Lucy Higgs Nichols, New Albany
Lucy Higgs Nichols was born in Halifax County, North Carolina on April 10, 1838. [1] Lucy, along with her family, was held in chattel slavery by farmer Reubin Higgs. During this time, the Higgs family moved to Mississippi, then to Tennessee, taking Lucy and other enslaved people with them. In 1862, Lucy learned that she was to be moved south again, even further from freedom. Instead, she escaped with her young daughter, Mona, to the camp of the Indiana 23rd Volunteer Regiment. According to some sources, Lucy was accompanied by her husband as well, who was said to have died later after enlisting in the Union Army. [2] Lucy managed to travel “some twenty or thirty miles” to the camp of the 23rd Regiment in Bolivar, Tennessee. [3] <br /><br />After making it to the camp of the Indiana 23rd Volunteer Regiment, Lucy was pursued by her former master. However, under the Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862, she was able to beg protection from the regiment, who ensured that she would not be sent back to slavery. [4] These acts declared that any property, including enslaved people, which was being used to aid the Confederate rebellion was to be seized by the federal government. [5] The Confiscation Act of 1862 went even further in describing the new protected status of enslaved people, declaring that: "All slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid of comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them and coming under the control of the government of the United States; and all slaves of such person found on or being within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves." [6] <br /><br />Although these acts were intended to deprive the Confederacy of labor, it was also a step towards emancipation, which thoroughly benefitted Lucy and her family and allowed her to escape slavery with the help of the 23rd Regiment. To show her gratitude to the Indiana 23rd Volunteer Regiment, Lucy, 30 years old at the time, “remained with the Twenty-third as hospital nurse, cook, laundress and sewing woman.” [7] She followed the regiment throughout the rest of the war, caring for soldiers on the front lines and on many long, arduous marches. [8] Lucy was present at such critical battles as the Siege of Vicksburg and the Siege of Atlanta, then followed the 23rd Regiment through General William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea. [9] Lucy even remained with the regiment after her daughter Mona, no older than five, died just after the surrender of Vicksburg. Mona was apparently well-loved by the soldiers, and was given an “elaborate funeral” by the 23rd Regiment, as they covered her body with flowers and laid her to rest “in a long trench on the hillside above the city, where many a silent figure in blue was stretched out” in their own final resting places. [10] Lucy was heartbroken and “left absolutely alone, but she still clung to the regiment.” [11] <br /><br />After the war, Lucy followed the 23rd Regiment to Washington, D.C., where she proudly marched with them as part of the “grand review of the Federal armies.” [12] When the regiment was mustered out of service, the men invited her to return with them to New Albany, Indiana, where many of them were from. [13] There, she was “employed as a servant in the families of several of the officers” of the 23rd Regiment. [14] In 1870, she married laborer John Nichols, and they lived together on Nagel Street in New Albany until his death in 1910. [15] After her husband’s death, Lucy remained in the city “as a boarder and a laundress.” [16] <br /><br />While living in New Albany, Lucy maintained contact with her fellow members of the 23rd Regiment. She attended every regimental reunion and marched in each Memorial Day parade. [17] Lucy provided care for ill former troops, nursing them “as she did in war times,” while they cared for her in times of sickness and need as well, affectionately calling her “Aunt Lucy.” [18] Lucy became a member of the New Albany chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization of veterans of the Union forces. [19] Despite the remarkable recognition for her service by her immediate compatriots, Lucy was not recognized for her work as a Union Army nurse by the federal government. In 1892, Congress passed an act granting pensions to “all women employed by the Surgeon General of the Army as nurses, under contract or otherwise, during the late war of the rebellion” who were in need of financial assistance. [20] Lucy applied for pension, citing medical issues which impacted her ability to work, but was rejected twice. [21] Finally, in December 1898, a special act of Congress was passed and Lucy was approved for a $12 per month pension for the rest of her life. [22] After the death of her husband John, Lucy was admitted to the Floyd County Poor Farm on January 5, 1915. [23] She died there just weeks later, on January 29, 1915, and was buried with military honors in an unmarked grave in West Haven Cemetery in New Albany. [24] The exact location of her grave is unknown because there was no written documentation and no tombstone. On July 3, 2019, a statue of Lucy Higgs Nichols and her daughter Mona was erected in New Albany, Indiana. [25] It joined a 2011 state historical marker outside the Second Baptist Church, where Lucy was a member of the congregation. [26] These monuments stand as a testament to her valor, from escaping slavery, to serving as a nurse on the front lines of the Civil War, to fighting for her right for compensation. <br /><br />Unfortunately, Lucy Higgs Nichols was not the last black American veteran to be barred from receiving the benefits earned through their service. In 1944, Congress passed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, popularly known as the G.I. Bill of Rights. [27] This landmark legislation provided American veterans with four major entitlements: special job placement services, unemployment compensation, home and business loans, and educational subsidies. [28] While there was no language in the bill that definitively excluded black veterans on the basis of race, the G.I. Bill was unequally implemented to the benefit of white veterans. Black World War II veterans, especially those living in the south, experienced difficulties when they attempted to access the benefits due to them through the G.I. Bill, “because of a combination of racial discrimination and the poor administration of the bill’s benefits.” [29] Like Lucy Higgs Nichols, many black veterans fought for their benefits after World War II, but many found that access blocked by racist white administrators, and unlike Nichols, were unable to appeal their mistreatment. [30]<br /><br />An Indiana Historical Bureau historical marker, installed in 2011, in New Albany, Floyd County, commemorates Lucy Higgs Nichols' life.
