Two Charlestonians at War: The Civil War Odysseys of a Lowcountry Aristocrat and a Black Abolitionist by Barbara L. Bellows (review)

Barbara L. Bellows has written an innovative dual biography that tells the story of two native Charlestonians, a free black abolitionist and a white planter aristocrat, who fought on opposite sides during the Civil War. Sergeant Joseph Humphries Barquet fought with the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry, and Captain Thomas Pinckney served in the Fourth South Carolina Calvary. Barquet had left Charleston in 1848 and did not meet Pinckney until Barquet was stationed as a guard on Morris Island in 1864, when Pinckney was imprisoned on the island. The book is exceptionally well written, and Bellows clearly has a broad audience in mind.

Bellows tells their stories in alternating chapters, beginning with Joseph Barquet. In 1823, Barquet was born to a French-speaking free black father, John Pierre Barquet, from St. Domingo and a mixed-race mother, Barbara Barquet, the daughter of a slave, Peggy, and Adam Tunno, a white Charleston merchant. The young Barquet trained as a brick mason, a familiar trade for free blacks in Charleston. In his youth, he identified as French, thereby taking advantage of Charleston’s moderate racial fluidity. In 1846, Barquet volunteered for service in the war with Mexico. In 1848, the Palmetto regiment disbanded and Barquet returned to Charleston, but he soon left for New York. In 1850, Barquet inherited money and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and he found work as a bricklayer that summer. By fall, he had relocated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During the 1850s, Barquet increasingly identified as black and began working as an abolitionist. In Wisconsin he gave a well-received antislavery speech that condemned the Fugitive Slave Act. In 1852, Barquet moved yet again, this time to Chicago, where he continued his antislavery activism. In 1855, Barquet moved his wife, Maria, and their first child to Galesburg, Illinois. In April 1863, he enlisted in the army and joined Company H of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry. In July, Barquet saw action in the South Carolina Sea Islands, including the assault on Battery Wagner. Bellows offers a fantastic account of the battle. Next, Barquet participated in the Battle of Olustee, another Union defeat. On February 27, 1865, Barquet and the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts received a hero’s welcome from black Charlestonians upon liberating their city from Confederate control—and slavery. Following the war, Barquet struggled with financial difficulties, some stemming from alcoholism exacerbated by his wartime experiences. All the while, he remained politically active on behalf of African Americans and the Republican Party. In 1877, Barquet moved to Davenport, Iowa, and he died of alcoholism in 1880.

Thomas Pinckney was born in 1828 to C. Cotesworth Pinckney and Caroline Elliott Pinckney, both children of wealthy planter aristocrats. In 1832, Cotesworth Pinckney assumed the management of Eldorado Plantation when his half-brother Edward Rutledge died that year. The rice plantation sat on the South Santee River, forty miles north of Charleston. Thomas Pinckney enrolled in the University of Virginia in 1846. Two years later, he enrolled in the Medical College of South Carolina in Charleston, and he graduated by 1850. He then continued his training at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. Pinckney soon returned to Eldorado Plantation, where he learned plantation management from his father. Undoubtedly, slaves there were brutalized for any number of offenses, including low productivity, but Bellows ignores slave punishment. In January 1861, Pinckney began raising a company to protect his plantation district. Eventually, his company joined Major Edward Manigault’s regiment stationed at McClellanville. In late 1862, Pinckney’s Saint James Mounted Riflemen became Company D of the Fourth South Carolina Calvary commanded by Colonel Benjamin Huger Rutledge. Initially, Fourth South Carolina was stationed at Pocotaligo, near Port Royal. In March 1864, the regiment formed part of a new brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia. In May, Pinckney had made it to...