In late May 1865, the Civil War was finally at an end.
The contest had cost more than 700,000 lives, destroyed countless others, and left the South in ruins. That month, the victorious Union armies paraded through Washington, D.C., in what organizers called The Grand Review—two solid days of celebration recognizing the efforts made by a generation in preserving the Union and ending slavery.
For most of the veterans who took part, it was their last act of soldiery. But conspicuously absent were the 180,000 African-American troops who had, by many historians’ estimations, made the crucial difference in achieving victory as the war dragged on for four long years.
“These soldiers played a pivotal role in victory, in saving the Union when it was being torn asunder,” said Dr. Frank Smith, founder and director of the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington, D.C.
They Earned It
When black troops were finally approved after much debate within the Lincoln administration, the outcome of the war was still very much in doubt.
“Yet after all the suffering and humiliation, after being bought and sold like animals, these men showed their worthiness and had some skin in the game, so to speak,” said Smith. “When Congress was debating the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments after the war, we can read that many of them said ‘these people deserve this because they earned it on the battlefield.’ ”
They had passed through the crucible of war.
However, black and white soldiers could not share the Grand Review in Washington because it was politically toxic, said Dr. Harry Bradshaw Matthews, associate dean and director of intercultural affairs at Hartwick College.
“It would have been troubling to the unification process to have black troops presented on the same footing as whites,” he said. “It is important to remember that, for many white abolitionists, an end to slavery was not the same thing as equal rights.”
But thanks to several men from Pennsylvania’s capital region—politicians, abolitionists, clergy, journalists—the city of Harrisburg did what the nation had not. On a sunny November day, they held a parade of their own, a second Grand Review to honor the African-American men (the vast majority of them former slaves) who had done nothing less than help save the nation.
“And the Harrisburg victory parade showed the country, and indeed the world, that these men indeed had a right to be proud,” said Smith, who will be the keynote speaker at this month’s commemoration in Harrisburg, which takes place Nov. 13 to 15.
The Very Idea
While often delegated for garrison, general labor or guard duty, soldiers of the United States Colored Troops fought with distinction in most major actions of the war’s later years. Some 8,000 would enlist from the commonwealth, more than 1,000 of them from the Harrisburg region alone.
The dangers they faced once at war were often worse than their white comrades. At a time when most military deaths occurred in camp and not on the battlefield, black soldiers died of disease at nearly twice the normal rate. It was also Confederate policy that any black soldiers captured on the field would be re-enslaved. In several instances, surrendering and wounded colored troops were simply executed.
Yet they fought with conspicuous valor at New Market Heights, Nashville, the ill-fated Battle of the Crater, and in actions throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and the Carolinas.
By the fall of 1865, as most Union troops were back home re-entering normal life, most African-American troops were still in the military. A French army bent on taking over Mexico, and maybe Texas for that matter, required immediate attention. So, off to the Rio Grande the veterans went.
Many scholars have debated whether the absence of black soldiers in the Grand Review was a move of a pragmatic command—after all, many colored troop enlistments would not be up for another year—or racially motivated, as many ranking army commanders at war’s end still objected to the very idea of colored soldiers.
“There were more than enough black soldiers in uniform that could have participated in the Grand Review,” stated Matthews.
The end of slavery was, in fact, represented at the Grand Review, but in the form of thousands of camp followers—former slaves who sought the relative safety of the Union armies in a vengeful south.
“It is ironic and also in very poor taste that contraband slaves could take part in the parade only by parading behind those conquerors that saved them,” Matthews said.
All the Rights
Sensing an injustice, Pennsylvania Gov. Andrew Curtin invited several USCT regiments to the city and, on a crisp and sunny November day—a Tuesday—the soldiers formed up at State and Filbert streets and marched through Harrisburg to the cheers of residents, both black and white.
The event had been loudly promoted in the preceding days in the local press, including a notice in The Christian Recorder, which, in proclaiming the event, hoped that “our people will not fail to show their appreciation of the services of our country’s defenders…”
Serving as grand marshal of the review was Thomas Morris Chester, a Harrisburg lawyer, abolitionist and colored troop recruiter. More than anyone present that day, he was intimately familiar with the heroism of the troops he reviewed.
In the waning days of the war, Chester served as the only black war correspondent for a major newspaper, covering the actions of colored soldiers as they helped bring the war to its end outside of Richmond. When the city finally fell in early April 1865, Chester personally witnessed a column of well-armed, smartly uniformed veteran black troops become the first Union men to enter the fallen Confederate capital.
Now, Chester led a column of the same men through his hometown, not as conquerors, but as honored victors. The procession paused at the Front Street home of Simon Cameron, former Secretary of War and U.S. senator. Cameron had been an early advocate of both emancipation and the recruitment of colored soldiers.
Like Chester, he hoped the Harrisburg review would help the nation work quickly towards universal black suffrage.
“Like all other men, you have your destinies in your own hands,” Cameron said to the troops. “And if you continue to conduct yourselves hereafter as you have in the struggle, you will have all the rights you ask for, all the rights that belong to human beings.”
But even if the exclusion from the Grand Review in Washington was intentional, as Matthews insists, the benefits to colored troops of their service were numerous.
“A large number learned to read and write due to their service,” Matthews said. “That was critical.”
Along with nearly $5 million in pension pay starting in 1870, this literacy helped former soldiers become leaders of the post-war South.
“They served in elected offices, became teachers and community leaders, and founded many of the self-help organizations that built the African-American communities of the South,” he said. “At a time when Jim Crow laws were seeking to reassert the old order, they became the new backbone of freedom.”
Many events are planned in Harrisburg from Nov. 13 to 15 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of The Grand Review. The highlight, The Grand Review procession featuring United States Colored Troops re-enactors, will take place on Nov. 14, beginning at 10 a.m. from Grace United Methodist Church, 216 State St. For a complete schedule of events, visit www.2015grandreview.com.
