page_title: Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman
section_title: Enlistment and service
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman / American Civil War / Enlistment and service
caption_attribution_description: English: United States Enlistment card of Timothy Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman.
context_page_description: Timothy Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman was an American Union Army soldier of Native Hawaiian descent. Considered one of the "Hawaiʻi Sons of the Civil War", he was among a group of more than one hundred documented Native Hawaiian and Hawaii-born combatants who fought in the American Civil War while the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was still an independent nation.
  Born and raised in Hilo, Hawaiʻi, he was the eldest son of Kinoʻoleoliliha, a Hawaiian high chiefess, and Benjamin Pitman, an American pioneer settler from Massachusetts. Through his father's business success in the whaling and sugar and coffee plantation industries and his mother's familial connections to the Hawaiian royal family, the Pitmans were quite prosperous and owned lands on the island of Hawaiʻi and in Honolulu. He and his older sister Mary were educated in the mission schools in Hilo alongside other children of mixed Hawaiian descent. After the death of his mother in 1855, his father remarried to the widow of a missionary, thus connecting the family to the American missionary community in Hawaiʻi.
context_section_description: On August 14, 1862, Pitman left school without his family's knowledge and volunteered to serve in the Union Army and fight in the Civil War. He apparently never informed his family in advance about the choice to join the war, because the news of his enlistment was reported back in Hawaiʻi's American missionary community as "Henry Pitman has run away from home and gone [to war]." Carter described Pitman's rationale for enlisting: "In the midst of the clamor of war, when the very air vibrated with excitement, the wild enthusiasm of the crowds, and the inspiring sound of the drum, his Indian nature rose within him. His resolve was made."
  Pitman was a hapa-haole, of part Hawaiian and part Caucasian descent. His father was white and his native-born mother was also part Caucasian from her own mother, who was the daughter of Captain Cox and a Hawaiian chiefess. Despite his mixed-race ancestry, Pitman avoided the racial segregation imposed on other Native Hawaiian volunteers in this period. Most Native Hawaiians who participated in the war were assigned to colored regiments, but Pitman's fair skin color meant he was able to serve in a white unit, indicating that unit assignment may have been influenced by how dark Hawaiians appeared. Historians Bob Dye, James L. Haley and others claimed Pitman was placed in the colored regiments because of his mixed race, but regiment records indicate otherwise.
  Pitman served as a private in the 22nd Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, Company H. This regiment was also named the "Henry Wilson's Regiment" after Colonel and U.S. Senator Henry Wilson, who commanded the unit in 1861. Colonel William S. Tilton was the regimental commander during Pitman's brief term of service. The regiment was part of the V Corps of the Army of the Potomac under the senior command of Major General George B. McClellan. During this period, the regiment fought in the Second Battle of Bull Run and was involved in the Maryland Campaign fighting in the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, and the Battle of Shepherdstown. His regiment was on the march to the Battle of Fredericksburg when Pitman was captured by Confederate troops.
caption: Enlistment card for Henry Pitman
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