By the end of the Civil War, nearly 200,000 Black men served as US soldiers and sailors. Of that number, more than 17,000 were from the state of Mississippi, with many of them stationed at Fort McPherson in Natchez, Mississippi. The acts of self-emancipation and agency of Natchez US Colored Troops (USCT) and Navy sailors demonstrated in their answer to the call of military service, and their forgotten contributions may not be known by some, but are definitely worthy of attention. The Natchez USCT not only contributed to the war effort but was essential to establishing a post-war monument honoring President Lincoln and emancipation that has stood in Washington, D.C., for almost 150 years.
With the fall of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, the Union gained control of the Mississippi River, which was a major turning point for the Union forces. Nine days later, on July 13, Union forces entered Natchez, establishing Union Headquarters there and further solidifying full control of the entire Mississippi river.
Black men demonstrated agency by leaving plantations and enlisting—their tangible mobilization for freedom—for themselves, their families, and the Union. Their collective actions affirm, as historian Manisha Sinha notes, that enslaved people took agency over their lives in their self-liberation. By the next month, August 1863, the Union Headquarters command center in Natchez was organized, and freedmen began to enlist in the regiment then named the 6th Mississippi Infantry Regiment (African Descent), a designation subsequently changed to the 58th Regiment US Colored Infantry (USCI) in March of 1864.
Shortly thereafter, in the fall of 1863, Wisconsin troops stationed in Natchez, along with the 58th USCI, received orders to tear down the slave pens located at the Forks of the Road, the second-largest domestic slave market in the Deep South. In a letter published in the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel on February 17, 1864, a white Wisconsin soldier stationed in Natchez provided a detailed and moving account of the order and the ensuing destruction of the slave pens to obtain lumber to build barracks within the fortifications. Providing great insights regarding those Black soldiers, many of whom had previously been sold in them, the white soldier wrote, “During this work many a thrilling remimbrence[sic] was recalled of the cruelty of traders, of sad partings of husband and wife, of inhuman fathers selling their own children, and a thousand other incidents illustrating the detestable state of society at the South.” This white soldier’s detailed account of Natchez Black soldiers working through the night to tear down the slave pens with “wildest enthusiasm” and “terrible earnestness” attests to their vehement commitment to abolishing those enslaving structures forever!