Black Civil War soldiers to get long-delayed honors on Cumberland County memorial

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It’s 151 years late.

But come Monday, five Black soldiers from Cumberland County who died in the Civil War while serving with the Union Army’s U.S. Colored Troops will have their names added to the rolls of a longstanding monument on Carlisle’s Public Square that pays perpetual tribute to the county’s Civil War casualties.

The addition to the Carlisle monument is an outgrowth of an ongoing effort to elevate the Black history of Carlisle and Cumberland County, including a push to have a new monument added to the county’s Veteran’s Courtyard that would honor the service of all known county residents who served with the U.S. Colored Troops.

Research associated with those efforts has led to the identification of these five Black soldiers - all members of the celebrated 54th Massachusetts - who perished while serving in the war. They are:

Pvt. Henry King, 27, a West Pennsboro Township resident killed in action at James Island, S.C. on July 16, 1863.

Pvt. Augustus Lewis, 20, a Shippensburg area resident killed in action at Fort Wagner, S.C., on April 15, 1863.

Pvt. Edward Parks, 43, a Carlisle resident who died of dysentery at Morris Island, S.C. on Oct. 3, 1863. Parks was survived by. wife and two daughters, and his wife received a widow’s pension. She later relocated to Philadelphia.

Sgt. Alfred Whiting, 23, a Carlisle resident who was wounded and captured at James Island, S.C., and died on June 26, 1865 in a Union Army hospital in Alexandria, Va., where he is buried. Whiting was married and his wife was awarded a widow’s pension.

Pvt. Stewart Woods, 27, a Penn Township resident who was wounded and captured at James Island, S.C. on April 15, 1863, and died of disease at Wilmington, N.C. on March 15, 1865.

Historians have a couple of theories as to how this oversight happened, but it all seems to be rooted in the racial segregation that was a hallmark of the time, even in the Union states.

Cara Curtis, archives and library director at the Cumberland County Historical Society, noted that the origin of the original Civil War combat units was regionally based, with units organizing on a regional level and being identified by their state of origin.

The all-Black U.S. Colored Troops, especially at the outset, tended to see willing Black volunteers from all over answer specific recruitment calls, and travel to where those units were formed.

“Massachusetts is the first to say: ‘We’re enlisting people of color,’ and people from all over come up and there are quite a few from South Central Pennsylvania that go to Massachusetts to enlist.... As soon as they can fight, they go a distance north to enlist,” Curtis said.

Records show that of the 1,007 soldiers enrolled in the 54th - one of the first to be mustered - more than 300 were Pennsylvanians.

When the public monument in Carlisle was planned in the late 1860s and erected in 1871, it was likely that the organizers started, and perhaps finished, with the lists of the Cumberland County-based units. It’s unclear whether the failure to dig deeper to include any Colored Troops at that time was an error of omission or commission.

The question lingers because of the open knowledge at the time that there were Black veterans in Carlisle - enough to warrant the establishment of a Black Grand Army of the Republic veterans post - and the Decoration Day parades after the war seemed to have included the prominent Black cemeteries in the town.

“It (the existence of Black veterans) wasn’t a secret,” Curtis said.

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2022/05/five-cumberland-county-black-civil-war-soldiers-to-get-forever-honors-monday-151-years-later.html