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President
Clinton said, “sometimes it takes this country a while,
but we nearly always get it right.” He
directed these words to the 93-year-old daughter of Andrew
Jackson Smith of the 55th Massachusetts Colored
Volunteer Infantry, on the occasion of presenting her with
the Congressional Medal of Honor he earned 137 years before.
It was at
the Battle of Honey Hill in South Carolina.Then Corporal Smith and his regiment
were in pursuit of retreating Confederates when the Rebels
gained the high ground and turned to fire on the Union
soldiers below. Over one-third of the enlisted men
were lost, including two color bearers.When
a third color bearer was hit, Corporal Smith recovered
the flags before they fell to the ground. He
continued forward with them facing heavy fire, while maintaining
a rallying point for the Union soldiers. They
eventually overcame the fire and repulsed the Confederates. Actions such as these were especially
noteworthy, considering the risks faced by African American
soldiers.If captured by Confederates, they
were either murdered immediately or sold into slavery and
sent deep into the south.
Many medals
were awarded after Honey Hill, but Smith’s heroic
actions were overlooked. In
1916 the regiment’s surgeon nominated Smith once again. But it was a different world by then.
The Ku Klux Klan was active; the Civil War era had been
romanticized, while the war’s issues were minimized. In
1916, Woodrow Wilson, the first Southern-born president
elected since the Civil War, denied the request.
But Smith
kept a journal, which his children and grandchildren preserved. It told the story of Honey Hill,
and much more about Smith’s life as a slave and a
soldier, and what freedom meant to him. He
was born on a Kentucky plantation in 1842, and when the
war started he crossed into the Union lines. He
worked for the army as a laborer and saw action at Fort
Donelson, and was wounded at Shiloh. When he recovered, he went to Massachusetts where Governor
Andrews was forming regiments of colored soldiers, the
Massachusetts 54th and 55th . He
died in 1932 at the age of 91, his heroism still not recognized
by his country.
But his children
and grandchildren continued. They
lobbied Congress, did their research, and finally Smith’s
grandson found an advocate in a history professor at Illinois
State University. She took their case to her local Congressman. An inquiry began and a decision was
made to award a very belated Congressional Medal of Honor
to Andrew Jackson Smith for conspicuous bravery at the
Battle of Honey Hill, November 30, 1864.
At the ceremony,
President Clinton said, “we finally got it right.” He should have said, “What happened was very, very wrong. Perhaps
this will make it right.” The
Smith family will have to decide if that’s enough.
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Learning Links
Andrew
Jackson Smith
awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2001.
Visit the
Library of Congress web site to view Slave
Narratives to read about slavery from those who lived
it.
Click photo
above to see Carruth Smith receive her father's Congressional
Medal of Honor.
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