The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-02-08
WHEN CARNEY
 HELD THE FLAG
SERGEANT LATELY KILLED THE
 HERO OF WAGNER

SERGEANT LATELY KILLED THE
 HERO OF. WAGNER
 It Was the Bravery of This New l Bedford Seaman and His Comrades of the 54th Massachusetts That 1 Made Use of COlored Soldiers in
 Civil War Success.
 With the death of Sergeant William
 H. Carney at Boston the other day
 the name of one more hero was added
 to the list of those absent at roll
 call' at the reunions of one of the
 bravest Northern regiments which
 participated in the civil war-the Eff
 ty-fourth Massachusetts, the first or
 ganization of colored men sent to the i front
 Carney, the color-bearer, who had lived through the slaughter of the
 bloooy parapets of Fort Wagner,
 where, although twice wounded, he
 never let the old flag touch the I ground" died forty-five years later l from injuries received in an elevator 1 accident in the Massachusetts State house, where he was employed as a messenger, not many steps away from
 that splendid Shaw memorial on the Common, the bronze relief showing the
 F1fty-fourth on the march in command 1 of its brave and young colonel, Rob- ert Gould Shaw, who was killed when his color sergeant. Carney, was wound 1 ed, ana buried with his black soldiers | in the trenches. There was no question about the right of Carney to a place on the hero roll of the war His rating there did
 not depend merely on tradition of his
 regiment. It was not the result of exaggerated reunion stories of veterans fighting battles over. again forty years afterWard. CarneyS heroiSm never ceased to be a cause of pride and re- joicing, an excuse for "reminiscences
 among his comrades, but, more than that, 1t was, and is, matter of offic- l ial record in the governments annals of the war. He was one of four en- listed men specially commended for their bravery in tn official report of the assault on Wagner. And the DOT trait of the color-sergeant, with the flag which he carried through the fight, is the frontispiece of the official history of his regiment.
 GOV. ANDREWS EXPERIMENT..
 Carney was twenty-two years old when he enlisted. on February IT, 1863 in Company c of the first colored reg in'ent which John A. Andrew, the war Governor of Massachusetts, with the approval of the War Department, had determined to send out as an experf- ment, in spite of the fears and jeers in the North, and threats in the South Carney came from New Bedford, and, according to the roster, was a seaman. TO say that a man was a seaman of New Bedford in those days meant that he was whaleman. There could be no more effective training school for a hero than a whaling vessel.
 If was fhn Sf11ff that Cxarpay and biS comrades were made of that made Gov. Andrews experiment, after Wag- ner, turn the jeers of the scoffers into cheers, and even call forth from South ern officers the admission that black men could fight.
 The honor of leading the attack on Fort Wagner was given to the Fifty fourth. The regiment also did splen- did work at Charleston. James Island, Olustee, and Honey Hill. But more of that later. Just to show how muoh more than the outcome of any single engagement depended on the behavior of those colored soldiers it is worth while to repeat extracts from the con- ment written by Horace Greeley, when the regiment returned to Boston, in September. 1865, and was received with all the honOrS that State and city could bestow.
 ''The demonstra tions of respect said the IT1Dune, were TaCnef more Jnan have usually been awarded to return ing soldiers, even in Massachusetts, which cherfshes her soldiers with an unforgetting affection. They were so honored in this case, we presume, be- cause the regiment is a representative one. There were regiments from that State which had seen more fighting than this, though none which had done any better fighting when occasion Of farpd. nnpa which had ran11- tation for discipline, patient endur ance, and impetuous valor
 But the true reason why MaSsachu- sets singled out this regiment for pe- culiar honor is because this was the first colored regiment organized in the North, and was that one on whose good conduct depended for a long time the success of the whole experiment of arming black citizens in defence of the republic. It is not too much to say that if this Massachusetts Fifty l fourth had faltered when. it's trial came two hundred thousand colored troops, for whom it was pioneer, would never have been put into the field, or. would not have been put in for another year, which would have been equivalent to protracting the war into 1866. But it did not falter. It | made Fort Wagner such a name to the l colored race as Bunker Hill has been | LOI lll0Iy yCdIS CO lII0 WullS dIlhS0S albeit black men fought side by side with white in the trenches on that l7th of June.
 A STUPENDOUS TASK
 "To this Massachusetts Fifty-fourth | was set the stupendous task to con- vince the white race that colored | troops would fight, and not only that | they would fight, but that they could be made in every sense of the word, soldiers.
 Many a. white regiment had shown the white feather in it's first battle; but for this black band to waver once was to fall forever, and to carry down with it perhaps the fortunes of the re- public.
 ''It had to wait months for the op- portunity. It was sent to a depart nent which was sinking under the prestige of almost uninterrupted de- feats. The general who commanded he department the general who com handed the division, and the general who commanded the brigade to which he regiment was consigned-neither ,f them believed in the negro. When he hour came for it to go into ac- ion, there was probably no officer in he field outside of it's own ranks who lid not expect it-and there were many who desired tito fail.
 When it started across that fatal peach which led to the parapet of Wagner it started to do what had not ,aap successfully attam nj cd bV whita