s the majority of those lynched in the United States were whites.
From 1882-1968, some 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States (not all lynchings were recorded). Of these, 3,446 or 73 percent were black and 1,297 (27 percent) were white. In other words, whites were the victims of more than one-fourth of all lynchings in the United States.
According to the Tuskegee Institute figures, between the years 1882 and 1951, 4,730 people were lynched in the United States: 3,437 Negro and 1,293 white. 3 The largest number of lynchings occurred in 1892. Of the 230 persons lynched that year, 161 were Negroes and sixty-nine whites.”
SOURCE : https://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html
1.) State Studies and the Whiteness of White-on-White Lynching
Published online by Cambridge University Press:
04 December 2020
SOURCE : https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-gilded-age-and-progressive-era/article/abs/state-studies-and-the-whiteness-of-whiteonwhite-lynching/9A9EBA253D [login to see] 26C4E67A7654#
2.) Many whites were lynched for fighting racism :
“While some whites were lynched for murder or stealing cattle, there is another important reason many were lynched. Many whites were lynched for helping blacks or being anti-lynching. According to David Barton’s extensively well-documented book, "Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White," the original targets of the Ku Klux Klan were Republicans, both black and white.
The Klan terrorized both black and white Americans not to vote for Republican tickets. “Of all forms of violent intimidation, lynchings were by far the most effective.”
Republicans often led the efforts to pass federal anti-lynching laws and their platforms consistently called for a ban on lynching. “Democrats successfully blocked those bills and their platforms never did condemn lynchings.”
SOURCE : Lynchings by state and race in the U.S. 1882-1968 | Statista
SOURCE : https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/opinion/2017/09/25/many-whites-were-lynched-fighting-racism-opinion/700690001/
SOURCE : https://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america/
"The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States, 1880-1950" states that, contrary to present-day popular conception, lynching was not a crime committed exclusively against black people. Between the 1830s and the 1850s the majority of those lynched in the United States were whites.
From 1882-1968, some 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States (not all lynchings were recorded). Of these, 3,446 or 73 percent were black and 1,297 (27 percent) were white. In other words, whites were the victims of more than one-fourth of all lynchings in the United States.
According to the Tuskegee Institute figures, between the years 1882 and 1951, 4,730 people were lynched in the United States: 3,437 Negro and 1,293 white. 3 The largest number of lynchings occurred in 1892. Of the 230 persons lynched that year, 161 were Negroes and sixty-nine whites.”
SOURCE : https://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html
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HUSL Library: A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States: Jim Crow Era
This guide focuses on the civil rights that various groups have fought for within the United States.
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LCpl (Join to see)
With all due respect 1SG, what Howard U could teach me, is basically an extension of the life I've lived. I have read Civil Rights documentaries Chapter, and verse, but I'm still learning.
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LCpl (Join to see)
I tried to post a Debate from You Tube on RP, but could not. It is 58+min. in length. It was a Debate with James Baldwin v. William F Buckley at Cambridge University Union Hall in 1965. Lengthy but enlightening to some respect. If you have an hour to spare give it a shot.
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TERRIFIC,
WHO'S NEXT?
OMG... Who'll Be Offended If They're Not Next in Line?
So Let's Just START Here:
Japanese, Italians, Costa Rican's, Chinese, French, British, Hebrew, Greek, Panamanians,
Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
B
The Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei
Bulgaria
SOMEONE Has To Do It..
BFD....We Just Need A Few More MONTHS. That's All.
WHO'S NEXT?
OMG... Who'll Be Offended If They're Not Next in Line?
So Let's Just START Here:
Japanese, Italians, Costa Rican's, Chinese, French, British, Hebrew, Greek, Panamanians,
Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
B
The Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei
Bulgaria
SOMEONE Has To Do It..
BFD....We Just Need A Few More MONTHS. That's All.
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LCpl (Join to see)
A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney - When you live in the mid west, you can almost tell when a storm is coming. Through life experiences, you learn not to fear the storm itself, but the contents of it. Like water on a ducks back, some of us just roll with the punch. Your message is clear but meaningless. We are not offended, and her/your apology is accepted. STORM HAS PASSED.
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A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney
LCpl (Join to see) - ...
I've Been To: Korea, Japan, Costa Rica,
Lived In: Michigan, Arizona, Panama,Texas, Indiana, California, And Now Living Vegas.
Stateside; BEEN To A Bunch..With Preferences Of Tennessee & Kentucky.~~GORGEOUS.!!
Foreign: Costa Rica ~ Specifically San Jose. Temperatures NEVER Below 70 Or ABOVE 80!.
And In Michigan We'd Say, As I'm Sure You Also Did; "If You Don't Like The Weather,
Just Wait A Minute, It'll Change"... And Watching Tornadoes Was Almost A Hobby
I've Been To: Korea, Japan, Costa Rica,
Lived In: Michigan, Arizona, Panama,Texas, Indiana, California, And Now Living Vegas.
Stateside; BEEN To A Bunch..With Preferences Of Tennessee & Kentucky.~~GORGEOUS.!!
Foreign: Costa Rica ~ Specifically San Jose. Temperatures NEVER Below 70 Or ABOVE 80!.
And In Michigan We'd Say, As I'm Sure You Also Did; "If You Don't Like The Weather,
Just Wait A Minute, It'll Change"... And Watching Tornadoes Was Almost A Hobby
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I am sincerely grateful for your attention to this matter. I want to share my childhood story. We lived with my parents in the small town of Sedona, in the state of Arizona. Living next to us was an elderly man named Dawit Samuel; he was very kind but lonely. Over time, I became very close to him and learned that he had escaped slavery and, at the age of 18, joined the Civil War. He shared various stories, but what struck me the most was how someone could hate another person solely because of the color of their skin. At that time, I decided to write a novel about him. However, I only remembered this in my 60s. To not waste any more time, I published my memoir on free essay examples. It may seem inappropriate to write about such things on the internet. Still, I carefully considered this decision, believing that providing help for students with their assignments could influence the new generation. I'll leave the link below; perhaps someone will be interested in reading it. Please, do not hesitate to share your ideas on how I can improve my essay.
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Morgan Freeman stated "Stop calling me a black man, and I will stop calling you a white man'. He also stated that Black History is American History . Stating anything that happened in America in the past is American History. I can't argue with that concept.
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