This web site provides short biographies of each of the soldiers who served in Maryland's 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, during the American Civil War. The information here, also available as a book, was taken from the soldiers' military and pension files at the U.S. National Archives in Washington, D.C. by Robert K. Summers over a ten year period.

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When the Civil War began in April 1861, President Abraham Lincoln called for 90-day volunteers to put down the insurrection. 75,000 patriotic men enlisted. But as the war dragged on, it became clear that many more volunteers would be needed to replace the dead and wounded. The President issued more calls for volunteers, but fewer men answered each time. The true horror of war had begun to sink in. The Union Government then began to offer cash bonuses for enlistment, and instituted a draft. The first draft law was enacted on July 17, 1862. A more comprehensive one, the Enrollment Act, followed on March 3, 1863.

 
But there were still not enough men to replace those lost in battle. After having initially resisted the idea, President Lincoln authorized the Army, in his Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, to begin enlisting free African-Americans. Later that year, he authorized the Army to begin enlisting slaves as well.


Six U.S. Colored Troops regiments were organized in Maryland in 1863 and 1864. Each regiment had about one thousand men, organized into ten companies of about one hundred men each. The officers were white. The enlisted men were black. The 7th, 9th, 19th, and 30th regiments, a total of about 4,000 men, were organized and trained at Camp Stanton in Benedict, Maryland during the late fall and winter of 1863-64. The 4th and 39th regiments were organized and trained in Baltimore. Some men were transferred to the U.S. Navy before completing their training at Camp Stanton.


Measles, cholera, smallpox, typhoid, and similar diseases were rampant among the 4,000 men training at Camp Stanton. Measles was the most common disease. During February 1864, 357 men were sick with disease. 50 of the cases were measles. There was a small field hospital at Camp Stanton, but many of the sick men were sent to army hospitals in Baltimore and Annapolis. Many never returned. Most of the enlisted men were slaves, but there were also a few draftees, substitutes, and free men who voluntarily enlisted.

 
Camp Stanton recruits came primarily from the counties of Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore. The army used roving recruiting parties to take slaves directly from the farms. Officers were ordered to raid through the countryside, carrying off slaves from under the eyes of their masters. Plantations were stripped of their field hands. The pension file of Frost Johns, Company A, contains a deposition from his mother in which she says:

“He was out in the field gathering corn when they came after him and took him away.”


While it could be assumed that the slaves were generally willing to be rescued from slavery, slave-owners were of course furious. Benjamin Brown, Company D, 19th Regiment, was shot and killed while on recruiting service in Caroline County. Lieutenant Eben White of the 7th Regiment was murdered while recruiting slaves on a plantation near Camp Stanton.


Some slaves were taken from the counties immediately around Camp Stanton - Charles, St. Mary’s, and Prince Georges - but most were taken from Maryland’s Eastern Shore, on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay. The army used a small fleet of steamers, including the Cecil, John Tracy, Balloon, United States, and Daniel Webster to ferry recruiting parties to the Eastern Shore, and then bring them and their new recruits back to Camp Stanton.


The Government offered $300 compensation to any slaveholder who signed a manumission document freeing the slave, signed an oath of loyalty to the Union, and had the loyalty oath verified by known loyal citizens. Few Southern Maryland slave owners filed compensation claims. Most of those who did were refused compensation on account of disloyalty.


A number of slaves enlisted under a different name than their given name. Some gave the enlisting officer a different name out of fear of being recaptured by their former owners. Others gave a different name because they wanted to replace their slave name with a name of their own choosing. Others gave their regular name, but the enlisting officer either misheard it or wrote it down incorrectly. Most slaves, but not all, were illiterate and couldn't tell if the enlisting officer was recording their name correctly or not.


Training of the 19th Regiment proceeded during the winter of 1863-64, until March 1st when it departed for Birney Barracks in Baltimore. The regiment spent March and April assisting with recruiting efforts and serving as guards at McKims Army Hospital.


The 9th Regiment left Camp Stanton on March 3rd by steamer to South Carolina. The 7th Regiment left on March 4th by steamer for Portsmouth, Virginia. The 30th Regiment left on March 18th, marching south to join General Grant's Army of the Potomac in Virginia.


On April 18th, the men of the 19th Regiment marched in a dress parade through downtown Baltimore, and then boarded boats that took them to Annapolis. From Annapolis, the regiment marched to Washington, D.C., where it camped near Georgetown for a couple of days. When orders were received to set out for Virginia, the regiment marched from Georgetown, past the White House, and then past the Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue where President Lincoln stood reviewing them. The regiment continued across the Long Bridge over the Potomac River and into Virginia where it joined up with General Grant’s Army of the Potomac.

 
As Grant's army fought its way south towards Richmond and Petersburg during May and June 1864, the 19th Regiment saw action at the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Topolotomy Creek, North Anna, Cold Harbor, and Old Church. Arriving at Petersburg, the 19th Regiment joined other Union troops in the trenches outside that besieged city. During the siege of Petersburg, the regiment saw action at the battles of Weldon Railroad, Poplar Grove Church, Bermuda Hundred, Chapin's Farm, and Hatcher’s Run.


The 19th Regiment’s largest battle was as part of the Union Army’s July 30, 1864 assault against Confederate forces outside Petersburg, Virginia. Many of its men were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. The assault was recorded in military records at the time as the Battle of Cemetery Hill or the Battle of the Mine, but in later years was popularized as the Battle of the Crater.


