The 5th United States Colored Infantry Regiment: African-American Soldiers in the Civil War

By Matt Doran

In 1863, Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew, with authorization from President Abraham Lincoln, organized the 54th and 55th Volunteer Infantry, the first African-American regiments in the American Civil War. Frederick Douglass, a leading African-American abolitionist, immediately became an active recruiter for the Union Army.  Douglass published this notice in his newspaper, published in Rochester, New York: 

Men of Color, To Arms
When the first rebel cannon shattered the walls of Sumter and drove away its starving garrison, I predicted that the war then and there inaugurated would not be fought entirely by white men. Every month’s experience during these dreary years has confirmed that opinion. A war undertaken and brazenly carried on for the perpetual enslavement of colored men, calls logically and loudly for colored men to help suppress it. … There is no time to delay. The tide is at its flood that leads on to fortune. From East to West, from North to South, the sky is written all over, ‘Now or Never.’ Liberty won by the white men would lose half its luster. 'Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.’ 'Better to die free, than to live slaves.’ This is the sentiment of every brave colored man amongst us. …

The 5th United States Colored Infantry Regiment

Douglass’s two sons, Charles and Lewis were the first two in the State of New York to enlist in the 54th Massachusetts regiment.  Many African-Americans from Ohio were also recruited to the 54th, until the formation of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the summer of 1863.

Later renamed the 5th United States Colored Infantry Regiment, Ohio’s African-American regiment was organized at Camp Delaware on the east side of the Olentangy River from August to November of 1863. Captain Lewis McCoy, at the direction of Ohio Governor David Tod, organized the regiment. 

The 5th Regiment moved to Norfolk, Virginia in November of 1863. The regiment saw action in Virginia as part of the Richmond–Petersburg Campaign and in North Carolina, where it participated in the attacks on Fort Fisher and Wilmington and the Carolinas Campaign.
​
By the time the regiment was mustered out in 1865, they had lost six officers and 243 enlisted men. Sergeants Beatty, Holland, Pimm, and Brunson were awarded medals for gallantry in action by Congress and by General Benjamin F. Butler.