Charles Young and the Ninth Ohio Battalion in the Spanish-American War, 1898

The Ninth Ohio Battalion in skirmish drill at Camp Alger, Virginia, about 1898. Library of Congress.

War with Spain

On February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine blew up and sank in Havana Harbor, Cuba, killing more than 250 Americans. Many in government and the press blamed Spain, then fighting to hold its empire. The United States declared war on April 25, 1898, and Americans rallied to free Cuba under the slogan "Remember the Maine!"

A new command

That spring Lieutenant Charles Young was finishing a four-year detached assignment at Wilberforce University in Ohio, where he had created the military science and tactics program and built it to just over 100 cadets. On April 9 he asked the War Department to return him to the Ninth Cavalry. Like many such requests, it was denied.

Instead, Ohio Governor Asa S. Bushnell appointed him major of the Ninth Ohio Battalion.

• Formed on July 18, 1881, the battalion was the only African American unit in the Ohio National Guard, and proud that all its officers were African American.
• It began with Company A (Springfield) and Company B (Columbus), adding Company C (Xenia) in 1887 — and, on July 8, 1898, Company D from the Cleveland area.

Into federal service

Camp Alger was a staging area for overseas deployment, and the men expected to sail soon. But in late June the battalion was made headquarters guard for Major General William M. Graham. As other units left for Cuba, Graham asked to keep Young's well-trained, disciplined men, and the War Department agreed. The Ninth Ohio never saw combat.

At Camp Alger the battalion met notable visitors: Judson W. Lyons, an African American lawyer and politician who became register of the treasury under President McKinley; Major Charles Douglass, son of Frederick Douglass; and the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, Young's friend since a visit to Wilberforce, who read from his work. The soldiers staged Shakespeare's Macbeth for a delegation of Ohio congressmen.

"Dynamite"

In August, with Camp Alger closing, the battalion helped set up Camp Meade near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on August 16 — named for General George Gordon Meade, the Pennsylvanian who commanded the Union army at Gettysburg. Corporal James M. Pierce of Company A wrote to The Cleveland Gazette:

Upon our arrival here we found our reputation had proceeded us. People from Harrisburg and neighboring places streamed along the road last Sunday inquiring all the way: 'Where is the Ninth Battalion?'

The excitement faded as word came that the fighting in Cuba and Puerto Rico was ending, and some men longed for home. But drill went on. On September 20, The Cleveland Press called the battalion "probably the best drilled and disciplined body of men at Camp Meade," adding: "Major Young is very strict, but takes good care of his men, and is popular with them." His men nicknamed him "Dynamite." In October Governor Bushnell inspected the battalion and found its camp in excellent order.

South Carolina

In November the battalion was ordered to Camp Marion in Summerville, South Carolina, arriving by train on November 21. Young at once issued Special Order Number 3, warning that "considerable uneasiness among the people of this section" had been caused by soldiers, "especially northern soldiers," and ordering every man to dispel it "by treating all whom they meet with respect and courtesy." Local people had no complaint against the battalion.

The Ninth Ohio was mustered out at Camp Marion on January 29, 1899, after nearly 10 months of active duty. As assistant commissary of musters, Young signed the men's discharges; they received 30 days' pay and went home by train.

Afterward

Young stayed in the Regular Army, finishing mustering-out duties in South Carolina and in Macon, Georgia, then returned to Wilberforce in early March 1899. Later that year he rejoined the Ninth Cavalry at Fort Duchesne, Utah.

For more, see Brian G. Shellum's Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment: The Military Career of Charles Young, and the monument's page on Buffalo Soldiers in the Spanish-American War.

Sources

Based on "Charles Young and the 9th Ohio Battalion during the Spanish-American War," Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The 1898 newspaper passages are quoted as published. The original names the general as "W. William Graham"; he was William M. Graham.