 Petersburg was an important railroad junction for the Confederate Army, funneling supplies from the south to General Lee’s army in Richmond. If Grant could capture Petersburg, he could starve Lee into submission.
Union soldiers from the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry dug a mine shaft under the Confederate lines protecting Petersburg, packed it with four tons of gunpowder, and detonated it on the morning of July 30, 1864. The explosion killed almost 300 Confederate soldiers and created a huge crater in the middle of the Confederate lines.


Nine USCT regiments, including the 19th Regiment, had trained to lead the assault against the Confederate lines after the mine was exploded. However, the day before the explosion, the white 1st Division was assigned to lead the assault, followed by the USCT regiments.


It did not go well. Instead of circling around the crater, as the USCT regiments had been trained to do, the 1st Division troops entered the crater, thinking it would give them protection from the Confederate soldiers. Instead, they were trapped, and became easy targets for the Confederates.


The USCT regiments were then thrown into the assault. First was 30 USCT, one of the Maryland regiments that had trained with the 19th Regiment at Camp Stanton. It was followed by 39 USCT, another Maryland regiment, trained in Baltimore. These were followed by 43 USCT from Pennsylvania, 27 USCT from Ohio, 23 USCT from Arlington, Virginia, 31 USCT from New York, 29 USCT from Illinois, 19 USCT from Maryland, and 28 USCT from Indiana. The other three Maryland USCT regiments, 7 USCT, 9 USCT, and 4 USCT, were not in the battle.


The 1st Division’s mistake of getting trapped in the crater instead of going around it allowed the Confederates time to regroup and repulse the USCT regiments. The battle was lost.


The fall of Petersburg came eight months later, at the beginning of April 1865. General Grant sent the 19th and other regiments from Petersburg to Richmond on April 1, 1865. General Robert E. Lee pulled his Confederate troops from both Petersburg and Richmond on the night of April 2, 1865, retreating westward towards Appomattox. At 6 a.m. on April 3, 1865, the 19th Regiment was in the first wave of Union soldiers entering and capturing Richmond. Captain James H. Rickard, commanding Company G, wrote in his company report that day:


"Advanced on the enemy’s works at 6 AM. Found they had evacuated Richmond."

President Lincoln visited Petersburg on April 3, 1865, and Richmond on April 4, 1865. On April 9, 1865, General Lee surrendered his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant about 50 miles west of Richmond at Appomattox Courthouse. All remaining Confederate Army units still in the field surrendered over the course of the next two weeks, and the great Civil War was over.


But military service was not over for the men of the 19th Regiment. Their term of enlistment was three years. Unlike most white regiments that had been formed earlier in the war, the men of the 19th Regiment had served barely half their three-year enlistment when the war ended. Instead of disbanding the regiment as the men had hoped, the regiment was sent to Texas as an occupation force to preserve order in the formerly Confederate state, and to protect the rights of the former slaves in that state. On June 1, 1865, the 19th Regiment boarded the military steamers J.W. Everman and Cumbria for a three-week voyage to Texas.

 
The steamers sailed from Fortress Monroe, Virginia down the Atlantic coast, around the tip of Florida, across the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans, and finally arrived at Brazos Santiago, Texas on June 24, 1865. For the next year and a half, the regiment’s base of operations was at Brownsville, Texas, but its companies were posted at a number of different encampments along the Rio Grande River. These included Edinburg, Santa Maria, Rancho Arenal, Rancho Costinas, and Rancho Barracas. Living conditions were abysmal. Almost everyone became seriously sick at one time or another from scurvy, malaria, cholera, dysentery, and other diseases.


Several soldiers died while the 19th Regiment was in Texas. They were buried in the military's National Cemetery at Fort Brown in Brownsville, Texas. In 1911, National Cemetery was closed and the remains of the soldiers buried there were moved to the Alexandria National Cemetery in Pineville, Louisiana.


The 19th Regiment was finally disbanded on January 15, 1867 at Brownsville, Texas. The men marched to the port town of Brazos de Santiago on January 20th where they boarded the Army steamer St. Mary. They stopped in New Orleans for three days, and then continued their voyage on board the steamship Mississippi, arriving at Fortress Monroe, Virginia on February 4th. They were delayed there for two days by ice in the Chesapeake Bay, but resumed their voyage on February 6th, arriving in Baltimore the next day, February 7, 1867. The men of the 19th Regiment disembarked, received their final pay and discharge papers a few days later, and then went home. Free men at last.


Two hundred sixty-eight of the original 1,000 men of the 19th Regiment organized at Camp Stanton died from all causes before the regiment was disbanded in 1867. Twenty-three were killed in action at the Battle of the Crater. The other 245 died of disease. Disease killed 75 at Camp Stanton, 82 while encamped at Petersburg, and 70 after the war in Texas. The main killers were cholera, chronic diarrhea, measles, pneumonia, scurvy, smallpox, and typhoid fever. Many of those who survived their service with the 19th Regiment suffered for the rest of their lives from the effects of diseases and injuries contracted during their service.


The entire number of men enlisted and commissioned in the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War was 186,097. They served in 120 Infantry Regiments, 12 Heavy Artillery Regiments, 10 Heavy Artillery Batteries, and 7 Cavalry Regiments. By the time the war was over, 68,178 of these brave men were lost from all causes.