William Harvey Carney
“I’ve only done my duty, boys. The old flag never touched the ground.”
Hey, so we got a new national holiday here in the United States yesterday! It’s called Juneteenth, which apparently is a portmanteau of “June Nineteenth”, and if you’re thinking that’s a pretty weird name for a holiday because that naming convention works for anything from 6/13 to 6/19 you’re not wrong, but I guess you also have to remember that people came up with that shit like 150 years ago when everyone still mostly talked like classical novelists writing letters home from Dracula’s Castle, and we hadn’t yet achieved the ability to convey complex and intricate theoretical arguments using cryptic strings of unrelated letters and the liberal application of the eggplant and poop emojis, so lol omg gtfo kthxbyeeee.
Anyway, the point is we now finally get a day off work in a month that people would actually want to go spend time outside, which, holy shit, it’ll be nice to spend a day at the beach without having to constantly worry that my boss is going to figure out that it’s physiologically impossible for one person to have an emergency appendectomy six times in the same decade. And, since this day is in honor of the emancipation of the enslaved peoples of the United States, I figured, hey, let’s talk about a dude who literally got shot in the head to help make that shit happen:
Sergeant William Harvey Carney of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first Black American to earn a Medal of Honor for heroism in battle -- a feat he accomplished by defiantly charging his Regimental colors through a hail of enemy artillery and rifle fire, rallying his army in a fierce assault against an impenetrable Confederate stronghold, and then not only surviving a half-a-dozen gunshot wounds to basically every part of his body, but enduring all that damage without once allowing his flag to touch the ground.
Carney was born February 29, 1840, on a plantation near Norfolk, Virginia. He was born into slavery, secretly taught himself to read and write (this was illegal at the time), and then somehow managed to escape Virginia and make his way up to New Bedford, Massachusetts. There are conflicting sources on whether he was emancipated upon the death of the plantation owner, or if he escaped North via the Underground Railroad, but, honestly, it’s quite possible that both things are true, since I have a sneaking suspicion that a piece of paper saying “hey guys I’m free now” probably didn’t 100% guarantee safety and humane treatment in 1845. Regardless, once he was finally free, Carney spent most of his time trying to buy or smuggle the rest of his family out of the South so they could come join him.
Will Carney had considered becoming a minister, but when Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation came out in September 1862 and Union states started recruiting Black soldiers to join the fight, Carney knew that his real calling was to grab a gun and get out on the battlefield. In February of 1863, twenty-three year old William H. Carney enlisted in the Morgan Guards, the local New Bedford militia unit that would soon be folded in to become Company C of the newly-formed 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry -- the first (official) Black soldiers in U.S. history.
After a few months of training, outfitting, and travel, the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts first deployed onto the battlefields of the Civil War in July of 1863. They were sent by ship to South Carolina, where the Union hoped to capitalize on the huge victories they’d just achieved at Gettysburg and Vicksburg by attacking the Confederate stronghold of Charleston and cutting off the major port city from the war.
Charleston, however, was heavily defended, not just by land but by a series of intricate forts on the islands out in Charleston harbor that were packed with naval artillery that would prevent any Union ships from getting close enough to attempt to shell or assault the city. So, any attack on Charleston -- the birthplace of the Confederacy -- would involve first taking those forts that surrounded it. The most well-known of these is Fort Sumter, famous for being the place where the first shots of the war took place, but just a mile or so off the coast of Sumter was Fort Wagner, a major Confederate base bristling with heavy naval artillery. It was here where the 54th, and Will Carney, would make their mark on history.
On the afternoon of July 18, 1863, the men of the 54th lay prone on the beach of Morris Island, taking cover from Confederate artillery that was raining down around their position. Two days earlier, they’d lost 54 men fighting against a huge number of Rebels at the Battle of Gimball’s Landing, and in the ensuing time they’d had very little food, water, or sleep. Already exhausted, they lay behind their makeshift fortifications as the guns of Fort Wagner shelled Union positions and traded fire with American ironclad warships that pounded the fort from the sea. The mission was clear -- attack at dusk, take the fort, and hold it. The 54th would be the vanguard -- the first wave of attack, spearheading the assault on the sprawling, heavily-defended trenches, earthworks, and battlements of the daunting enemy fortress.
As dusk settled, the attack began. Charging across nearly a mile of sand, swamp, and exposed terrain, covering fire provided only by the few cannon on land and the guns of the ironclads, the men of the Fifty-Fourth rose from their positions, bayonets at the ready, and sprinted towards the objected. Clambering over front-line defenses, with rifle fire and canister shot slamming into their ranks or whizzing past their heads, the men pushed forward, firing when they could, and engaging outer defensive positions with fists, teeth, and bayonets. They climbed over makeshift earthworks and wooden battlements, plunged through waist-deep swamp, forded a moat, and stormed a defensive trench, all the while taking gunfire and artillery from every direction.
William Harvey Carney was there at the front, fighting hand-to-hand when need be, watching as the walls of Fort Wagner grew ever-so-slowly larger as he pressed the attack. But then, amid the fierce battle, as the enemy musketfire picked up, he saw something no Civil War soldier ever wanted to see -- the Color Sergeant carrying the Regimental Flag took a hit, staggered, and stumbled to his knees.
In the days before radio communications, the only guide the men of a unit had as to where their comrades were fighting was to search for their flag flying proudly amid the gunfight. The flag was the soul, the beating heart of any infantry unit. It was to be treated with honor and respect, go at the front of your troops, never touch the ground, and never be captured by the enemy.
