Although not present at the battle of Milliken’s Bend on June 7, 1863, the 1st Arkansas Infantry, African Descent, was posted nearby, just upriver a ways at Goodrich’s Landing. Like all the other black Union regiments forming at the time more »
The fiftieth anniversary of the War Between the States was on the horizon, and Confederate veteran F. T. Roche maintained a vigilant watch for Yankee propaganda. Though one wonders just why he would bother reading a publication like the National more »
Defining Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture in the South, 1863-1913 explores the efforts and insistence of African Americans to place emancipation and the end of slavery at the center of Civil War commemorative activities over the course of more »
According to the National Park Service’s Soldiers and Sailors System, there were twenty enlisted men named George Washington in the 5th U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery. These all would have been black men, the vast majority, former slaves. The 5th U.S. more »
It wasn’t until I was reviewing a document featured in my “Chaos of Emancipation” post at the National Archives blog, “Rediscovering Black History” that I rediscovered the story of a lone freedom fighter in northeast Louisiana early in 1863. In more »