[1] Pamela R. Peters, Curtis H. Peters, and Victor C. Megenity, “Lucy Higgs Nichols: From Slave to Civil War Nurse of the Twenty-Third Indiana Regiment,” Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History 22, no. 1 (2010): 36. <br />[2] “A Female Civil War Veteran,” The New York Times (New York, NY), Dec. 27, 1898. <br />[3] “Why Aunt Lucy got a Pension,” The Denver Sunday Post (Denver, CO), Dec. 18, 1898. <br />[4] Peters, Peters, and Megenity, “Lucy Higgs Nichols,” 38. <br />[5] Matthew Pinsker, “Congressional Confiscation Acts,” Dickinson College Emancipation Digital Classroom, July 14, 2012, http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/emancipation/2012/07/14/congressional-confiscation-acts/. <br />[6] Steven F. Miller, “The Second Confiscation Act,” University of Maryland Freedmen & Southern Society Project, last updated August 26, 2019. http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/conact2.htm. <br />[7] “Why Aunt Lucy got a Pension,” The Denver Sunday Post (Denver, CO), Dec. 18, 1898. <br />[8] Ibid. <br />[9] Peters, Peters, and Megenity, “Lucy Higgs Nichols,” 38-39. <br />[10] “Why Aunt Lucy got a Pension,” The Denver Sunday Post (Denver, CO), Dec. 18, 1898. <br />[11] Ibid. <br />[12] “Negress Who Nursed Soldiers is a Member of the G.A.R.,” The Freeman, (Indianapolis, IN), Sep. 3, 1904. <br />[13] Peters, Peters, and Megenity, “Lucy Higgs Nichols,” 39. <br />[14] “Why Aunt Lucy got a Pension,” The Denver Sunday Post (Denver, CO), Dec. 18, 1898. <br />[15] “Lucy Higgs Nichols,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed October 18, 2019, https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4121.htm. <br />[16] Ibid. <br />[17] “Negress Who Nursed Soldiers is a Member of the G.A.R.,” The Freeman, (Indianapolis, IN), Sep. 3, 1904. <br />[18] Ibid. <br />[19] Peters, Peters, and Megenity, “Lucy Higgs Nichols,” 35. <br />[20] Fifty-Second Congress. Sess. I. Chs. 375,376,379. (1892). Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/52nd-congress/session-1/c52s1ch379.pdf. <br />[21] “Lucy Higgs Nichols,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed October 18, 2019, https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4121.htm. <br />[22] Peters, Peters, and Megenity, “Lucy Higgs Nichols,” 39. <br />[23] Ibid. <br />[24] Ibid.; Amanda Beam, “New Albany Bicentennial: Floyd County Poor House,” News and Tribune (Jeffersonville, IN), Jul. 3, 2013. <br />[25] John Boyle, “Celebrating an Icon: Statue of New Albany’s Lucy Higgs Nichols Unveiled,” News and Tribune (Jeffersonville, IN), Jul. 3, 2019. <br />[26] “Lucy Higgs Nichols,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed October 18, 2019, https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4121.htm.; John Boyle, “Celebrating an Icon: Statue of New Albany’s Lucy Higgs Nichols Unveiled,” News and Tribune (Jeffersonville, IN), Jul. 3, 2019. <br />[27] David H. Onkst, “’First a Negro…Incidentally a Veteran’: Black World War Two Veterans and the G.I. Bill of Rights in the Deep South, 1944-1948,” Journal of Social History 31, no. 3 (1998): 524. <br />[28] Ibid., 518. <br />[29] Ibid. <br />[30] Ibid., 519.
