After the War: What Became of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers

Veterans of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, 1912. Penn Center Collections

The 1st South Carolina Volunteers — later the 33rd USCT — mustered out on February 6, 1866. Most of the men went home free.

New lives

Most went back to farming the rich soil of the South Carolina Sea Islands — now as citizens and voters during Reconstruction.

The fight for pensions

Like many veterans, they and their families applied for government pensions based on their service, and the struggle for recognition went on for generations:

• By the 1880s and 1890s, white supremacists controlled most of South Carolina's government, which made it hard for the veterans and their families to file affidavits.
• Their officers had long since gone back north and were hard to find to confirm details.
• Marriages and family ties formed during enslavement were difficult to prove.

Those efforts left a long paper trail. Today descendants and researchers use the regiment's pension files to document the history of the Lowcountry during Reconstruction — and their story is central to Reconstruction Era National Historical Park.

The first of many

A small company from Hunter's Regiment were the first Black soldiers to serve — but far from the last. The 1st South Carolina opened the way for the 1st Louisiana Guards, the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, and eventually 180,000 Black men in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Black people have served continuously in the Army for more than 160 years, following in their footsteps.

At the mustering out in February 1866, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Trowbridge reminded the men where it had begun: with a small band of hopeful, trusting, brave men gathered at Camp Saxton on Port Royal Island in the fall of 1862, amid terrible prejudice. From them, he said, had grown an army of 140,000 Black soldiers, whose courage history would remember.

Preserved

In 2017 the regiment's story became part of a new national park site, Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, which takes in part of the grounds of Camp Saxton. Their camp and their story are key to understanding Reconstruction in the Lowcountry and beyond.

Sources

Based on "The Legacy of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers," National Park Service, Reconstruction Era National Historical Park; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Trowbridge's figure of 140,000 is his own, from 1866; the article gives 180,000 Black men in the Army during the war. The article spells the county "Duvall"; it is Duval County.