Monument
Honors 'Colored Regiment' Of Civil War, by Mary E.
O'Leary
The Smithsonian Associates Civil War E-Mail Newsletter,
Volume 9 , Number 7
Almost 150 years ago, 900 men of color mustered
on a swampy area of Fair Haven, Connecticut, as they trained
for a war that would take numerous lives through combat and
disease in the service of a nation that was ambivalent about
their worth. They
were paid less than their white counterparts, suffered continuing
indignities tied to racism, undertook the hardest manual labor
and had next to no chance of advancing to officer.
Joseph Sills of Shelton was one of those men who survived five
Civil War battles and later returned to home, where he married,
reared a large family in Woodbridge and left behind examples
of his masonry work that still exist.
Sills and his comrades in the Connecticut 29th Colored Regiment
C.V. Infantry were memorialized September 20 when a monument
designed by New Haven’s
“Amistad” sculptor, Edward Hamilton, was unveiled
on the site of the soldiers’ first encampment along the
Mill River at Grapevine Point, now known as Criscuolo Park.
As a cool breeze blew off the water at the
Chapel Street park, Harrison Mero, the great-grandson of Sills,
reflected on the 10-year quest of the men’s descendants
to win the soldiers recognition and a more formal place in
the history books.
“It has been a labor of love . We look upon the monument as belonging
to the citizens of Connecticut,” said Mero, president of the descendants’ group,
which promotes awareness of the African-Americans and Native Americans who
comprised the regiment, and the white officers who advocated for their equality. In
addition to Sills, Mero, 67, claims three other mixed heritage Native American
and African American relatives in the regiment: Robert Sills and Robert Franklin
(great-uncles) and Samuel D. Franklin, another great-grandfather.
A retired affirmative action officer for a construction company,
Mero said he always is asked why the men joined the war effort. The Hamden resident always has the same
answer. “For
freedom. For the right to vote. They
wanted a right to choose their leadership, to have a say in
various laws. That
was of great value,” said Mero, although the vote did
not come until five years after the men completed their service,
from late 1863 to November 1865.
‘No more patriotic
people’
Adeline Tucker, 71, another group member, said the monument
is a way to make sure men of the 29th “get their due.” Tucker,
a retired research associate at the Yale Medical School, said
her relatives fought in the Revolutionary War and the Civil
War. “There
are no more patriotic people than African-Americans. We fought
in all the wars,” despite discrimination, she said.
The men of the 29th saw action in Maryland and Virginia and
had to battle Texas rebels all the way to Brownsville, after
the rebels refused to accept Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s
surrender. But the high point was the march into
Richmond, Va., when the regiment was the first to enter the
city after it fell to Union soldiers. “They
took the seat of the Confederacy. It is amazing to me. I can just see them running down the
road to Jefferson Davis’ mansion,” said Samuel
Dixon of New Haven, another relative of the Sill brothers.
Filling in the larger picture of the 29th Colored Regiment
is the research undertaken of Thomas Acri of Milford, an eighth-grade
teacher at West Shore Middle School. A
member of the monument committee, Acri did his master’s
thesis on the regiment at George Mason University. The
Connecticut War Record published regular reports back from
the regiment and detailed the soldiers’ indignation at
not being armed until weeks after they arrived in Annapolis. The
group also regularly endured racial taunts and were banished
to hastily erected tents in the middle of winter, rather than
barracks enjoyed by white recruits.
Before they left New Haven, however, Frederick Douglass, the
famous black orator, addressed the men at the encampment on
January 29, 1864, advising them of the value of education and
also how important it was for them to succeed as soldiers. “You
are pioneers — on you depends the destiny of four millions
of the colored race in this country. If
you rise and flourish, we shall rise and flourish. If you win freedom and citizenship,
we shall share your freedom and citizenship,” Douglass
said.
Orderly Isaac Hill, one of the men in the regiment, wrote a
book about his experiences with the 29th regiment, providing
many details, including the march down Chapel Street to State
Street to Long Wharf to embark on the vessel, “Victory,” to
take the men to Annapolis on March 8, 1864. “White
and colored ladies and gentlemen grasped me by the hand, with
tears streaming down their cheeks, and bid me good bye, expressing
hope that we might have a safe return,” Hill wrote.
Mero said a descendant of Col. William Wooster, for whom Wooster
Square is named, will be part of the dedication ceremony, as
will Hamden resident Daniel Lathrop, 84, grandson of Daniel
S. Lathrop, who with Alexander H. Newton attained the rank
of master sergeant in the 29th, the highest possible for the
men.
“I’m the closest one to an ancestor in the 29th,” said Lathrop,
a retired construction worker, who was born in 1924, the year his grandfather
died at 76, a part-French and Iroquois Indian who enlisted in the regiment
at 16. Lathrop and Newton are featured
on one side of the black granite obelisk that is the centerpiece of the memorial. On
the other is a bronze plaque created by Hamilton that shows soldiers marching
with the regimental flag, with five in front protecting the others.
“It gives you the feeling that the soldiers are coming toward you. It brings you in and takes you out,” said
Hamilton of the design and the eight matching granite obelisks that bear the
names of the men and their officers. Two matching benches complete the artwork,
which rests on white cobblestone. “We have created this kind of
solemn space, where your eyes automatically go to the obelisk,” said
Hamilton, whose studio is in Kentucky.
MEETING ABE LINCOLN
Hill also gave a first-hand account of President Abraham Lincoln
visiting troops April 4, 1865, as he arrived without fanfare
and walked for more than a mile through the smoldering city
with his son, Tad, then 12, to Davis’ Confederate White
House.
“Then followed thousands of people, colored and white. What a spectacle! I never witnessed such rejoicing in
all my life,” Hill wrote. Mero
said Lincoln was accompanied by a color guard from the 29th and family history
has Lathrop in the lead.
In a short speech to African-American and Native American troops,
Hill quoted Lincoln as saying: “Although you have been
deprived of your God-given rights by your so-called masters,
you are now free as I am.” Eleven days later, Lincoln was dead,
assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
The Hartford Courant wrote that on Nov. 29, 1865, the 29th
was given a hero’s welcome by Gov. William Buckingham,
Wooster and Gen. Joseph Hawley. “I
saw black men brought back wounded and I believe their blood
was worth as much as anybody’s. Thank God for one thing
that has been settled by the war. It is settled that the black man is
entitled to all the rights and privileges of the white man. And with the help of God, they shall
have them!” Hawley said.
Still, it took half a decade more for men of color to get the
vote.
Our thanks to
Mary E. O’Leary and The
New Haven Register, for providing this article. Click on these links for more information
on the monument, the Connecticut Freedom Trail,
and the Connecticut 29th Colored
Troops
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