Student Authors: Allison Hunt and Jordan Girard <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Lucy Higgs Nichols, attributed to 1898 photo, Public Domain, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lucy_Higgs_Nichols_head_shot.JPG
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4121.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
Indiana's 28th Colored Infantry Regiment, Camp Fremont
On November 30, 1863, the U.S. Department of War authorized Oliver P. Morton, Governor of Indiana and ally of Abraham Lincoln, to raise “one Regiment of infantry to be composed with colored men.” [1] This order was not unusual; since the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect on January 1, 1863, several black regiments, such as the 54th Massachusetts, had already been created. Prominent Indianapolis abolitionist Calvin Fletcher, Reverend Willis R. Revels of Indianapolis Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and Garland White, another AME minister, were the recruiting officers for this newly ordered black regiment. [2] The recruits were trained at Camp Fremont, located near the south side of Fountain Square in Indianapolis. They were provided with clothing, instructed on the use of their weapons, and trained in military tactics by Captain Charles S. Russell. Upon completion of training, Russell was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on May 1, 1864, and the 28th U.S. Colored Troops Infantry Regiment was organized under his command. [3] The regiment left Indianapolis on April 24, 1864, heading to their first assignment at the defenses of Washington, D.C. [4] From there, they were posted at Camp Casey in Alexandria, Virginia to await their first battlefield assignment. [5] On June 21, 1864, the 28th Regiment saw their first combat near White House, Virginia. [6] Soon after, they faced their first major casualties accompanying General Philip H. Sheridan and his cavalry across several skirmishes throughout the Chickahominy swamps of Virginia. [7] The 28th Regiment emerged from the swamps of the Chickahominy River to join the Ninth Corps of the Army of the Potomac under General Ambrose E. Burnside. [8] Burnside’s troops were engaged in siege operations around Petersburg, Virginia, fighting to cut off the city’s important railroad supply line to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. In an effort to decisively end the siege, generals approved a plan devised by the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment. [9] This plan required the regiment, which largely consisted of Pennsylvanian coal miners, “to dig a 500 foot drift mine from the Union side of the line” underneath the Confederate position, “load the head of the mine with gunpowder, and blow it up,” whereupon “Union troops would charge the Confederate lines […] through the resulting crater.” [10] However, “the wide and deep crater” which resulted from the explosion the morning of July 30, 1864, “impeded advance as effectively as had the cannon of the Confederate battery.” [11] The Confederates regained their position in a decisive victory which resulted in heavy Union losses. Members of the U.S. Colored Troops were targeted specifically in “tragic executions of blacks who sought to surrender.” [12] The 28th Regiment faced heavy casualties in what came to be known as the Battle of the Crater, with 11 killed, 64 wounded, and 13 missing. [13] Less than a year after the 28th Regiment left Indianapolis, they marched into a defeated Richmond, Virginia. [14] The regiment was one of the first of the Union forces to make “triumphant entry into the fallen capital.” [15] The capture of Richmond on April 4, 1865 was swiftly followed by the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, “marking the end of the war.” [16] Though the war was over, however, the work of the 28th Regiment was not. First, they were assigned to guard the prisoners of war held at City Point, Virginia, a position which particularly made the captured Confederates’ “Southern blood boil.” [17] From there, the 28th Regiment journeyed to Corpus Christi, Texas, as one of “nearly forty colored regiments transported immediately after the war to the Rio Grande border and posts along the Gulf of Mexico to occupy former Confederate strong points and restore civil government.” [18] Finally, the 28th Regiment was mustered out of service and returned home to Indianapolis on January 8, 1866, where the “surviving 33 officers and 250 men” received a reception in their honor. [19] Life as a soldier during the Civil War was not easy. In addition to the stress and danger of battle, soldiers on both sides dealt with cramped conditions, inadequate food, and disease. For black soldiers, however, conditions were even more difficult. They encountered racism not just from the enemy, but from within their own ranks as well. Most officers of black units were