"JUSTICE WILL NOT ALWAYS STAND AFAR OFF"
Connecticut's 29th Regiment

By Steven Scarpa

Nine hundred men of color answered Connecticut Gov. William Buckingham's call to arms in the early days of 1864, forming the state's first primarily black combat unit, the 29th Connecticut Colored Infantry.

The decision was bred of necessity - the Civil War had been raging for three years and the United States government was beginning to see that African-American soldiers could be necessary to win the war.

Frederick Douglass addressed the 29th Connecticut on the day of its debarkation, offering inspiration and encouragement to the men saying that their service would ultimately create a greater good.

Buckingham, a state leader with strong abolitionist ties, also addressed the men on the decks of the Warrior, the ship slated to transport them down South. "He asked the men, when you come home from achieving this great victory, what do you want. They said they wanted the right to vote restored to them. They wanted to participate in the decision making process," said Harrison Mero, a Hamden resident whose relative Joseph Sills was part of that unit.

Mero, the president of The Descendants of the Connecticut 29th Colored Regiment, his niece Jacqueline Buster, and the other members of the group have spent the last decade reliving the Civil War, learning about the African-American and Native American men from all over Connecticut who chose to fight for the Union.

They have been among those who have worked to create a permanent memorial at Criscuolo Park in New Haven - the site of Douglass's speech to the regiment. The monument was dedicated in September.

The 29th Connecticut fought at the battles of Petersburg, Kell House, and Deep Bottom Run. The regiment was known for fighting for 23 straight hours at Fair Oaks, Virginia. They were the first Union regiment to march into the fallen Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.

In the fall of 1865, the 29th Connecticut was mustered out of service and returned to Hartford. The request they made of Buckingham wasn't forgotten. "Although Connecticut now denies you privileges which it grants to others, for no other apparent reason than because God has made you differ in complexion, yet justice will not always stand afar off. Be patient," Buckingham said upon their return.

The members of the regiment returned to their communities and, profoundly affected by the experience of war, became leaders, going to college, becoming teachers and ministers. "When they came home, they kept (the experience) as the light in front of them," Mero said.

Sgt. Alexander Newton, a veteran of the regiment who later entered the ministry, expressed his frustration with the slow progress of civil rights reform. "We are forced to conclude the no man is really free unless he holds in his bosom the right of franchise and has received the liberty to exercise that right. Have the tens of millions of Afro-Americans in the United States that right today? The answer comes from many States, NO!" Newton wrote in his war memoirs, published in 1910.

Less than 100 years after Newton's frustrated cry, on Wednesday, November 5, 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American elected president of the United States. Now more than ever, Mero and Buster are reminded of the sacrifice men like Newton made, both in combat and in their efforts at home after the war ended.

Mero stayed up late watching Obama's televised victory speech in Grant Park in Chicago. While the president-elect conveyed his message of hope and unity, Mero's thoughts turned to the men of the 29th. "The foundations of freedom were born of their experiences," Mero said.

Buster sees in Obama something the Civil War veterans could never have anticipated. "What he has got embodied in him is the best of all worlds," Buster said. "How does this happen? He dreamed it. He believed in this American dream. Do you really just have to believe in all this (to have it happen)? When we talk about it now, we can with conviction," Buster said.

Mero was able to trace a line from Newton, his ancestor Sills and the members of the 29th Connecticut, through Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Shirley Chisholm's political activism, to Obama's successful presidential campaign. "I never thought it would happen in my lifetime," Mero said. "You hope. Hope is eternal."

For more information about The Descendants of the Connecticut 29th Colored Regiment C.V. Infantry, Inc., visit the web site at www.thect29th.org.