A leading political figure of the Reconstruction era was Robert Smalls, a Beaufort native and former slave. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands in South Carolina, and Beaufort was the site of the first Freedmen’s Bank in the state. (In 1893, he would be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions that day. Beaufort’s military governor, Major General Rufus Saxton, directed the U.S. Up next in CCWN, the je ne sais quoi JUBAL EARLY. As part of the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862, Stonewall Jackson’s forces attacked Harpers Ferry on May 30, but Union general Rufus Saxton mounted a successful defense. He continued along this line of work until the war ended, after which he gradually moved up the ranks before retiring to Massachusetts a colonel and all-around cool guy. Tasked with raising the first regiment of liberated slaves, Saxton put together the 1st South Carolina Colored Volunteers and helped organize the post-Emancipation recruitment of black soldiers. Like a number of Union officers in this area, and like Thaddeus Stevens, he believed that only an economic. Major General Rufus Saxton commanded the area that included Georgias Sea Islands and later became the Freedmens Bureaus assistant commissioner for Florida, Georgia, andSouth Carolina. Saxton would receive the Medal of Honor for his work there, specifically for “distinguished gallantry and good conduct in the defense.”īut he didn’t stop there. Rufus Saxton, Testimony Before Congress, 1866. Saxton joined up with McClellan’s staff until partaking in what would become a pivotal moment in his career: leading a defense as brigadier general at Harper’s Ferry to push back Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah campaign. It’s-Everyone-Else’s-Fault, George McClellan.Īnd then, as the future Great Emancipator said, the war came. He graduated from West Point eighteenth in this class, then spent the rest of his antebellum days fighting the Seminoles in Florida, teaching at West Point, and surveying the Rocky Mountains for the Northern Pacific Railroad with none other than Mr. The largest portion of the papers is composed of S. Beaufort, South Carolina February 2d, 1863 Hon. Willard Saxton Papers consist of correspondence, journals, mem rabila, and photographs that document the life of Samuel Willard Saxton and the career of his brother General Rufus Saxton during the Civil War. General Rufus Saxton's Report on an Early Engagement by Black Troops. ![]() A Massachusetts native, his father was a transcendentalist, feminist, and abolitionist, which helped form Rufus’ anti-slavery sentiments from a young age. The letter accompanied a report on one of the first military engagements of former slaves, under the command of Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who like Saxton, was a white, northern-born abolitionist. ![]() ![]() Saxton was, in the argot of youth, the bomb diggity.
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