Article from November 1998

	As featured in November 1998
	Colored Yankee Soldiers

Their Time Has Come

By David A. Anderson/Sankofa

He may have been the offspring of Choctaw, European, African, all of the above. Momma's parents didn't say. Momma never saw him.

"He left Alabama the year I was born. Said he was going to the old soldiers home in Dayton," she said.

I asked, "Momma, would that be Tennessee? Kentucky? Ohio?" She had shushed me, perturbed, that in what would be the last year of her life, she knew so little of her grandfather, Samuel Bibb. She parried my next question by mimicking the four-year old she had once been: "Hmp. If my grandpa was here, I'd cook his meat just the way he'd want it.

"My mama cooked alright to suit Poppa," she continued. However, the older man had left his son and daughter-in-law's house, complaining that "she cooked his meat too done." For eavesdropping, the four-year-old "got my butt tore up," because 'Fronie (Saphronia) Kelly Bibb, wasn't about to take sass from her own child, Mary Alice Bibb.

The quarrel between the crusty Civil War veteran and his son's feisty teen-wife, was settled by his retreat to what was then the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, in Dayton, Ohio. When he died at that facility, June 24, 1910, his personal effects were "appraised at fifteen cents, and $2.00 cash." Among thousands of identical limestone markers in that city's National Cemetery, I found one for the grandfather Momma never knew, but often wondered about.

Eighty-eight years later, on July 18, 1998, I considered him as a very able, determined 25-year-old. I was among thousands jamming the plaza at Vermont and U Street in the nation's capitol, to see our forebears in the 11-foot bronze "Spirit of Freedom" memorial to the African Americans who fought as Union soldiers in the Civil War under the destination, United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.).

Their time had come. The Spirit of Freedom sculpture is the centerpiece of a long overdue national memorial to African-American soldiers and sailors who fought in the Civil War.

On that day, Old Glory billowed in the light breeze; uniformed reenactors presented arms; the blue cloth cloaking the sculpture fell away; and pride and happiness welled up in me, descendant of one, and a wannabee descendant of another "Colored Yankee Soldier." Residents and tourists, federal employees and jobless people cheered as vigorously as did those of us who had been able to authenticate kinship to the men of the U.S.C.T.

The struggle for the right to become a "Colored Yankee Soldier" had raged for two years of a war-the Civil War in which they would ultimately provide the margin of victory for the Union. Young white Yankee soldiers were maimed and killed while the president and his advisors hesitated. For to place guns in the hands of black men, would be to elevate them to a status white America seemed unwilling to abide.

This was consistent with Lincoln's attitude regarding slavery. In his 1861 inaugural address he declared that he had no reason "directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery, in the states where it now exists." A year later, Lincoln was still equivocating:

"My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving other others alone I would also do that . . ."

Frederick Douglass, erstwhile ally of the President, nonetheless took to the pulpit in Rochester, New York's venerable African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church to score Lincoln's policy refusing enlistment of black men in the Union's military forces:

"It deprives us [the nation] of the moral support of the world. It degrades the war into a war of sections and robs it of the dignity of being a mighty effort of a great people to vanquish . . . a huge system of cruelty and barbarism. . . It cools the ardor of our troops and disappoints the hopes of the friends of humanity."

-"Douglass Monthly," Rochester, NY, August 1861.

In the intimacy of the Douglass South Avenue home in Rochester, there was no room for equivocation. Frederick and his wife, Anna, probably counted their blessings. All five of their children were born on free soil, due in large measure to risks Anna had taken to facilitate her now famous husband's escape from bondage. But what additional risks would their convictions demand?

They might have broached the subject with their children, for their sons were of age to take up arms. Perhaps the Douglasses sat in the same room in which the martyred John Brown had, in 1858, hinted at his plan to raise the stakes in the debate, a plan executed October 16, 1859, with seizure of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Mother and father looked at Lewis, Frederick Jr. and Charles, and were likely reminded of Shields Green. He had gone "down wid de ole man," John Brown. Green's neck had likely been broken by the same hangman as "done the deed" on Brown.

Following more stinging rebukes by Douglass and others, Lincoln knew that the time had finally come to loose the Union's other hand-its black hand. Shortly after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Frederick Douglass, trumpeted, "Men of Color, to Arms:"

". . . The case is before you. This is our golden opportunity. Let us accept it and forever wipe out the dark reproaches unsparingly hurled against us by our enemies. Let us win for ourselves the gratitude of our country and the blessings of our posterity through all time."

-Frederick Douglass, "Broadside," Rochester, New York, March 21, 1863.

The Douglass sons, Lewis and Charles, stepped forward, and, with other free men of color took the first steps that would cover the 54th Massachusetts Regiment with glory. Even then, more skirmishes would occur at the White House and in the halls of Congress. Eventually, with approval by the Secretary of War and the Congress, on May 22, 1863, the Adjutant General's Office ordered the establishment of a "Bureau for the record of all matters relating to the organization of colored troops."

