A slave freed to join the Union army

Bill Fox slid the slightly faded and folded document carefully from the clean white envelope with my name on the front.     

He was just as excited as me about what we had before us. It was a manumission document freeing a slave to join the Union army. The slave’s last name was spelled two different ways – a testament to how little worth his owners attached to something as significant as his identity.     

The document had some splits at the ends of the folds, but it was in remarkably good condition for its age. Fox, who lives in the Philadelphia area, had called me after seeing an article I had written last week about the African American history items I found at auction. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he had gotten the document from his great aunt when he was 15 years old (he’s 70 now).     

The document was actually two separate papers, one glued to the bottom of the other (which, in effect, had kept them together. Click on the photo above to see both documents.). They had been signed by a woman named Elizabeth Coulbourn of Somerset County, MD, on the Eastern Shore. One was dated April 5, 1865, with Coulbourn attesting that she owned a slave named John H. Whittington or Whittenden (“a man of African descent”) who enlisted in the 9^th Regiment, United States Colored Troops, Company K on Nov. 26, 1863. The second was dated April 22, 1864, a claim she filed seeking $100 for freeing him to enlist in the army.     

According to the National Archives, these manumission papers are unique to the U.S. Colored Troops and are contained in their service files. The War Department in October 1863 agreed to pay up to $300 to citizens in Maryland and three other states who allowed their slaves to enlist in the Union army “upon filing a valid deed of manumission and of release, and making satisfactory proof of title.”     

Maryland’s citizens were torn between the Union and the Confederacy, and white men enlisted on both sides. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s first attempt to invade the North was the 1862 Battle of Antietam in Maryland, but he was fiercely rebuffed. Soon after, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which included several southern states but not Maryland. Although it had slaves, Maryland was considered a Union state.     

I was now bent on finding out as much as I could about Whittington/Whittenden and the 9^th Regiment. Finding the regiment’s trail was easy, but finding a man whose name was spelled two different ways wasn’t. After some searching, I finally located a John H. Whitenden, Company K in the National Park Service’s Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System.     

Whitenden was one of about 180,000 slaves and free men who joined the U.S. Colored Troops – organized by the Union army in 1863 – in cavalry, artillery and infantry units. Some got manumission papers from their owners while others just left on their own or were recruited by the army right off the plantations – all with the hope that the war would free them.     

The 9^th was organized at Camp Stanton in Benedict, MD, from Nov. 11-30, 1863, three months after the camp was set up to recruit and train African American soldiers. They trained, drilled, marched and built roads and huts until March 1864.     

The men of the 9^th Regiment are credited with creating a song “They Look Like Men of War” while stationed at Benedict during the winter of 1863-64. The verses in part:     

Hark! Listen to the trumpeters,
They call for volunteers,
On Zion’s bright and flow’ry mount
Behold the officers.     

They look like men, they look like men,
They look like men of war;
All armed and dressed in uniform,
They look like men of war.     

In March 1864, they headed out to South Carolina and Virginia, where they engaged in heavy fighting at Petersburg and Richmond. They participated in the Siege at Petersburg, 10 long months of trench fighting that opened the way to the eventual fall of the Confederate capital of Richmond on April 3, 1865.     

Many black regiments were involved in the battle, and this was said to be the largest amassing of black soldiers during the war. The 9^th was among the first regiments to occupy Richmond after its fall. The regiment moved on to Texas before being discharged on Nov. 20, 1866. Whitenden was a private during his years in the military.      

As for Elizabeth Coulbourn, I could find little about her. I did come across someone with that name who was born in 1795 and died in 1872. Her husband had died in 1821, and they had six children, including twins who died one year after they were born in 1816.     

Fox did more than just share the documents with me. He gave them to me. He said that based on my article, he thought I would appreciate them and understand their importance. I was too happy for words. Theyare indeed two very significant documents and I am most grateful.     

A few years ago, I had bidded on the bill of sale for a slave girl, but was outbidded. Even as I stood there nodding my assent to the bids, I was conflicted. It was as if the girl was on the auction block again and this time I was bidding for her. It made me uneasy, but I knew my reasons for bidding on the document – and not her – was for its historical value.     

With John Whitenden’s documents, I plan to dig up more about him. Fox doesn’t believe that Coulbourn was one of his ancestors. His aunt was into historical documents, he said, and he believes she may have picked it up somewhere.     

Fox himself is a collector of sorts, having started with coins in high school (which he stopped collecting when he went to college). Now, he has three foreign-made antique cars that he drives around on weekends: a white 1964 Honda S600 sports car named “Minke Shrew,” a red 1967 Toyota Sport 800, a red 1947 MG called “Gatsby” and a 1955 Vespa.     

Thank you, Bill Fox, for sharing a love for history.