![]() ![]() A group of 18 or more, mostly Shirley Plantation slaves, boarded gunboats on the night of Jand enlisted on board ship. The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System (CWSS) is a database containing information about the men who served in the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War. Slaves also enlisted in the Union Navy by making their way out to Union vessels when they ventured up the James River. A majority of those who enlisted had been enslaved, but this roll includes at least a dozen who were free persons of color. ![]() Those men found themselves engaged almost immediately in the Action at Wilson’s Wharf on the 24 th of May facing Confederate cavalry that poignantly included cavalrymen from Charles City County on the opposite side of the fortifications. Other men were recruited here in the county when Union forces landed in May 1864 and embarked on building Fort Pocahontas. Colored Troop units organized in Hampton and Norfolk. Hundreds of Charles City slaves had left the county with Gen, McClellan’s Army when it retreated from Harrison’s landing in August 1862, and many of those men enlisted in the U.S. Siah Hulet Carter, a Shirley Plantation slave, is pictured here on the deck of the USS MonitorĮnlistment of African Americans into the Union Army began in earnest in January 1863.
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