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»	John Washington

In May of 1864, citizens in Orange County saw African American Union soldiers for the first time. Since their inception in 1863, United States Colored Troops serving in the Civil War faced harsher treatment than their white counterparts, especially by the enemy. Those serving in General Burnside’s Overland Campaign of 1864 were among the first African American soldiers that Army of Northern Virginia soldiers under Robert E. Lee had seen. In Spotsylvania County during the Battle of the Wilderness, Confederate troops captured black and white soldiers. Some black prisoners were executed on the spot. One was spared and brought with white prisoners to an enclosure at the Orange County Courthouse, but there, on May 8, 1964, he was hanged from an oak tree on the courthouse lawn.

Resources

• James K. Bryant II. “‘…That Sable Hero’: African-Americans in the Fredericksburg-Area Battlefields.” Journal of Fredericksburg History 7 (2003): 37-54.
• Frank S. Walker. Remembering: A History of Orange County, Virginia. Orange, Va.: Orange County Historical Society, 2004.

People in the Places

John Washington (1828-1918)

John Washington. (Courtesy of the Alice J. Stuart Family Trust and the Massachusetts Historical Society)

Two-year-old John Washington and his mother were hired out to Richard Brown of Orange. The boy treasured his early childhood memories, before he felt the hardships of slavery. A fair-skinned and fair-haired boy, he remembered playing mostly with white children, chasing butterflies in clover-scented fields, fishing with a pin hook and line, watching the moss-covered mill wheel throw sprays of water. His mother taught him to read in the evenings and took him to church on Sundays. Once he rode with the white family to Orange Courthouse to see the circus. They lost him during a thunderstorm and returned home without him, much to his mother’s distress. Washington’s godmother found the crying boy as the crowd thinned that evening, packed him in “comforts” in an oxcart, and drove him home. He “arrived safe about Sunlite … amidst great rejoicing.”

Washington experienced the hardships of slavery, as the Brown’s fortunes declined. When he was four he awoke to see a line of men, women, and children with bundles on their backs, sold South. “I shall never forget the weeping … among those that were left behind,” he wrote. When John was about twelve, he and his mother were returned to their Fredericksburg owner. John grieved when his mother was hired in Staunton. They exchanged letters, monitored by their white owners. Washington was hired to a tobacco factory owner and later a saloonkeeper.

The Civil War found Washington in Richmond in charge of a tavern when, as federal troops approached, white people fled. He gathered the servants and poured them drinks, toasted with them the Yankees’ health, and paid them “according to orders.” Then, with a cousin, he crossed the river in a boat and went into the Union lines. Soldiers there told him he was free. He was so filled with joy he “could only thank God and laugh.” He worked for the Union Army and traveled with them to Warrenton and Culpeper, and eventually made it back to his wife near Fredericksburg. He wrote his reminiscences in 1873, and died in Massachusetts in 1918.

Resources

• John Washington. Memoir, “Memorys of the Past, undated. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Transcription by history professor Randy Shifflet available online.

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