Camp William Penn: Training Ground for Freedom » HistoryNet - From the World's Largest History Magazine Publisher

Major Louis Wagner of the 88th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment knew that his situation was desperate when a Confederate bullet shattered his right shin at the Second Battle of Bull Run on the afternoon of August 30, 1862. The fight had been raging ferociously since noon, with Southern fire slamming relentlessly into Union soldiers commanded by Major General John Pope. That night the defeated Northern army retreated toward the safety of Washington, leaving behind some 16,000 casualties.

One of those casualties, 24-year-old Louis Wagner, would be taken prisoner by the victorious Rebels and later paroled to his Philadelphia home. The German-born Wagner, despite his youth, had been a shining star ever since he enlisted at the outbreak of the war, rising steadily in rank and prestige. By the time he was wounded at Second Bull Run, he had already fought valiantly at Cedar Mountain, Rappahannock Station, Thoroughfare Gap and Groveton.

Before his wound had sufficiently healed, Wagner returned to the front in preparation for the Battle of Chancellorsville. His hasty return aggravated his wound, and Wagner returned home to Philadelphia, unfit for further field duty. The determined young officer did not return to his civilian occupation of lithographic printer. Instead, in early 1863 he volunteered to take command of Camp William Penn, the first and largest Federal training facility for African-American soldiers.

When President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves held in Confederate states took effect on January 1, 1863, thousands of free blacks and ex-slaves rushed to enlist in the Union Army. Many poured through the gates of Camp William Penn, about 10 miles north of downtown Philadelphia in the rolling, green Pennsylvania countryside. First Lieutenant Oliver Willcox Norton of the camp’s 8th United States Colored Troop (USCT) Regiment, formerly a private in the 83rd Pennsylvania, later described the enthusiasm of the black recruits. ‘Our camp thronged with visitors…who wanted to enlist,’ he wrote. ‘There are hundreds of them, mostly slaves, here by now, anxiously waiting for the recruiting officer. The boys are singing: ‘Rally round the flag, boys, rally once again, shouting the battle cry of freedom; down with the traitor, up with the star.”

Despite the lingering pain of his injury, Wagner took command and personally helped drill the camp’s first new recruits. Although unable at times to walk, the newly minted lieutenant colonel had himself lifted into the saddle on his horse as he readied the 3rd USCT for what he knew would be a soul-testing career in the Union Army. Not only would the new troops have to face battle-hardened Confederate veterans, but they would also encounter the resistance of racially motivated opponents at home.

Although Philadelphia was a stronghold for abolitionist activities, many eastern Pennsylvanians harbored deep-seated racism. More than two decades earlier, in 1842, the great African-American orator Frederick Douglass had been pulled from his train seat by an irate white passenger after giving a speech in nearby Norristown. Trains and streetcars were segregated then, and blacks were not allowed to sit inside the vehicles. Instead, they had to stand outside between the cars. After reaching the state capital at Harrisburg, Douglass was attacked by a white mob and barely escaped with his life.

Camp William Penn had been formally mandated by the federal government after state and local authorities had refused to start their own camp for black troops. An estimated 1,500 African-American volunteers from the Philadelphia area had traveled north to enlist in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the first famous black regiment, because of racist opposition in the so-called City of Brotherly Love. Sometimes black soldiers from Camp Penn were beaten unmercifully by white mobs if they were caught in the wrong part of town.

At the same time, racist Copperheads nearly burned down Philadelphia’s Union League, a Republican institution with many anti-slavery members. Copperheads were Southern sympathizers who did not appreciate the league’s role in raising funds to organize and train black troops in the city. One prominent Union League member was Chelten Hills resident Jay Cooke, a multimillionaire who sold so many bonds to finance the Union war machine that he became known as ‘the financier of the Civil War.’ Another member was Edward M. Davis, son-in-law of the famed Quaker abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Lucretia Mott, whose family leased the land to the federal government to erect Camp William Penn. The petite Mott often spoke to the troops at the camp while standing on a drumhead, and she baked cakes and pies for the men.

When Frederick Douglass entered the grounds of Camp William Penn on the afternoon of Saturday, July 18, 1863, he was greeted by a disturbing sight. As the legendary black leader prepared to speak, he saw a number of black recruits standing atop barrels with rails over their shoulders as punishment for various military infractions. Douglass was clearly angry when he began to address the troops of the 3rd Regiment because he had learned that some of the men–many bearing the scars of slavery–were giving their white officers plenty of trouble. One disgusted officer condemned the ability of the black recruits to become good soldiers.

‘The fortunes of the whole race for generations to come are bound up in the success or failure of the 3rd Regiment of colored troops from the North,’ Douglass told the troops. ‘You are a spectacle for men and angels. You are in a manner to answer the question, can the black man be a soldier?’ His confident voice rising, Douglass continued, ‘That we can now make soldiers of these men, there can be no doubt!’

The imposing Douglass–standing more than six feet tall and weighing about 200 pounds–knew all too well how much the destiny of blacks in America rested on the shoulders of newly enlisted black soldiers. That very evening, one of Douglass’ own sons was putting his military training to good use by taking part in the bloody assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina as a member of the 54th Massachusetts. The 54th would be repelled and suffer terrible casualties, but the regiment proved conclusively that blacks were brave warriors.

Douglass knew that skeptical local antagonists would still closely scrutinize events at Camp William Penn. For that reason, the rebellious attitude of some of the black soldiers in camp worried him greatly. Although he realized that some of their defiant actions were at least partially justified due to abuse by whites at the camp, he also knew that there was much at stake for the soldiers and the local abolitionists who had stuck their necks out for them. Douglass would temporarily stop recruiting due to the abuses and meet with President Lincoln about the problem, but he wanted the new black soldiers to look at the larger picture while fighting in a constructive way for their human rights. Right in the Chelten Hills community where they were pre-paring for war, abolitionists such as Mott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, William Lloyd Garrison and others were helping to lay the groundwork that would lead to the expanded emancipation of black Americans.