William C. Bryant, Captain, Company C
William C. Bryant, Captain, Company C
From Iowa to the Iron Brigade
William C. Bryant was about twenty-two years old and living in Cedar Falls, Black Hawk County, Iowa, when the Civil War began. On May 2, 1861, only weeks after Fort Sumter, he enlisted as a private in the 2nd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. The 2nd Wisconsin became one of the regiments later celebrated as part of the Army of the Potomac’s Iron Brigade.
Bryant’s first enlistment exposed him to some of the hardest fighting of the early war. On August 28, 1862, during the fighting near Gainesville and Groveton that preceded the main clash at Second Bull Run, he was wounded. Years later, in his pension application, Bryant recalled that he and other wounded men were left on the battlefield until September 6, when Washington city hacks were pressed into service as ambulances. He was then taken to Judiciary Square Hospital in Washington, D.C. The experience remained central to his account of the physical damage caused by his military service.
Commissioned into the 19th U.S. Colored Troops
Bryant recovered, returned to duty, and rose to First Sergeant in the 2nd Wisconsin. On November 20, 1863, he was appointed First Lieutenant in the newly forming 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops. He mustered into the regiment at Camp Stanton, Benedict, Maryland, on December 20, 1863, and was initially assigned to Company D.
His records show that he quickly received responsibilities beyond ordinary company duty. In January 1864 he was detached as an aide-de-camp on Brigadier General William Birney’s staff. He subsequently served as post adjutant and, for much of 1864 and 1865, performed the demanding work of regimental quartermaster. That position placed him at the center of the regiment’s supply system—responsible for helping keep hundreds of men equipped, clothed, transported, and supplied while the 19th campaigned with the Army of the Potomac.
Campaigning with the 19th Regiment
The 19th USCT entered active campaigning in Virginia in the spring of 1864. Its battle honors eventually included the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, the Battle of the Crater, Weldon Railroad, Hatcher’s Run, Bermuda Hundred, and Richmond. Bryant’s own records repeatedly place him on duty with the regiment or on staff and quartermaster assignments during this period.
In a December 1867 application concerning arrears of pay, Bryant stated that during more than three years of military service he had never been absent from his regiment or off duty except because of wounds received in battle. The statement is consistent with the extensive sequence of duty assignments preserved in his compiled military service record.
Brevet Major for Bravery
Bryant’s service received formal recognition after the war. War Department General Orders dated July 16, 1867 appointed him a Major by brevet in the United States Volunteers, with rank dating from March 13, 1865, for “long and meritorious service and bravery in action.”
A brevet promotion was an honorary advancement rather than a permanent promotion to the full command and pay of that rank. Bryant’s substantive rank remained Captain, but the brevet made him Brevet Major William C. Bryant and recorded the Army’s recognition of his wartime conduct.
Captain Bryant and the Rio Grande
After the collapse of the Confederacy, the 19th USCT was sent to Texas rather than immediately mustered out. Bryant was promoted to Captain effective July 1, 1865. His records show assignments first to Company K and then to Company C, which he commanded during much of the regiment’s long postwar service along the lower Rio Grande.
Texas proved dangerous even after the shooting war had ended. The regiment suffered badly from scurvy, malaria, dengue or “Texas” fever, and eventually cholera. Bryant later wrote that he commanded a detachment at Rancho Arenal near Brownsville without the assistance of physicians when Asiatic cholera struck. Colonel Joseph G. Perkins remembered that Bryant had already suffered a severe attack of dengue fever and had been treated at the post hospital in Brownsville before returning to duty.
Rancho Arenal and the Cholera Emergency
Colonel Perkins’s later pension testimony gives an unusually vivid picture of Bryant’s ordeal. In the summer of 1866, when troops were ordered to cover the Rio Grande from Brownsville toward Ringgold, Bryant’s company was posted near Rancho Arenal at a river crossing beside a backwater lagoon. Perkins attributed Bryant’s serious illness there to malaria and exposure.
After only a partial recovery, Bryant returned to his command. Cholera then broke out along the lower Rio Grande, producing numerous cases and deaths at Rancho Arenal. Perkins recalled that the emergency was so serious that Bryant’s company was moved to Fort Brown so that the captain could be relieved of some responsibility and remain closer to the hospital surgeons. On December 5, 1866, Bryant was formally assigned to command Fort Brown itself, including its armament, magazines, and everything pertaining to the post.
A Commanding Officer Who Remembered His Men
Bryant’s surviving record also intersects directly with the story of Sergeant Adam Laws of Company C. Laws had been convicted by a military court and reduced in rank after a period of confinement in the Brownsville military prison. On August 1, 1866, Captain Bryant promoted Laws back to First Sergeant. Laws retained that rank until the regiment was mustered out.
The episode provides a small but revealing glimpse of Bryant as a company commander. The records do not preserve his reasoning, but the restoration placed an experienced noncommissioned officer back in a position of responsibility after Laws had completed his punishment.
Mustered Out
The 19th USCT was finally mustered out at Brownsville, Texas, on January 15, 1867. The regiment then traveled north to Baltimore for final payment and discharge. Bryant later remembered the abrupt change from the tropical Rio Grande to severe winter weather as another blow to his health.
Colonel Perkins supported that recollection. He wrote that the Chesapeake Bay was frozen and that the returning regiment was delayed for several days at Fort Monroe because of the ice. Perkins believed that the sudden climatic change contributed to the chronic respiratory problems from which Bryant later suffered.
Life After the Army
Bryant returned to Cedar Falls and resumed his civilian occupation as a druggist. On June 30, 1868, he married Vesta A. Bryant in Black Hawk County, Iowa. Pension records indicate that Cedar Falls remained their permanent home, although in later years the family commonly spent winters near Fernandina, Florida.
Bryant’s pension papers describe years of recurring illness after the war. He attributed his declining health to the Bull Run wound, the diseases and extreme conditions of Texas service, and the harsh winter journey home. His complaints included catarrh, rheumatism, bronchial and asthmatic problems, and recurring effects of the fevers he had suffered on the Rio Grande. Colonel Perkins’s detailed affidavit strongly supported Bryant’s account of the Texas illnesses and the demanding circumstances under which he continued to serve.
Death and Burial
William C. Bryant died at Fernandina, Florida, on November 6, 1905, while there for the winter. His Florida death certificate identifies him as a retired druggist and records chronic lung disease complicated by emphysema and pulmonary and cardiac problems. He was about sixty-four years old.
His widow, Vesta, pursued a widow’s pension after his death. The pension investigation confirmed their June 30, 1868 marriage. Burial records identify Brevet Major William C. Bryant as buried in Fairview Cemetery in Cedar Falls, Iowa, the community to which he had returned after nearly six years of Civil War and postwar military service.
William Bryant’s Place in the 19th USCT Story
William C. Bryant entered the Civil War as a young private, survived a battlefield wound and abandonment after Second Bull Run, rose through the enlisted ranks, and accepted a commission in a Black regiment at a time when the success of African American military service remained a matter of national consequence.
With the 19th USCT he served not only as a company officer but as an aide, adjutant, quartermaster, detachment commander, company commander, and finally commander of Fort Brown. His brevet promotion for bravery and meritorious service recognized the military side of that record. His pension testimony reveals another dimension: the physical cost of prolonged campaigning and occupation duty, especially on the disease-ridden Rio Grande. Bryant’s story is therefore both a record of advancement and responsibility and a reminder that the 19th Regiment’s service did not end with Appomattox.
Sources
This profile is based primarily on William C. Bryant’s compiled military service and pension records at the U.S. National Archives, together with Robert K. Summers, Maryland’s Black Civil War Soldiers: 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops.