The Washington Post reports that on Saturday a new historical marker was placed at the site of the Battle of Balls Bluff alongside the Potomac River with the history of the first African American to fire a gun at the Confederate forces during the Civil War. Here is how the Washington Post reports the story:
“I can’t imagine what standing in his shoes felt like,” Pastor Michelle C. Thomas, president of the Loudoun NAACP, told a few dozen people huddled at the site of the park in near-freezing temperatures Saturday morning. “But I can tell you this: We’re all standing on his shoulders.”
Researchers have been able to uncover few other details about Bell, who likely enlisted with a regiment from south of Boston. Under a cloudless sky, Thomas and other local leaders unveiled a plaque honoring him that featured photos of other African American camp workers.
Newspaper reports indicate that Bell was born into freedom in Washington, D.C., said Paul McCray, NOVA Parks’s historian. He had been working at the Union Army camp in Poolesville, Md., which was led in part by Col. Edward Baker, a prominent U.S. senator.
Free Black men like Bell, as well as formerly enslaved men who fled to Union lines, often served as camp workers at this early stage in the Civil War, McCray said.
Someone like Bell would have helped with food service and carried gear for a specific officer, often in uniform. It would not have been unusual for him to end up on the battlefield given his job responsibilities.
Before the battle on Oct. 21, 1861, Confederate troops were assembled in Leesburg, on the Virginia side of the river. Maryland, where Bell was camping out, had stayed in the Union but nonetheless still allowed slavery.
A small Union patrol crossed the Potomac to scout the other side, mistaking a line of trees for an unguarded Confederate camp. Reinforcements were sent across to stage a demonstration, McCray said, that might try to push the Confederates out of their strategically important spot in Loudoun County.
It didn’t end up working out that way. The battle-hardened Confederates, fresh off a victory at the First Battle of Bull Run, ended up charging against the much less experienced Union troops, forcing them to scurry back down the bluffs to reach their boats and get back across to Poolesville.
“It really wasn’t an effective way to cross quickly, and later it was a terrible way to retreat quickly,” McCray said. Many soldiers, he noted, either drowned in the chaos or were shot in the river as they fled back across the Potomac.
It was then that Bell made history. Standing next to Union lieutenant J. Evarts Greene and Company F of the 15th Massachusetts Regiment Company as they defended retreating soldiers, he grabbed a gun and fired.
Bell “supplied himself with arms, and loaded and fired with great spirit,” Abijah Perkins Marvin wrote in “History of Worcester in the War of the Rebellion,” an 1880 account that included that regiment’s history.
Note: Feature photo from Washington Post.
