Stephen A. Swails: Black Freedom Fighter in the Civil War and Reconstruction by Gordon C. Rhea (review)

Reconstruction was hotly contested even as the United States took the first steps to rebuild—physically and ideologically—in the midst of the Civil War. The historical memory of the era has been just as fiercely debated. In the middle of both fights has been the subject of Gordon C. Rhea’s newest biography Stephen A. Swails: Black Freedom Fighter in the Civil War and Reconstruction. In his own lifetime, Swails became one of the most prominent politicians and community leaders in South Carolina, yet he was largely forgotten after the South’s counter-revolutionary “Redemption” of the late nineteenth century. His name and life story have occasionally resurfaced as the historiography of the era continues to move away from the Dunning school, and Rhea’s biography now serves as the most powerful reminder yet of the part played by Stephen A. Swails in America’s “new birth of freedom.”

After a brief preface, Rhea introduces his subject to his readers with a precis of Swails’s early life. He then follows his subject through his service in the Civil War. Swails was among the first northern African Americans to volunteer to serve in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment and fought with distinction in that unit for the duration of the Civil War. He was quickly promoted to the regiment’s highest noncommissioned rank—first sergeant, the highest then available to an African American soldier—and eventually became the first African American in a combat role to be appointed a commissioned officer in the US Army.

After the war, Swails worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina, where he built a reputation as a strong and effective spokesman for both Black rights and fairness and efficiency when dealing with whites in his district. This skillset helped launch him into the forefront of Reconstruction politics in the Palmetto State and earned him the reputation as the “political boss” of Williamsburg District.

Swails represented Williamsburg District at the 1867 constitutional convention, where he served on two prominent committees, chairing one. Once the new state constitution was in place, Swails was elected to represent his county in the state senate (an office he held for eight years) as well as concurrently serve as county auditor. In May 1868, he represented South Carolina at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, where Ulysses S. Grant was nominated for the presidency. And when South Carolina cast its electoral votes for Grant, Swails was one of the state’s official electors (a role he would assume again in 1872). He was also elected the mayor of Kingstree and served as Republican Party chairman for the South Carolina First Congressional District, a state Republican executive committeeman, Williamsburg County’s representative to the state party convention, agent for the state land commission, commander of the state militia, and trustee of South Carolina College.

Rhea attributes Swails’s success to several factors. As a Freedmen’s Bureau agent, he had developed close relationships with his county’s Black majority. His responsiveness to issues of housing, employment, and disputes over labor contracts had proven him an advocate for the Black voters of his constituency, and few voters would have not been aware of his role in coordinating the distribution of rations in the times of greatest need. He was a decorated war hero who had shed blood for his country and for the freedom of formerly enslaved African Americans, and his status as the first African American commissioned as an officer in the US Army gave him an unmatched level of prestige in the community. Formally educated, intelligent, Swails communicated effectively with constituents Black and white. Indeed, he also openly courted the white vote in Williamsburg County and brought together an uncommon multiracial coalition of politicians from the Republican and Democratic Parties to facilitate the efficient governance of his constituency.

Like...