In an effort to stop supplies from getting to Confederate troops on July 30, 1864, during the Battle of the Crater in Petersburg, Va., more than 6,000 Americans on both the Union and Confederate sides were injured or killed.

Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant said it was “the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war.”

Among the heavy number of losses were many U.S. Colored Troops who were trained under Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside.

From the division of two brigades, one was designated to go to the left of the crater and the other to the right; a regiment from each was to leave the attack column and extend the breach by rushing perpendicular to the crater, while the remaining regiments were to rush through, seizing the Jerusalem Plank Road just 1,600 feet beyond, followed by the churchyard and, if possible, Petersburg.

Burnside’s two other divisions, made up of white troops, would then move in, supporting Brig Gen. Edward Ferrero’s flanks and race for Petersburg. Two miles behind the front lines, out of sight of the Confederates, the men of the USCT division were trained for two weeks on the plan.

Maj. Gen. George G. Meade protested the use of U.S. Colored Troops, which Grant supported.

During the Civil War 178,895 freed and escaped slaves served in the Union army. Their history during two years of the four-year battle will be told to those who go to the 12th annual L.B. Brown Festival by Jarvis Rosier, who works at the John G. Riley House Museum of African-American Culture. This will be his second appearance at the event. His talk, scheduled at 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 11, is called “From Slavery to Freedom: African Americans and the Civil War Era.”

“They had a lot to fight for,” Rosier said. “There was talk about how white Union soldiers left their homes to fight for their families; African-Americans fought to have a home. They had a fight for freedom, not only for the country.”

The festival is scheduled Friday, Feb. 10-Sunday, Feb. 12. It will run from 9 a.m.-
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and from noon-6 p.m. Sunday. Aside from Rosier, there will be a group of black Seminole warriors, and on Friday the L.B. Brown Youth Leadership Awards will be presented. There are also a fashion show, educational displays and entertainment at the house and on the stage in front of the house.

The U.S. Colored Troops, which were forerunners to the better known Buffalo Soldiers, were created on May 22, 1863, when the Bureau of Colored Troops was established. By the time the war ended, one-tenth of the Union army were black troops.

In Florida, the U.S. Colored Troops fought in 39 battles, Rosier said.

“They were patriots,” he said. “They wanted to fight for the country and free their people.”

And, he said, they fought despite the poor treatment they knew they were going to get.

“Their wages were less and they paid for their own uniforms,” he said, but “Being free and having a chance to be free is better than not being free.”

While some people know a little about black men fighting in the Civil War, he said he runs into many who don’t know about them.

“It’s very interesting when I get that jaw-dropping experience. Some have a small grasp of what we’re talking about.

“A lot of this is not in the history books. A lot of battles say colored troops fought there and that was that. I try to dig deeper,” he said.

He said slowly people are realizing what black men did in the Civil War and know how they had to fight the enemy and those who were fighting with them.

“There were a lot of atrocities on the battlefield and of course they were treated worse, but they fought through that because they were looking at a bigger picture.”

There is also some talk of black men fighting on the Confederate side, but Rosier said in his research there is little evidence of it. He said he found that Jefferson Davis, the leader of the Confederacy, had African-American regiments at the end of the war and they were supposedly told they would get land afterward.

“Some may have done some out
of ignorance, loyalty or fear,” he said. “I researched what was going on but I don’t see that myself. If there was any it was small but not a large scale.”