Family Wins Honor for Former Slave

The rifles crackled and cannons boomed that November day long ago when Andrew Jackson Smith charged into battle, a former slave dodging enemy fire as he picked his way among the bodies of Union comrades.

As he rushed across a narrow bridge, the color sergeant at his side was hit. Grabbing the dying soldier, he heard his commander shout: “For God’s sake, Smith, save the flag!”

And Smith did, catching the falling colors the sergeant carried.

Smith was a hero that day in 1864 on a South Carolina battlefield. His commander wrote about it. His comrades talked about it.

But his government never acknowledged it.

Still, his family never forgot it-- especially his daughter. She always suspected racism was the reason the black Civil War veteran was rejected for the Medal of Honor in 1917.

She fought to reverse the decision. When old age slowed her down, her nephew took over. They’re now just one step away from getting the medal, but that’s one big hurdle for Smith’s daughter, who has waited for the day since she was 9--and fears she may not live to see it.

“I am now 92,” Caruth Smith Washington says, her voice rising in exasperation. “If there’s one thing I’m asking God, just let him get the medal. If ever a man deserves it, he does.”

“I just want it in my hands so I can see it,” she adds from her nursing home in New Jersey. “I would feel like something had been accomplished. Then I would be ready to go to my maker.”

This spring, Congress is set to clear the way for the honor, which is expected to be attached to a defense spending bill. But the measure is not likely to be approved until fall. And that leaves the Smith family wondering why the process can’t be expedited as it has been in some other cases.

Some family members contend U.S. Rep. Stephen E. Buyer (R-Ind.), who chairs the House Armed Services subcommittee on military personnel, has been blocking the measure until the Army approves Theodore Roosevelt for the Medal of Honor for bravery during the Spanish American War. (President Clinton has signed legislation that asked him to award Roosevelt the medal, but will not act until Army experts complete a final review of the late president’s qualifications.)

Buyer is among supporters of the Roosevelt honor, but his office says he backs Smith’s medal and is not holding it hostage--but believes it would be unfair to give one family preferential treatment.

So the family waits. For them, this is Andrew Jackson Smith’s last battle.

But for Andrew Bowman, it is more.

His 10-year odyssey has taken him from Civil War archives in Pennsylvania and New York to courthouses in Illinois and Kentucky to battlefields in Virginia, Florida and South Carolina. He not only has learned about a grandfather he never met but has discovered some truths about himself.

“I didn’t have that sense of belonging until I began to understand my history,” Bowman says. “We tend to miss the things that make us proud. We never got our full story. Our history has been subjugated to textbooks, and we were written out of them. Our accomplishments were ignored.”

“This is like setting the record straight,” he adds. “It’s reviving the truth.”

For Bowman, it all began in 1982 with his son’s school project for Black History Month.

Bowman drove his son, also Andrew, to the county courthouse in Eddyville, Ky., the area where Smith had lived, to look at his grandfather’s property records for a school essay.

At the time, Bowman knew little about Smith. He had little interest in the Civil War. “I didn’t want to recognize my people were slaves,” he says.

Several years passed when Caruth told her nephew about her failed quest to honor her father.

Long after Smith’s death in 1932, she had traveled to Washington, lobbied politicians and contacted historians. But she had found no one to help her challenge that government decision of 1917--an era when the Klan was on the rise and segregation was strong.

“I remember how disappointed he was,” she recalls of her father. “But he would never say anything. He was never bitter.”

Grandson’s Tireless Research Pays Off

When she realized her nephew was interested in his family roots, she approached him. “I want you to pick up the flame,” she said.

She mailed him a box of materials, including a maroon leather-bound book that contained postcards, letters, Smith’s wartime pension records and a notarized statement from an eyewitness to the Battle of Honey Hill on Nov. 30, 1864.

Caruth had saved the documents for nearly 60 years.

