Book Review: Black Civil War Veterans in Washington State

Black Civil War Veterans in Washington State. By Cynthia A. Wilson. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2022. Softcover, 176 pp. $24.99.

Reviewed by Tim Talbott

Thankfully, authors, historians, and publishers continue to see the value in researching, writing about, and printing books highlighting the lives of the men who fought in United States Colored Troops regiments during the Civil War. Joining this growing body of work is Black Civil War Veterans in Washington State by Cynthia A. Wilson and published by The History Press.

Organized into two parts and covering the eastern and western halves of Washington State, Wilson sets up her chapter-like sections into the counties in which Black veterans lived. Kittitas, Spokane, Walla Walla, and Yakima counties make up the eastern half, while King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties make up the western half. The eastern section includes the profiles of 12 veterans, while the western section offers biographies of 20 soldiers. Additionally, two men that the author located and who served as enslaved Confederate camp servants also receive coverage.

In the book’s thoughtful introduction, Wilson explains the study’s purpose: “This book is about my quest to identify African American Civil War soldiers who, for whatever reason, found their way to the Washington Territory/state.” (9) To tell the military parts of their stories, Wilson relies heavily on the soldiers’ compiled military service records and regimental records, most coming from the National Archives and Records Administration. Information also comes, of course, from their pension records, which offered her a wealth of insight into both their lives as soldiers and their post-service experiences. Census and other civil records also helped shed light on their histories. With a few of the men, Wilson went even further and located descendants from whom she gathered oral family history information.

Wilson began her project with the intention of only researching the Black Civil War soldiers buried in Seattle who had pension files. Soon, however, she found many other men across the state with fascinating life stories to tell.

What these brief profiles—most of which are about two to three pages—vividly show us is the diversity found among Black Civil War soldiers. Wilson notes that “within this set of men are three Union sailors, two men who worked for the Confederacy, twenty-six Union army soldiers . . . and two cooks in all white regiments; others were free men of color coming from cities as far away as New York; Philadelphia; Boston; New Haven; Jacksonville, Florida; and St. Kitts in the British West Indies.” (11) While the majority of the Civil War’s Black soldiers came from formerly enslaved backgrounds, others, as Wilson clearly shows, were free all their lives or years before the war. Many who were from the former slave states did not go back to their former homes to stay, but rather sought out opportunities to better their lives and establish new homes. Migrating westward, Washington became the final home for a number of these old soldiers.

Each soldier’s profile begins with basic biographical information. Included are birth dates (if known) and death dates; where they were born and where they died; where they are buried; rank, and unit they served in; date enlisted and date discharged or mustered out; and where they enlisted and mustered out.

Like white Civil War veterans, some of the men profiled in this book led challenged lives following their service. Some had war wounds, service-related labor injuries, or other health concerns to deal with. Others fell into crime or succumbed to other vices which helped cut their lives short or made them more difficult. Wilson is honest and candid in telling their stories regardless of their successes and failures.

Period images and photographs richly illustrate the book and add significantly to readers’ understanding of the life stories they accompany. A notes section directs readers to the sources of the author’s citations within the text, and a 16-page bibliography shows the depth of Wilson’s biographical research on these men.

One minor criticism that crept in several times within the text is that several of the dates presented either did not match up with the information presented or were in the wrong order.

Black Civil War Veterans in Washington State is a valuable read for those Civil War students wishing to learn about the post-war lives of USCT soldiers. Hopefully, other future studies like this one will inform us about more soldiers who migrated to other regions of the United States following the conflict, because knowing about their lives is yet another important puzzle piece to understanding our nation’s past and present.