Freedom Journey: Black Civil War Soldiers and The Hills Community, Westchester County, New York by Edythe Ann Quinn (review)

Hartwick College historian Edythe Ann Quinn traces the experiences of the thirty-six African American men from “The Hills” section of Westchester County, New York, who served in three regiments of the Union army. As a project nearly thirty years in the making, Quinn’s work builds on previous studies on African American soldiers in the Civil War, but particularly William Seraile’s New York’s Black Regiments of the Civil War (New York: Routledge, 2001). As Seraile’s seminal work filled an enormous gap in the historiography on African American Civil War soldiers, drawing attention to northern troops outside of Massachusetts, Quinn offers a snapshot of one African American community and the men who served in the Civil War in the 29th Connecticut Infantry, the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery, and the 20th Infantry Regiment of New York. Though Seraile and Anthony F. Gero, in his Black Soldiers of New York State A Proud Legacy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), have written on the 20th Infantry Regiment, Quinn has filled a lacuna with a study of the 29th Connecticut Infantry, Colored Volunteers and the sixteen men from The Hills who served in its ranks, and the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery.

The major question historians have raised of African American soldiers in the Civil War has been why they fought? Quinn’s argument is no different. In agreement with Seraile, she asserts that The Hills men fought to preserve the Union, end slavery, and demonstrate their worthiness of full citizenship (38). For Quinn, the men of The Hills served in the Union army as an extension of the general struggle for African American freedom that had been in progress during the nineteenth century.

To support this argument, Quinn utilizes a variety of source material, such as editorials, letters from soldiers published in African American newspapers, and five surviving letters from The Hills resident Sgt. Simeon Tierce, who served in the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery Regiment (Colored) and died of illness while stationed in Louisiana in 1865 (these letters appear in an appendix). Though of limited quantity, these sources allows Quinn adequate support for her general thesis; however, they provide stronger support to the notion that northern African American men volunteered to liberate their enslaved brothers and sisters.

The book offers an overview of The Hills community before and after the war as well as the experiences of the three aforementioned regiments. Her chapter on the community before the war is a good overview that gives the reader an idea of what The Hills men valued, such as the nuclear family, the Church, education, and a Protestant work ethic. In the postwar chapter, Quinn focuses on men as some of them returned to The Hills, but many left for other towns in Westchester County, and larger cities like Brooklyn, New Haven, and Providence. Unlike in the prewar chapter, Quinn fails to give the readers a rich view of the community, even though it seemed to be on the decline. Regarding the experiences of the soldiers, Quinn reveals problems with unequal pay, poor food, and the use of African American troops more as occupiers than as fighters. These are common themes in the historiography. One particular contribution Quinn makes is that she highlights the fighting prowess of the 29th Connecticut. This unit saw heavy action in October 1864 near Fair Oaks, Virginia, when it lost eleven and suffered sixty-nine wounded. Out of three regiments under study, this was the only force that experienced heavy engagement. Quinn writes that the men of this regiment were “liberators” (81).

This is a welcomed book in the field of Civil War history, as it digs deep into one community and the men it provided to the Union army. Like other works on African American soldiers in the Civil War...