Before the war ended, more than 208,000 Yoruba-Asante-Mandingo-Wolof-Kongo-Angola-Fulani-Hausa-Baule-descended youths, genetically and legally linked to Ole Massa, stepped forward to don the blue jackets of the United States Colored Troops.

What blessings. My God, what responsibilities.

In November, about the time the first frost hit the collard greens in Pittsford and Pawtucket, Samuel Bibb stepped forward to help form the 17th Infantry Regiment. Private Samuel Bibb saw battle in Tennessee, and possibly his native Alabama, to which he returned in 1866.

On May 4, 1864, Rochesterian George Brown stepped forward to join the ranks of the First Heavy Artillery Regiment in the Grand Army of the Republic. Sergeant Brown, the former slave to a Confederate officer, escaped and joined the Union Army in Knoxville, Tennessee. After mustering out in 1865, Brown re-enlisted in 1869 and served in Texas with the Buffalo Soldiers.

I encountered photographs of him in the Rochester Museum & Science Center's 1988 exhibition, Images Afro-Rochester, 1910-1935. Brown was openly proud to have served under the Stars and Stripes. He lived in Rochester until his death in 1939. For two years, I have been privileged to re-enact a segment of his life for the Landmark Society-sponsored program, "Walk-the-Walk: Encounters with African-American Ancestors."

George Brown often appeared as a dignitary in Memorial Day parades. On this morning of July 18, 1998, I marched in a special parade in memory of the U.S.C.T, but I marched behind the dignitaries, behind most of the bands and re-enactors, among the large contingent of the descendants.

I, the great-grandson of Private Samuel Bibb, 17th U.S.C.T., was thanking God as I struggled against the tide to see the sculpture unveiled. A thousand weeping, praising people were jammed between it and me. Those nearest the Washington, D.C., monument clung to it.

The Spirit of Freedom monument was sculpted by Kentuckian Ed Hamilton, and Kentucky officials and citizens were there in force, telling their state's story.

Spokespersons from Kansas City, Boston, Detroit, even Buxton, Ontario in Canada, were there reinforcing the cheerleading by the descendants. Together, they made compelling cases for celebrants to come sample their states' versions of the freedom story.

Each descendant also had stories and documentation, as each family seemed to have at least one serious genealogist.

For example, Mrs. Dolly Nash of Cape May, New Jersey, shared evidence pertaining to her great-grandfather, Robert Smalls, who was elected to the post-Civil War Congress, but who was better known as the man who commandeered the Confederate gunboat Planter, and delivered it to the Yankees.

Samuel, out of Alabama, and George, out of Virginia, were reborn in "The Spirit of Freedom" sculpture. I knew their time had finally come.

However, as a descendant and lone witness from Rochester, I was beset by ironies: Rochester, major hub on the Underground Railroad from whence Douglass issued "Men of color, to arms!" This cry sent Lewis and Charles Douglass to that first casting call for Glory.

Irony lay in the fact that in 1895, Rochester was slated to be the site of a memorial to the United States Colored Troops. Such a memorial had been called for, November 20, 1894, when J. W. Thompson proposed to Eureka Lodge, No. 36, Free and Accepted Masons, that "a committee be appointed for the purpose of erecting a monument in memory of the Afro-American soldiers and sailors who had fallen in the Civil War."

Frederick Douglass was:

". . . more than pleased with the patriotic purpose to erect in Rochester a monument in honor of the colored soldiers who, under great discouragements, at the moment of the national peril volunteered to go to the front and fight for their country-when assured in advance that neither by their own government nor that of the confederates would they be accorded the equal rights of peace or war. The colored soldier fought with a halter around his neck, hut he fought all the same. I shall be proud if I shall see the proposed monument erected in the city of Rochester, where the best years of my life were spent in the service of our people-and which to this day seems like my home."

-J.W. Thompson, "History of the Douglass Monument," Rochester, NY: Rochester Herald Press, 1903.

Then Douglass unexpectedly died and the focus of the monument shifted to memorialize Frederick Douglass whose remains are entombed in Rochester.

Samuel Bibb, entombed in Dayton, was my mother's paternal grandfather. His "personal effects ... were settled with a daughter, Adeline Floyd..." whom Momma knew as the Aunt Addy who raised "my Papa, 'cause his mama died when she gave birth to him."

There is evidence-recorded and oral-that Samuel Bibb was widowed twice before he lost Sally Murray Bibb. I suspect that children were also lost, so I thank God for Aunt Addy. Without her, there would have been no Samuel Bibb Jr., no Mary Alice Bibb, no me.

Momma's sassiness in me says, that without Private Samuel Bibb and Private George Brown, there would be no Union.

David A. Anderson/Sankofa is a fledgling genealogist, a teller and publisher of stories, a lecturer at the State University College at Brockport and founder of the Blackstorytelling League of Rochester, New York, Inc.

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Colored Yankee Soldiers