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 February, the plantation commissioner at Lake Providence, Lark Livermore, a former army chaplain, wrote to George B. Field, another commissioner, about the conditions in his area. Among many other things, Livermore wrote this:

“I have known but one negro [sic] in arms here, & he went out with an old gun (as i understand it) on his own hook as the saying goes, & got into a skirmish, he killed one man dead took two prisoners (& has now one of the double barreled shot guns) making one of them wade a bayou up to his neck to get it & when with my clerk he saw a rebel & made for him under cover of a fence, till he halted & shot at him & the reb, cry out “O Lord,” but did not get him.

I gave him a note to Gen. McArthur & Col. Ditzler comdg post, give him a mule & I hear he is like a pointer dog ahead looking up the game.”

This is the only mention I have found of this man. Unnamed, virtually unknown.

Recruiting of black soldiers did not begin in earnest in the region until three months later. It is not known if this freedom fighter joined the Union army, or if he preferred to continue waging his own private guerrilla war. But it is a testimony to the bravery and determination of one man, and his crusade for freedom.

Source: L. S. Livermore to George B. Field, Feb. 19, 1863 enclosure in George B. Field to E.M. Stanton, Mar. 20, 1863 (L-89), Letters Received (entry 360), 1863, Colored Troops Division, Office of the Adjutant General, RG94, National Archives, Washington DC.