Alexander Kelly was an African- American Civil War soldier who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.  He was born on April 7, 1840 in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania and worked as a coal miner prior to his involvement in the war.  On August 19, 1863 in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania he enlisted in Company F of the 6th United States Colored Troops Regiment  as a substitute for someone named Joseph Kelly.  He was originally trained at Camp William Penn in Chelten Hills, Pennsylvania.  Although Kelly was small in stature, standing at only about 5 feet 3 inches tall, he was commended for his actions at Chaffin’s Farm in Henrico County, Virginia on September 29-30, 1864.  The National Park Service’s website includes a brief summary on the battle at Chaffin’s Farm (also known as New Market Heights) that includes how  Union Major General Benjamin Butler attacked General Robert E. Lee and the Confederate forces at Richmond.  A more detailed description of the battle at Chaffin’s Farm is provided in “Pennsylvania Negro Regiments in the Civil War .”  Kelly was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor  on April 6, 1865 for his bravery and leadership at Chaffin’s Farm.  General Benjamin Butler noted in an order  issued on October 11, 1864:

“Alexander Kelly, first sergeant Company F, Sixth U.S. Colored Troops, gallantly seized the colors, which had fallen near the enemy’s lines of abatis, raised them, and rallied the men at a time of confusion and in a place of great danger.”

Another resource that may be interesting to browse is Black Union Soldier’s  in the Civil War which has a valuable list detailing all the Black Union Recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor.  Kelly was “mustered out” of service in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1865.  After the war, Kelly married his wife Victoria on July 30, 1866, and the two had a son named William in January 1867.  He served as a night watchman for the Pittsburgh Police before his death on June 19, 1907.  Kelly is buried in St. Peters Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Confederate forces under the command of General Robert E. Lee and Maj. Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson had 40,000 fewer soldiers fighting at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia than Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s Union troops.  Nonetheless, General Lee executed what historian John Murrin has labeled “the riskiest operation of his career” coming out victorious on May 8, 1863 after seven days of fighting.  William Swinton, in his 1882 analysis Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, credits Hooker with the mistake of taking a defensive stance and leaving his “right flank thrown out ‘in the air,’” and giving Lee the opportunity to attack.  The Civil War Preservation Trust provides an interactive map of the battle, which shows the forces’ movements over the course of May 1st.  Though the Confederacy won the Battle of Chancellorsville, Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded by his own troops on May 2nd, “the event of the Chancellorsville conflict which caused intense sorrow to the enemy [the Confederate troops],” according to Samuel Bates’ The Battle of Chancellorsville (1882), and “was regarded as entailing the greatest injury to their cause.”  The Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson was a member of the faculty from 1851 until 1861, has an online research center with an extensive Stonewall Jackson exhibit. Their Jackson exhibit includes a photo gallery, a collection of Jackson’s papers available as originals or transcriptions, a Jackson family genealogy, as well as an informational timeline and biography. The Battle of Chancellorsville has also been preserved as part of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial by the National Parks Service.  The NPS website includes a wide variety of resources for teachers including “troop position maps” for May 2nd and May 3rd, links to General Lee and Hooker’s official reports, as well as an extensive list of suggested readings on the battle which range from firsthand accounts to children’s books.

The Confederate Army attacked Fort Pillow in Lauderdale County, Tennessee on April 12, 1864 in a fight that later became known as the Fort Pillow Massacre since the lives of few Union soldiers were spared.  The National Park Service’s website gives a valuable overview of the fight and its commanding figures in its battle summaries section as well as a map that outlines the territory covered under the website’s Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report Update and Resurvey.  There is also a concise overview of African American Participation in the Civil War located on the website.   Led by Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate forces attacked Fort Pillow which was protected by 295 white Tennessee troops and 262 United States Colored Troops.  Union Army Major Lionel F. Booth was killed during the battle and command was subsequently taken over by Major William F. Bradford.  The atrocities committed by the Confederates were best described by The Rebellion Record:

“Then followed a scene of cruelty and murder without parallel in civilized warfare, which needed but the tomahawk and scalping- knife to exceed the worst atrocities over committed by savages.  The rebels commenced an indiscriminate slaughter, neither sparing age nor sex, white nor black, civilian or soldier.  The officers and men seemed to vie with each other in the devilish work; men, women, and even children, wherever found, were deliberately shot down, beaten, and hacked with sabres; some of the children not more than ten years old were forced to stand up and face their murderers while being shot; the sick and the wounded were butchered without mercy, the rebels even entering the hospital building and dragging them out to be shot or killing them as they lay there unable to offer the least resistance.”

