The Legacy of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers

Veterans of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers in 1912.

Penn Center Collections

The 33^rd USCT, originally know as the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, mustered out on February 6, 1866, and most of the men returned home – as free men. Some, like Jerry Savage, became business owners. Henry Hayne, Prince Rivers, and Louden Langley were among those who entered state and local politics. Others got involved in real estate ventures. Not all remained around Beaufort County. Albert Sammis, who had been one of the men from the Jacksonville, Florida area to join the regiment, because a community leader in Reconstruction era Duvall County. Susie King Taylor opened a school in Savannah before moving to Boston, Massachusetts. She published a memoir of her experiences, as did Thomas Higginson.

Most, however, returned to a simple life of farming in the fertile soil of the South Carolina Sea Islands as citizens and voters during Reconstruction. Like many veterans, they and their families applied for pensions from the government based on their military service. The struggle to gain recognition for their service lasted generations. By the 1880s and 1890s, white supremacists controlled most of the mechanisms of government in South Carolina, making it difficult for 1^st South Carolina Veterans and their families to file affidavits. Their officers had long since returned north and were difficult to track down to verify information. Proving marriages and family ties that had begun during enslavement proved difficult. But their efforts created an archival paper trail that allow descendants and researchers to use to pension files of the 1^st South Carolina Volunteers to document the history of the Lowcountry during Reconstruction, and their story is a crucial part of Reconstruction Era National Historical Park.

A small company of men from Hunter's Regiment were the first Black soldiers to serve, but they weren’t the last. The 1^st South Carolina paved the way for others, like the 1^st Louisiana Guards and 1^st Kansas Colored Infantry, the 54^th Massachusetts Infantry, and eventually 180,000 Black men in the US Army during Civil War. Black people have continuously served in the United States Army for over 160 years in the footsteps of the 1^st South Carolina Volunteers.

In 2017 their story was preserved as part of a new national park site, Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, which includes part of the grounds of Camp Saxton. Their encampment and their story are crucial to understanding the story of Reconstruction in the Lowcountry and beyond.

"And from that little band of hopeful, trusting, and brave men who gathered at Camp Saxton, on Port Royal Island, in the fall of '62, amidst the terrible prejudices that surrounded us, has grown an army of a hundred and forty thousand Black soldiers, whose valor and heroism for your race a name which will live as long as the undying pages of history shall endure."

- Lt. Colonel Charles Trowbridge at the mustering out of the 33^rd USCT, February, 1866