22-year-old William Bryant, from Cedar Falls, Black Hawk County, Iowa, joined the 2nd Wisconsin Volunteers as a Private on May 2, 1861, just three weeks after the beginning of the Civil War. He was wounded at the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 28, 1862. Bryant and other wounded soldiers lay unattended on the field for more than a week, until September 6, 1862, when Washington, D.C. city hacks were pressed into service as ambulances. Bryant was taken with others back to Washington where they were treated in the Judiciary Square Hospital.

The following year, Bryant was serving as First Sergeant when he received a commission as a 1st Lieutenant in the 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, on November 20, 1863. He mustered into the 19th Regiment on December 20, 1863 at Camp Stanton.

For much of 1864 and 1865, Bryant served as the Regimental Quartermaster. On July 1, 1865, while the Regiment was in Texas, he was promoted to Captain and assigned to Company C. On December 5, 1866, Captain Bryant was placed in charge of Fort Brown at Brownsville, Texas. He mustered out of the Union Army the next month, on January 15, 1867, and returned with the regiment to Baltimore where the soldiers received their final pay and discharge papers.

After the Civil War, Captain Bryant resumed his occupation of druggist. He and Vesta Bryant were married on June 30, 1868 in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Captain Bryant died November 6, 1905 while visiting Fernandina, Florida.

Bryant’s pension file contains the following statement:

… I claim a severe strain on my constitution and vitality by being wounded at Gainesville or Groveton near Bull Run Aug. 28th, 1862 by reason of being abandoned on the field until Sept. 6, 1862 when city hacks were impressed into service as ambulances and took me and others to Judiciary Square Hospital, Washington, D.C. … 

I claim disability from the severity of the service on the Rio Grande in Texas, when the Command was attacked by scurvy, dengue fever, and other fevers, with the nervous strain and unusual responsibility of an attack of Asiatic Cholera in the Command when I had command of a detachment at Rancho Arenal near Brownsville, Texas without assistance from physicians…Bryant, William

I claim that being ordered North to be mustered out in midwinter helped to make me a confirmed invalid from resulting catarrh and rheumatism and ailments rapidly following and continuing to develop more and more disastrously until now.

The pension file also contains the following statement by Colonel Joseph G. Perkins of the 19th Regiment:

After the fall of Richmond, the Regt. was sent to the Rio Grande, Texas, and there the whole Command suffered greatly from scurvy. Captain Bryant, though continuing on duty, was attacked and I think never was capable of resisting the bad climatic condition after that time. In the summer of 1866, consequent on orders to cover the line of the Rio Grande, from Brownsville to Ringgold, Captain Bryant's Co. was posted at a crossing of the river near Rancho Arenal, and on the bank of a back water lagoon; owing to malaria and exposure, he was there taken ill with a very serious attack of the Texas, or dengue fever, which at that time was epidemic among the white troops and officers of the black regiments, and was removed to the Post Hospital at Brownsville. After partial recovery Capt. Bryant returned to his post but was subject to periodical attacks of the fever during the remainder of his term of service.

While still suffering from the secondary effects of the fever, Captain Bryant returned to his post where he was in command as senior officer, and hardly had he assumed charge when the Asiatic Cholera broke out along the whole line of of the lower Rio Grande, the camp at Rancho Arenal having many cases and several deaths… 

So serious was the emergency that I had his Company moved to Fort Brown that he might be relieved of some of the responsibility and be near the Hospital surgeons…

Early in 1867 the Regt. was ordered to Baltimore for final muster out. The almost instantaneous change from the tropic frontier to the bitter winter weather which met us at our destination - the Chesapeake Bay was frozen so that we were delayed at Fort Monroe several days on account of ice - I believe to have been the cause of the catarrh which Captain Bryant claims to have settled into chronic asthma, and in as aggravated a form as to bring about almost total disability.