Letters

Benjamin Vann, 24th United States Colored Infantry: “please have it corected sose eye can get my pay”

Soon after private Benjamin Vann of the 24th USCI enlisted in Allegheny City in February 1864, the provost marshal of Harrisburg detailed the private to serve as a cook. Vann first worked at Pennsylvania’s Twenty-third Congressional District headquarters, then at Camp Reynolds near Pittsburgh. Almost eleven months later, Vann joined his regiment at Camp William Penn as a member of Company B. At some point that summer, he discovered that the time he labored before January 5, 1865, had not been counted towards his three-year military enlistment period.

Benjamin Vann, 24 USCI, enlistment papers

In early April, 1865, Vann sought assistance from James W. Kirker, the provost marshal of the Twenty-third Congressional District.… Read more

Benjamin Vann, 24th United States Colored Infantry: “please have it corected sose eye can get my pay” Read More »

In the News: Capt. O. S. B. Wall, 104th USCI, an African American Commissioned Officer Writes to His Hometown Newspaper

Capt. O.S.B. Wall, 104th U.S. Colored Troops
From Joseph T. Wilson’s The Black Phalanx: African American Soldiers in the War of Independence, the War of 1812 & the Civil War

The Lorain County News, Oberlin, Ohio
July 19, 1865

Letter from Capt. O.S.B. Wall
PORT ROYAL, S.C.,
June 24th, 1865.

EDITOR OF THE NEWS, OBERLIN, O.:

I have thought for some time that it might not be amiss to drop you a line, with reference to myself since I arrived in this department, and to say something of other matters that may be of interest to a few of your many patrons.

About the 1st of last April, I was ordered to Savannah, Ga.,… Read more

In the News: Capt. O. S. B. Wall, 104th USCI, an African American Commissioned Officer Writes to His Hometown Newspaper Read More »

A Mother Writes to Abraham Lincoln

On December 7, 1864, Alcia Bass wrote to Abraham Lincoln. The distraught mother was concerned about her son, Armor, who served in the 27th USCT. She wrote to the president that her son “was underage and ran away from me,” and that she “would give him up freely” but he was also ill with consumption.

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To read more about “underage” enlistments, families at home, and the post-war lives of men from the 27th USCT, see For Their Own Cause: The 27th United States Colored Troops, The Kent State University Press, 2016.… Read more

A Mother Writes to Abraham Lincoln Read More »