It was not that he did not understand the soldiers’ problems. Douglass had a special respect for the men standing before him, many scarred and mangled for life by years of slavery. He had shared their agonizing past and knew their pain. Underneath his garments, on his back, he wore a stark reminder: horrible scars caused by the flesh-slicing whip of a Maryland slave overseer.

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It was not long before the black men standing at arms before Douglass would prove themselves quite worthy of carrying the U.S. flag into battle. But they still had to face trouble at home first. In fact, before leaving the Philadelphia area on September 18, 1863, the 3rd Regiment would endure further humiliation. Because of continuing racism, the regiment was not allowed to parade in the city. The August 8, 1863, edition of the Christian Recorder, a black newspaper published in Philadelphia by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, explained the situation: “At the latter part of last week several of our daily papers published the gratifying intelligence that the Third Regiment of Philadelphia Colored troops would come into the city from Camp William Penn, to go through the evolutions of a street parade. The day came, but with it also came the postponement of the promised treat indefinitely. This has been a source of grievous disappointment to a great many, both colored and white.”

The Christian Recorder noted the 3rd Regiment’s great anger about not being able to parade shortly before it departed. “[N]ot only were the friends of the regiment disappointed, but when the intelligence reached the encampment it caused a great commotion amongst the men, amounting, as we have been told, almost to a state of mutiny, which had been the consequences of so frequently disappointing the men on this account,” the Recorder report said. “What right any man has to interfere with colored, more than with white troops, we cannot conceive. Does the government want to get them up in some dark corner, and prepare them to do just what white men are prepared to do in the dark? It should be remembered, that these men are human beings, and have their five senses, and feel just as well as the whites do. They are not ignorant of the manner in which they are treated; and of course they know what they are, and the kind of treatment they deserve. And the men who would interfere with, or molest them in any way, deserve the severest punishment. We, therefore, hope that both the Government and Philadelphia will redeem themselves from last week’s doings.” The disappointed 3rd Regiment, under Colonel Benjamin C. Tilghman, eventually marched off to war, participating in the siege of South Carolina’s Fort Wagner and in several important Florida battles.

One black soldier, upset with unfair treatment in the Philadelphia region and especially at Camp William Penn, wrote a moving letter to President Abraham Lincoln complaining about his treatment. His white officers, the soldier explained, would not let him vote and would not let him go home when he was sick. “We had boys her that died and wood gout [would have gotten] well if thy could go home,” the soldier said. “[They] can come back as well as a white man.” The camp’s white officers and recruits elsewhere were allowed to go home to recover when they were severely ill, he complained, but not the black recruits.

Another camp recruit also complained of his unsympathetic officers. “My left leg is very badley afected from an old cut and the surgent here have bin giving me…Leinament to rub it with and it is well mixt with turpentine,” he wrote. “I hav bin useing it until I have almost lost the use of my leg.I have tole him often that it was getting worse, but he will driv me off like a dog and say that he can’t do anything for me.”

Although soldiers sometimes complained about receiving harsh treatment, some members of the local community recognized that Camp William Penn symbolized an important advancement for the African-American community. For instance, Lucretia Mott wrote about the camp in a letter to her sister in 1863. “The neighboring camp seems the absorbing interest just now,” Mott wrote, although she was a staunch pacifist who claimed to support the necessity of combating pro-slavery forces via preaching and advocacy but not by resorting to physical violence. “Is not this change in feeling and conduct towards this oppressed class beyond all that we could have anticipated, and marvelous in our eyes?”

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