Some other sources that may be valuable to further research on Fort Pillow and can be accessed through Google Books are The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of Union and Confederate Armies as it gives mention of activity at the fort prior to the attack and A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865: Preceded by a Review of the Military Services of Negroes in Ancient and Modern Times which gives an interesting account of the scene at Fort Pillow through the eyes of an African-American soldier.  In terms of modern scholarship, John Cimprich’s Fort Pillow, a Civil War Massacre and Public  Memory provides valuable maps which could help gain a better understanding of the area surrounding the fort.

In Ulysses S. Grant ’s memoir, fully available on Google Books, the brigadier general recollected that from February 11 to 16 1862, his men battled extreme winter conditions that alternated between “rain and snow, thawing and freezing” in addition to engaging the 21,000 Confederate troops entrenched at Fort Donelson . Historians Jack Hurst and Kendall Gott  both argue that the Union’s capture of Fort Donelson was a crucial victory as it opened the western theater to Northern troops and supplies.  Hurst’s book, Men of Fire: Grant, Forrest, and the Campaign that Decided the Civil War, and Gott’s analysis, Where the South Lost the War: An Analysis of the Fort Henry-Fort Donelson Campaign, February 1862, are both available in limited preview on Google Books. A key resource for teachers and researchers is the National Park Service’s website on Fort Donelson.  The website includes informational tools for creating lesson plans and field trips  to Fort Donelson, and also features the Fort Donelson National Cemetery’s website , which includes a “Roll of Honor” that lists the known Union soldiers that were reinterred in the cemetery. The National Park website also includes a special section that documents the evolution of the role of African Americans at Fort Donelson, which ranged from slave labor to employment by the U.S. Quartermaster, later reinforced by the Second Confiscation Act of July 1862.  Grant famously demanded “an unconditional and immediate surrender”  from the remaining Confederate general, Simon B. Buckner at Fort Donelson, which resulted in 12,000 to 15,000 prisoners of war including Flavel Clingan Barber , Dickinson College Class of 1850.

While Gerald G. Eggert’s article in Pennsylvania History focuses on the experiences of Harrisburg’s African American community throughout a century, it also includes a short but interesting description of Harrisburg’s Grand Review in November 1865. The parade in Harrisburg was clearly an opportunity for that community to honor the African Americans who served in the USCT during the Civil War. Yet the Grand Review’s organizers had other important objectives as well. “These leaders hoped to use the occasion to build support for extending the suffrage once more to blacks,” as Eggert observes. African American men in Pennsylvania, however, were not able to vote until the 15th Amendment was adopted in 1870. Pennsylvania History, which is the official journal of the Pennsylvania Historical Association, is available through a digital archive that contains all of the issues published between 1934 and 2005. Eggert’s article is available here as PDF file – see page 16 for Eggert’s description of the Grand Review. (Note that Adobe Reader has to be installed on your computer in order to read this article.)