And William Carney wasn’t about to let any of that happen.
Carney grabbed the flag from the dying man, held it aloft, and charged forward. Holding the flag was a great honor, but it also made you a pretty fucking big target, and the gunfire around him picked up pretty much immediately. With death-cries of falling men, the rumbling of artillery, the crack of musketfire, the thumping of his heart, and the hoarse screams from officers pounding his ears, Carney struggled on, refusing to slow down until he’d reached the walls of Fort Wagner.
He reached them, climbed to the parapet, fell to his knees, and jammed the Flag on the wall of the enemy fort.
The sight of the star-spangled banner waving triumphantly atop the parapet was simultaneously inspirational to the Union attackers and demoralizing to the Rebel defenders. The Union was on the walls of Fort Wagner! Both sides increased their intensity, battling fiercely, as each knew that the fate of this action would be decided in the coming minutes. Carney waved his flag, calling for the surviving men from his shattered unit to rally forward into action, all the while being shot at by snipers, riflemen, and cannons. He took one .69-caliber minie ball to the leg, yet still he waved on.
For the next thirty minutes, the fight raged around him. However, despite a heroic effort, Carney soon found himself surrounded by the dying and wounded men of his Regiment, and realized that the situation was starting to get bad. Then, from his left, he saw a unit of infantry marching up towards him. In the darkness of the night, surrounded by gunsmoke, it was hard to see if they were friend or foe…
Until they started shooting.
Carney took two bullets to the chest and one in the arm, realized that he was outflanked with nobody near him, and he knew he had to get those colors out of there before the flag of the first Black unit in the United States Military fell into the hands of enemy soldiers. The disgrace of losing that flag would be unforgivable. So, winding the flag around the staff, he began his long and painful withdrawal from the walls of Fort Wagner.
For several long minutes, Carney scrambled down the walls of the fort, waded through chest-deep water, and went back the way he’d come, with four bullets in him and enemy weapons targeting him every step of the way. A glancing blow rocked him as a bullet ricocheted off of his skull, but even that didn’t slow this guy down. He got all the way back to Union lines, half-dead, bleeding profusely, dragging himself every step of the way. When some guy from a New York regiment offered to help him with the flag, Carney gripped it even tighter, saying “No one but a member of the 54th should carry the colors.”
He didn’t give them up, even as he staggered into the hospital tent.
The instant he entered the medical tent, flag still in hand, he was greeted by the sight of dozens of wounded men from the 54th Massachusetts.
They immediately broke into cheers upon seeing their flag.
Carney weakly smiled, nodded, and said, “I’ve done my duty boys, the old flag never touched the ground.”
He passed out the instant the flag was in the hands of another member of his unit.
The Second Battle of Fort Wagner was a tactical defeat, and in terms of blood it was a difficult day for the men of the 54th. The unit lost its Regimental and Division commanders in the fighting, as well as two Company commanders and 272 of their 600 enlisted men killed, wounded, or missing in the fighting. But, despite these losses, Carney and the 54th had accomplished something huge -- they were the first all-Black unit in the history of the United States Army, they’d spearheaded a tenacious battle against a formidable foe, braved insane amounts of firepower, pushed through despite heavy losses, almost overcome impossible odds, and had proven their bravery, determination, and ultimate badassitude not only to the enemy, but to men, women, and military leaders across the world. Tales of the battle for Fort Wagner began to spread almost immediately, and, upon reading them, Black men from across the North were inspired to join the fight. By the end of the war, roughly 180,000 Black soldiers would enlist and join the struggle.
Sergeant Carney continued with the 54th, but was eventually medically discharged in June of 1864 due to the wounds he’d taken at Fort Wagner. He was still with his men during the Battle of Olustee in February 1864, when the 54th heroically led the rearguard into combat against a much-larger Confederate force, stood strong, and managed to prevent the complete destruction of Union military operations in Florida, but Carney was still recovering from his injuries when that fight went down and he wasn’t on the field for the action.
After the war Carney moved back to Massachusetts, got married, had a couple kids, then worked for the U.S. Postal Service for thirty-two years as a mail carrier. He finally received his Medal of Honor on May 23rd of 1900, nearly 40 years after the battle in which he’d earned it. And while he’s sometimes credited as the first Black soldier to receive a Medal of Honor, that’s not quite correct -- a guy named Robert Blake got his medal in 1864 for a mission where he took over a cannon aboard the Union gunboat USS Marblehead after the crew died and continued manning it despite the ship burning and leaking water all around him. However, Blake’s fight aboard Marblehead took place five months after Fort Wagner, so William Carney is the first Black soldier to earn the Medal. I’m sure this all sounds like pedantic and pointless arguing over bullshit semantics -- and it is definitely that -- but people are weird about that stuff and I don’t want anyone getting “well actually’’ed by dipshits while trying to talk about this stuff.
Anyway, Carney lived to the age of sixty-eight, passing away in a hospital in Boston in 1908 of injuries he sustained when one of those scary-ass early 20th-century elevators malfunctioned and took off part of his leg, which, what the fuck, right? There are a few statues to him in various towns, including Norfolk Virginia, which I think is awesome, and he’s got a few schools and plaques and stuff that mention his name. But, beyond all that, the most important part of Sergeant William Carney’s legacy is this:
He fought, clawed, battled, and bled for freedom.
And he earned it. Not just for himself, but for generations to follow.
Links:
Books:
Thompson, Ben. Guts & Glory: The American Civil War. Little Brown, 2014.