“She revered her father,” says Bowman’s wife, Esther, who joined her husband’s efforts. “When she went to the funeral, the only thing left was a box of papers. That was her inheritance. It’s ironic because that was the real treasure.”

Included in the documents was the Jan. 3, 1917, rejection from the War Department. The letter said an exhaustive records search had failed “to discover any evidence of the incident referred to within, or of gallant conduct on the part of Mr. Smith.”

Smith had been nominated by a white surgeon who had served with him in the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. He cited the black soldier’s “conspicuous gallantry.”

Bowman, now 64, began his research by visiting the battlefield at Manassas, Va., the Library of Congress and the National Archives. Eventually he headed to the U.S. Army War College library in Pennsylvania, searching for an article about the 55th he had heard was in the National Tribune, a newspaper dedicated to Civil War veterans.

One day as he scrolled through the microfiche, a photo emerged. It was a somber-looking man, dapper in coat and tie, a scar in the middle of his forehead.

It was the first time Andrew Bowman saw his grandfather, Andrew Jackson Smith.

“It was such a rush,” Bowman recalls. “I looked at his face. It was so distinguished. He looked like a hero to me. I felt like he belonged in the history books--my grandfather!”

Bowman had another reason to be impressed. Beneath the photo, the 1914 newspaper described Smith as “a perfect type of soldier” and mentioned his battlefield exploits.

Bowman’s work had just begun. A retired systems engineer with the Federal Aviation Administration in Indianapolis, he traveled to museums, courthouses and historical societies, piecing together Smith’s story.

It was an adventure tale: Born into slavery around 1842 and probably fathered by his owner, Smith became a boatman, transporting people across the Cumberland River. At 18, with just the shirt on his back, he ran away one January day, ending up at the Battle of Shiloh, serving a Union colonel--and surviving a bullet to the head.

Smith returned to Clinton, Ill., with the colonel. But in 1863, he signed on with the 55th.

“I had a mother and three sisters at home and thought I could help to free them,” he revealed in a letter, which was probably dictated, because Smith could not write. “I always craved to be more than just a man in the army. I wanted to be a soldier.”

Smith’s valor as a soldier was well documented.

His own story--including his memories of the Battle of Honey Hill--were recounted in the National Tribune in a piece titled “Adventures of a Colored Boy in War.”

But Bowman found independent evidence in the archives: an enlistment book that noted Smith mustered in the 55th from DeWitt County, Ill., and was promoted for bravery in action under fire.

And there were two orders in 1865 from Smith’s commanding officers commending and promoting him. In one, a lieutenant colonel states how he carried the flag “through the rest of the action [and] is hereby detailed as color sergeant in recognition of his conduct.”

Overcoming ‘An Act of Blatant Racism’

The War Department had turned down Smith’s nomination after two weeks’ research. Bowman’s research had taken about seven years. But when he approached a military official about the medal, he was given no encouragement. Too much time had elapsed.

Then he met a professor at a Civil War round table in Indianapolis.

Sharon MacDonald, a military historian at Illinois State University, agreed to help, convinced Smith had been cheated in 1917. “This was an act of blatant racism,” she says. “There’s no doubt about it.”

In 1997, MacDonald and one of her students, William Beckman, using Bowman’s work, submitted a new application for the award. They noted that more than 80 medals were awarded for saving the colors during the Civil War.

They also argued Smith’s actions were considered especially courageous because the color bearer--and a black man, at that--was a prime Confederate target.

Last year the military approved the medal and waived time restrictions. U.S. Rep. Thomas W. Ewing (R-Ill.), who represents the district in which Smith once lived, moved the process along, introducing a bill to honor him.

Andrew Bowman’s work is almost done. Almost.

He won’t be happy until his aunt has the medal.

“It would be the crowning glory of her life,” he says.

He remembers she once told him she was a solitary person, this widow whose only child died long ago.

“She always said she lived to be alone,” he says. “This would give her something so she wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.”