ERIC KOLENICH | Richmond Times-Dispatch
In November 1864, a regiment of Black soldiers in thenUnion army was deployed to southeastern Henrico County. On election day, 194 of the soldiers stood in a single-file line and dropped paper ballots into a box. Every one of the soldiers cast a vote for President Abraham Lincoln.
The election took place outside Fort Harrison, so close to the front lines of the Civil War that Confederate soldiers could see them voting. Although it was barely noted at the time, their votes were an important piece of history. The soldiers are believed to be the first Black members of the U.S. Army to vote in an election, and theirs may have been the first votes cast by Black Americans in Virginia.
Their story was uncovered by a local historian for the National Park Service earlier this year. On Saturday, the park service held an event at Fort Harrison commemorating election day 1864. What happened that day raises questions about how different people saw race in the 1860s, and it highlights the importance with which white and Black Americans held the act of voting.
Gorman’s discovery began when he read a book of news articles written by a Black Civil War correspondent named Thomas Morris Chester. Gorman, who has worked for the park service for 26 years, read an article describing how some of the 5th Regiment of the United States Colored Troops cast votes on election day. Gorman didn’t immediately realize the importance of what he read. Then he found the entire newspaper clipping from Nov. 11 in the Philadelphia Press, a Black newspaper. The headline read: “Election day – Some of the Colored Troops Voting – The Result in General Butler’s Army.”
The historian began considering the timing of the article and did more research. He found two letters from soldiers and another news article, and he started to understand the big picture. Chester was apparently the only journalist who made note of the Black soldiers voting. Newspapers run by white publishers did not cover it. The race between Lincoln and George B. McClellan, former commanding general of the U.S. Army, was a “hotly contested, all-eyes-on-it election. It didn’t make the narrative,” Gorman said. “It should have been a bigger story.”
Comment: Another article from my local paper, although it came from the “Richmond Times Dispatch.” This one’s quite appropriate for this election day’s eve. The NPS historian, Mike Gorman, may have found this story in his own research, but I found an “Emerging Civil War” article from 2022 describing this event based on the news articles written by the Black Civil War correspondent, Thomas Morris Chester. A book of his dispatches from the Virginia front was published in 1989.
Still, I’m glad Mike Gorman found the story and ran with it. A commemoration of the Event was held at Fort Harrison this past Saturday and it will now forever be part of the Fort Harrison and USCT story.
TTG