The book Making and Remaking Pennsylvania’s Civil War is a collection of essays about the events and legacies of the Civil War in Pennsylvania.  The essay “The Civil War Letters of Quartermaster Sergeant John C. Brock, 43rd Regiment, United States Colored Troops,” edited by Eric Ledell Smith, focuses specifically on the issue of African-American troops from Pennsylvania.  The first part of the chapter contains a synthesis of the history of African-American troops during the Civil War in general and specifically in Pennsylvania.  The second part contains nine letters written by John C. Brock to the Christian Recorder, a newspaper published in Philadelphia by the African Methodist Church.  Smith gives a good biography of Brock and explains the context and background of each letter.  John C. Brock was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1843, and he enlisted in the army at Camp William Penn in April 1864.   One of the exceptions to the general rule of not assigning colored regiments to combat duty, the 43rd regiment arrived in Virginia as part of the rear guard to the Army of the Potomac and Brock shared, “You cannot imagine with what surprise the inhabitants of the South gaze upon us.”  Later, when his regiment proudly passed through Fairfax, Virginia “armed to the teeth, with bayonets bristling in the sun,” Brock echoed the same sentiment: , “The inhabitants… looked at us with astonishment, as if we were some great monsters risen up out of the ground.”  His letters cover a wide range of topics, from religion to food and supplies to other African-American troops from Pennsylvania.  Unfortunately, although his regiment was present at the Battle of the Crater, Brock does not mention it in his letters, and he also rarely elaborates on the issue of slavery, instead choosing to focus on topics more relevant to his everyday life in the army.  His last letter in March 1865 briefly broaches the topic with eloquence and a great deal of optimism: “The hydra-headed monster slavery which, a few short years ago, stalked over the land with proud and gigantic strides, we now behold drooping and dying under the scourging lash of universal freedom…. The bondmen of the South have heard that single word ‘liberty,’ and they will not heed the siren voice of their humbled masters.”  Brock is clearly proud to have had a part in defeating the South and the institution of slavery.  These letters are a valuable resource for studying the Civil War from a perspective that is often overlooked, that of an African-American soldier in combat duty.

Susie King Taylor, born 1848, wrote a book in 1902 documenting her time spent enrolled as a laundress with the Union’s 1st South Carolina Volunteers, later named 33rd regiment of the United States Colored Troops, during the Civil War.  Documenting the American South, an online resource at the University of North Carolina, has her entire book online.

The book makes great use of primary sources, such as the General Order No. 1 of Lt. Colonel C.T. Trowbridge, commander of the regiment.

Taylor’s account is remarkably vivid outlining the struggles of African American Union soldiers fighting in the South.  She described how “men and even women would sneer and molest them whenever they met them” while her regiment’s “brave men risked life and limb” to assist the citizens of Charleston, S.C. after the 1865 Confederate retreat and subsequent burning of the city.

This a great online primary resource for anyone interested in the life of African American soldiers during the Civil War. Camp life, battles, occupation, and officer descriptions are all intrinsically linked together in Taylor’s candid narrative of one of the definitive moments in our country’s history.

I’ve pointed out digital newspaper collections before, but those largely featured publications from northern or western states. A great resource for southern papers is available from the University of Richmond’s Digital Initiatives, which has over a thousand issues of the Richmond Daily Dispatch published between 1860-1865. One can learn more about Richmond during the Civil War from an essay written by historian Robert C. Kenzer. The project also provides full text access of related primary sources, such as a diary from someone who lived in Richmond in 1865.

The Smithsonian recently published “John Brown’s Day of Reckoning,” an interesting article by Fergus Bordewich that discusses Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry. While the raid took place 150 years ago, Bordewich observes that Brown “remains one of the most emotive touchstones of our racial history.” In addition, both the attack and Brown’s execution in early December 1859 greatly increased sectional tensions and pushed the country closer to war.  “After [Harpers Ferry] the chasm [between the North and the South] appeared unbridgeable,” as Bordewich explains. While Brown did not free any slaves, Bordewich argues that his actions created the political conditions that gave Abraham Lincoln the opportunity to win the 1860 election.

Horatio Nelson Taft’s diary (January 1861-May 1865) is available online from the Library of Congress and provides an interesting look at life in Washington D.C. during the Civil War. While Taft worked at the US Patent office, his children played with “Willie” and “Tad” Lincoln. “Our three boys and the Two Lincoln boys have been very busy fireing off Crackers & Pistols,” as Taft recorded on December 25, 1861. Be sure to check out this short essay from the Library of Congress for more information about Taft’s diary.