white; the 28th Regiment was unusual in that they had a black Chaplain, AME minister Garland H. White. [20] Black Union soldiers also had three dollars’ lower pay per month than their white comrades, with fewer clothing rations as well. [21] Black units were often given the least desirable assignments; the nearly 40 black regiments that traveled with the 28th Regiment to Corpus Christi had “widespread opposition […] to being packed off to Texas at the very time they felt they had done their part to win the war and deserved to rejoin their families in freedom.” [22] The horrendous conditions in Corpus Christi only fueled this opposition; hundreds of the U.S. Colored Troops posted there died of disease within the first months after their arrival. [23] Nevertheless, the 28th Regiment, along with the nearly 180,000 black soldiers to serve in the Union Army during the Civil War, did their duty and their service was essential in preserving the Union. A historical marker commemorating the regiment’s valor was erected on the corner of Virginia Avenue and McCarty Street in Indianapolis in 2004. [24] The 28th Regiment served in a segregated Armed Forces. Black Union soldiers during the Civil War were relegated to their own units, most often commanded by white officers. This arrangement continued well into the twentieth century, with black Americans fighting in both World War I and II facing just as much discrimination on the front lines as they did at home. They were expected to fight “for the freedom of oppressed peoples abroad while simultaneously being subjected to oppression themselves.” [25] Only in 1948, with the issuance of Executive Order 9981 by President Truman, was the United States military finally integrated. This document declared that “there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.” [26] More than 80 years after the 28th Regiment was mustered out of service, black American soldiers had the same rights as their white counterparts. In 2004, the Indiana Historical Bureau, Indiana War Memorials Commission, Andrew & Esther Bowman, and African American Landmarks Committee of Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, Inc. erected a historical marker at the site of Camp Fremont, to commemorate the training location of the 28th Regiment.
<p>[1] War Department Letter to Governor Morton, November 30, 1863. <br />[2] George P. Clark and Shirley E. Clark, “Heroes Carved in Ebony: Indiana’s Black Civil War Regiment, the 28th USCT,” Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History 7, no. 3 (1995): 6. <br />[3] John H. Eicher and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, p. 466<br />[4] Clark and Clark, “Heroes Carved in Ebony,” 9.[5]Ibid. <br />[6] Indiana Historical Bureau, “Indiana’s 28th Regiment: Black Soldiers for the Union,” The <br />Indiana Historian (1994): 7. <br />[7] “28th Regiment, United States Colored Troops,” Indiana War Memorials, accessed April 19, 2019, https://www.in.gov/iwm/2397.htm. <br />[8] Clark and Clark, “Heroes Carved in Ebony,” 9.<br />[9] Colin Hennessy and Brock E. Barry, “The Civil War Battle of the Crater: An Engineering Inspiration,” Civil Engineering 83, no. 9 (2013): 63. <br />[10] Ibid. <br />[11] Clark and Clark, “Heroes Carved in Ebony,” 10.<br />[12] Ibid. <br />[13] William F. Fox, Regimental Losses in the American Civil War 1861–1865, (Albany, NY: Albany Publishing Co., 1889), Chapter VI. <br />[14] Clark and Clark, “Heroes Carved in Ebony,” 5. [15] Ibid., 12. <br />[16] Indiana Historical Bureau, “Indiana’s 28th Regiment: Black Soldiers for the Union,” The Indiana Historian (1994): 13. <br />[17] Clark and Clark, “Heroes Carved in Ebony,” 12. [18] Ibid. <br />[19] Ibid., 14. <br />[20] Ibid., 7. <br />[21] Ibid. <br />[22] Ibid., 12. <br />[23] Ibid., 14. <br />[24] “28th Regiment USCT,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed September 26, 2019, https://www.in.gov/history/markers/3.htm. <br />[25] John L. Newby, “The Fight for the Right to Fight and the Forgotten Negro Protest Movement: The History of Executive Order 9981 and its Effect Upon Brown v. Board of Education and Beyond,” Texas Journal on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights 10, no. 1 (2004): 84. <br />[26] Harry S. Truman, “Executive Order 9981, Establishing the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services,” July 27, 1948, National Archives Foundation, accessed November 19, 2019, https://www.archivesfoundation.org/documents/executive-order-9981-ending-segregation-armed-forces/. </p>
Student Authors: Allison Hunt and Emma Guichon <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
28th-Regiment-US-Colored-Troops, attributed to Dictioneer at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:28th-Regiment-US-Colored-Troops.png
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/3.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>