Saxton later served as assistant commissioner for the Freedmen's Bureau, where he pursued the policy of settling freed slaves in land confiscated from white landowners in the Sea Islands until President Andrew Johnson removed him from his position. After the Civil War, Saxton remained in the Army, serving in the Quartermaster Corps. On the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Higginson and Saxton were presented with engraved silver ceremonial swords by the freedmen. Saxton figures prominently in Higginson's book Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870). Saxton appointed author and abolitionist Thomas Higginson, colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first official Black regiment. He directed the recruitment of the first regiment of black soldiers who fought in the Union Army. Later in 1862, he was appointed quartermaster of the South Carolina Expeditionary Corps based at Hilton Head during much of the Union occupation of the Island and was in charge of supplying contraband colonies in the region, including on Edisto Island and at Port Royal Saxton was later appointed military governor of the Department of the South. During the war, he commanded the Union defenses at Harpers Ferry and was awarded the Medal of Honor for his "gallant service" there in May and June 1862. According to an account by his close friend, author Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Saxton "had been almost the only cadet in his time at West Point who was strong in anti-slavery feeling, and who thus began with resentments which lasted into actual service."Īs the Civil War broke out, Saxton served as a quartermaster and ultimately a brigadier general for the Union forces. Saxton was an abolitionist and proponent of greater rights for Blacks. He was promoted to first lieutenant in March 1855. McClellan's staff in advance of the Northern Pacific Railroad (1853), and map work for the Coastal Survey. His antebellum career included posts fighting Native American Seminoles in Florida, teaching artillery tactics at West Point, surveying the uncharted Rocky Mountains on George B. Saxton was educated at the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1849. His father attempted to secure a place for Rufus Saxton at Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, a transcendentalist community started by George Ripley and attended by Nathaniel Hawthorne. His father, Jonathan Ashley Saxton, was a Unitarian and a Transcendentalist. Saxton was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts. He was a white-American Union Army brigadier general. *On this date, in 1824, Rufus Saxton was born.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |