Adam Laws, Sergeant, Company C

A Pennsylvania Blacksmith

Adam Laws was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, about 1834 or 1835. The 1860 Federal census appears to place him in Dunbar Township, Fayette County, where a 25-year-old Black man named Adam Laws was listed as a domestic worker with $15 in personal property. A 24-year-old woman named Susannah Laws was enumerated immediately after him. Because the census did not record relationships within households, the record does not establish how the two were related, but the age and birthplace are consistent with the soldier who enlisted three years later.

By December 1863 Laws was in Frederick, Maryland, working as a blacksmith. On December 9 he enlisted in the Union Army for three years. His military description gave his age as twenty-nine, his height as six feet and one-half inch, with black hair and black eyes. He was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. He mustered into the 19th Regiment, United States Colored Troops, at Camp Stanton, Maryland, on January 4, 1864.

A First Sergeant from the Beginning

Laws did not enter the regiment as an ordinary private. He mustered into Company D as its first sergeant, the senior enlisted man in the company. In a regiment whose commissioned officers were white, the first sergeant was one of the most important positions open to a Black soldier. He stood between the company commander and the enlisted men, maintained order and accountability, supervised formations and details, and helped make the company function from day to day.

The surviving records suggest that Laws had the bearing and ability for the position. Later testimony from officers of the regiment described him in unusually strong terms. His company commander said that he had always been a good soldier and respectful toward his officers. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Perkins went further, recalling that Laws had always been dutiful and obedient and that he considered him the best soldier in the regiment.

The Annapolis Confrontation

Laws's military career nevertheless nearly ended only a few months after it began. On April 23, 1864, as the 19th Regiment was moving from its Maryland training camps toward the Virginia theater of war, the troops halted at Annapolis. Colonel Henry G. Thomas ordered Laws to return to his company. According to the later Judge Advocate General's summary of the case, Laws responded angrily and warned Thomas not to put his hands on him. Witnesses also testified that Laws did not attempt to strike or physically resist the colonel and that, apart from the incident, his reputation as a soldier was good.

Laws was arrested. Less than two weeks later, on May 3, he was admitted to Claremont General Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, suffering from smallpox. The hospital record describes him as single and gives a relative or contact in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He recovered and returned to duty on June 8.

Court-Martial and the Dry Tortugas

A general court-martial considered the Annapolis episode in August 1864. Laws was not convicted of the specific Articles of War originally charged against him, but the court found him guilty of conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline. He was reduced to the ranks and sentenced to six months at hard labor on the public works. The Dry Tortugas, the remote military prison at Fort Jefferson in the Gulf of Mexico, was designated as the place of confinement.

Before reaching Florida, Laws was confined at Castle Williams on Governors Island in New York Harbor. From there, on October 7, 1864, he appealed directly to President Abraham Lincoln for clemency. Laws emphasized his previous record. He said that he had always done his duty and had never missed a roll call, and he pleaded that his elderly father and mother depended upon him.

The appeal received serious attention. Lincoln's secretary John Hay referred the case to Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt. In reviewing it, Holt noted both the offense and the strong testimony concerning Laws's character as a soldier. The record preserved the striking judgment of Lieutenant Colonel Perkins that Laws had been the best soldier in the regiment. Holt concluded that the punishment already endured could properly be taken into account.

Laws was eventually sent to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, but he did not serve the full sentence. On January 28, 1865, President Lincoln remitted the unexecuted portion of the sentence and ordered that Laws be returned to his regiment and restored to duty. War Department Special Orders issued on February 9 directed his release from the Dry Tortugas. The episode is therefore more accurately described as an act of presidential clemency than simply as the expiration of a prison term.

Back to the 19th Regiment

After his release Laws returned to the 19th Regiment. His surviving service cards show him again with the regiment during 1865. On July 31 he was transferred from Company D to Company C for promotion, and on August 1 he was again made first sergeant. The Army had reduced him to private and imprisoned him, but within months of his return his officers again placed him in the company's senior enlisted position.

In November 1865, while the regiment was serving in Texas, Company C commander Captain William Bryant supported a request from Laws for a sixty-day furlough. Bryant's endorsement is one of the clearest assessments of Laws in the record: he called him a brave and good soldier who deserved any favor that could consistently be granted. The statement is especially significant because it came after the court-martial and imprisonment, from an officer who knew his subsequent conduct.

Brownsville, Texas

The 19th Regiment remained in federal service after the Civil War and was sent to the Rio Grande. By the summer of 1865 Laws was in Brownsville, Texas, where the regiment performed occupation and border duty during the turmoil accompanying the French intervention in Mexico.

A surviving invitation offers an unusual glimpse of Laws away from military formations and disciplinary records. It advertised a Grand U.S.C.T. Military Ball at Market Hall in Brownsville on March 5, 1866 and listed a first sergeant of the 19th U.S.C.T. as the floor manager. The printed name appears as 'John Q. Adams Laws.' No other record yet examined confirms that this was Adam Laws's full name, so the identification should be treated cautiously. The rank, regiment, place, and date, however, make the item highly suggestive.

A Second Court-Martial

Only days after the military ball, Laws encountered more trouble. He was arrested in Brownsville on March 18, 1866 after a Mexican baker accused him of stealing a loaf of bread. At the resulting court-martial Captain Bryant acted in Laws's defense and argued mistaken identity, maintaining that Laws had not been at the bakery. The court nevertheless convicted him of conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline, reduced him to the ranks, and ordered a forfeiture of eight dollars per month for two months.

Even in imposing sentence, however, the court acknowledged the severity of what Laws had already endured. He had been confined in the military prison at Brownsville for nearly two months and had been put to work on the streets with, in the court's words, 'all classes and kinds of culprits.' He was therefore released from confinement.

The reduction did not last. On August 1, 1866, Captain Bryant again promoted Laws to first sergeant. He retained the rank through the remainder of his service and mustered out with the 19th Regiment at Brownsville on January 15, 1867. Thus Laws began his service as a first sergeant and, after two reductions, two court-martial proceedings, imprisonment in New York, the Dry Tortugas, and Texas, ended it as a first sergeant as well.

A Complicated but Remarkable Record

Adam Laws does not fit neatly into a simple story of either exemplary service or military misconduct. The official record contains both. He could be defiant, and military courts twice punished him. Yet the same record contains repeated testimony from officers who regarded him as brave, dependable, obedient in ordinary service, and worthy of responsibility. Most strikingly, one of the regiment's senior officers remembered him as the best soldier in the 19th U.S.C.T.

His case also produced a rare documentary connection between an enlisted Black Civil War soldier and Abraham Lincoln. Laws did not merely become the subject of a routine military review. He personally appealed to the President, his appeal was examined by the Judge Advocate General, and Lincoln intervened to cut short his punishment and return him to the regiment. Laws then regained the highest enlisted rank in his company and continued serving for almost two more years.

No pension record for Adam Laws has been located, and the records examined for this profile do not establish what became of him after his discharge in January 1867. His postwar life therefore remains uncertain. What survives in his military file, however, is unusually revealing: the story of a Pennsylvania blacksmith who became a first sergeant in one of Maryland's Black Civil War regiments, survived smallpox and military imprisonment, received clemency from Abraham Lincoln, regained the confidence of his officers, and finished his Army service in the same position of responsibility with which he had begun.