RECRUITING FOR A COLORED CAVALRY REGIMENT FOLLOWING THE SUCCESS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS 54TH AND 55TH INFANTRY REGIMENTS

Autograph letter signed by Asst. Adjt. Gen. Nehemiah Brown. Boston, Massachusetts, 14 December 1863. 1 page, 8vo, on Commonwealth of Massachusetts's Adjutant General's Office letterhead. 

A letter from Nehemiah Brown to Samuel Camp, a former surgeon for the 27th Massachusetts. Brown is replying to Camp's letter from 11 December 1863 regarding "the men who wish to enlist in the Mass. Colored Cavalry," writing that these men can be sent to Lt. Col. Henry S. Russell, previously of the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry. 

Before being assigned to the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry, Russell (1838-1905) served in the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry as a first lieutenant and then a captain. While in the infantry, he was captured at the Battle of Cedar Mountain and taken as prisoner to Libby Prison, where he stayed for three months. He was then promoted to lieutenant colonel of the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry, a position he held for a year. 

On 5 April 1864, Russell was commissioned as colonel of the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry, the third colored regiment to come from Massachusetts. During the regiment's short tenure, it only participated in one battle: the Second Battle of Petersburg. It was here that Russell was wounded and prevented from rejoining his regiment until three months later at Point Lookout, where it was guarding Confederate prisoners. Russell ended up resigning his command two months before the end of the Civil War. He was breveted brigadier general in March 1865. 

[Civil War, Union, Confederate] [Manuscripts, Documents, Letters, Ephemera, Signatures, Autographs] [USCT, United States Colored Troops, Glory, 54th Massachusetts, Buffalo Soldiers, Black Soldiers]