Mathias Embry Correspondence
June 20th marks the 160th anniversary of Private John Posey’s enlistment as a Black solider in the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment, Company D fighting in the Civil War. Posey was a 22-year-old Black farmer from Vincennes, Indiana, and his experience and motivation are captured in 8 of his personal letters found within the newly acquired Mathias Embry Correspondence (https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/special/ead/findingaids/1421).
Addressed to his cousin, Mathias Embry, his letters describe major events the 55th Massachusetts Regiment participated in, including battles, locales visited, the names of fellow Black soldiers in the 55th Massachusetts, descriptions of daily life, frustration at the lack of news from home, and the perspective of the Black soldier fighting against “oppression” for “all people of our color.”
In a letter dated May 16, 1864, Posey writes: “[I] feel as happy as a nightingale 16 degrees above the sky. Times are good here . . . I am better satisfied now and have been so ever since I left home than ever I was for three years before . . . I am a soldier for Uncle Sam.”
John Posey to Mathias Embry. Mathias Embry Correspondence (#1421), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.
Posey was killed in action on November 30, 1864, during the Battle of Honey Hill in South Carolina as the 55th Massachusetts charged a Confederate battery.
Included in the additional 5 pieces of correspondence in the collection is a letter by 21-year-old Private Charles Newton of the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment Company C. Newton details his experience as a Black soldier fighting in the Civil War. Newton writes: “I am well satisfied[,] my resolution is made perfect . . . although we are far from home we are not yet in mind of the way the [terribly?] have treated we friends of color and now stand as though they had done some great righteous duty and deserved to be worshiped [.] we will worship them with powder and lead. . .”
Charles Newton to Mathias Embry. Mathias Embry Correspondence (#1421), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.
The Mathias Embry Correspondence provides a fascinating glimpse of the experience and motivation of Black soldiers serving during the Civil War and the effect of the war on both the enlisted and non-combatants.
The collection is open for research and the originals can be viewed by clicking on the link https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/special/ead/findingaids/1421 to book an appointment. The entire collection has been digitized and digital copies and typed transcripts for most of the letters can be accessed on our Digital Collections website https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/.
Interested in other firsthand accounts of Black soldiers serving alongside Posey and Newton? Check out Voices of the 55th: Letters from the 55th Massachusetts Volunteers, 1861-1865 by Noah Andre Trudeau. Check out the book in our Special Collections Authors collection https://librarycatalog.ecu.edu/catalog/5960810.