Ball's Bluff Battlefield Regional Park
Park History Interpretive Series: First Black Combatant of the Civil War
During the Federal retreat at Ball’s Bluff, Lewis A. Bell, a free African American camp worker, may have been the first Black man to fire a gun in support of the Union Army.
According to the 1870 edition of History of Worcester in the War of the Rebellion, Bell worked for Colonel Milton Cogswell, 42nd New York Infantry Regiment, while other sources cite his involvement with a Massachusetts unit. Bell “supplied himself with arms, and loaded and fired with great spirit” before being taken to Richmond as a prisoner of war.
Bell is Captured
Late in the battle, as Union troops fled down the steep embankment, Company F of the 15th Massachusetts Infantry, along with members of other regiments, fought a rear-guard action to protect the retreating soldiers. Bell was with them and likely captured at this point in the battle and taken prisoner with company commander Lieutenant Greene. Richmond newspapers mentioned Bell on October 25, 1861. The Daily Richmond Examiner claimed Bell was acting, “at the time of his capture, as servant to one of the Massachusetts officers” and “he was dressed in semi-military costume.”
He denied ever having been in the city before, and said he was born and had resided all his life, prior to the present time, in Washington DC. The Daily Richmond Dispatch described Bell as, “a negro from the 20th Massachusetts (Infantry Regiment).”
The New-York Daily Tribune later referenced Lewis Bell in a February 22, 1862 column filed from Fort Monroe, Virginia. In a list of prisoners who arrived under flag of truce from Richmond, he was one of four described as “Negroes.”
Service in the Union Army
As African Americans were officially barred from Union Army service until the January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, Lewis Bell’s participation at Ball’s Bluff was possibly the first time an African American took up arms in support of the Union cause.
