Now or Never! by Ray Anthony Shepard

Author:Ray Anthony Shepard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
Published: 2017-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Before this, on August 7, nineteen days into the siege, the soldiers of the Fifty-Fourth had once again stood in front of the paymaster’s wagon. For the second time, regardless of rank, they were offered $10 a month minus $3 for uniforms, instead of the $13 White soldiers received for taking the same risks. Colonel Montgomery’s Second Carolina accepted the $10. But when the Fifty-Fourth was asked, “All who wished to take the ten dollars per month, raise your hand,” Gooding proudly told readers, “I am glad to say not one man in the whole regiment lifted a hand.” He concluded in his letter to the New Bedford Mercury: “Too many of our comrades’ bones lie bleaching near the walls of Fort Wagner to subtract even one cent from our hard earned pay.”

Stephens dismissed the payment as “insulting” to be offered “about half the pay of a poor white private.”

Seven weeks later, tired of waiting for equal compensation, Gooding brushed the dirt from his pants and hands to keep from smudging his writing paper and sat outside his tent with a wood plank across his lap. He wrote to Abraham Lincoln. He began timidly, “Your Excellency,” and begged to be pardoned for “the presumption of a humble individual.” But his writing grew stronger as he continued.

He asked, “Are we Soldiers, or are we Labourers?” Gooding reminded Lincoln that even though the African American had for two years been refused “the privilege of aiding his Country in her need,” this day “he is in the War, and how has he conducted himself? Let their dusky forms rise up, out [of] the mires of James Island, and give the answer. Let the rich mould around Wagner’s parapets be upturned, and there will be found an Eloquent answer.” As his passion grew, he challenged: “Now your Excellency, we have done a Soldier’s Duty. Why Can’t we have a Soldier’s pay?”

A White New York reporter had been covering the war on Morris Island. Gooding asked him to mail the letter to President Lincoln. He did not want the letter read by the army or the War Department. Letters to the president and commander-in-chief were expected to be approved by the regimental commander, then by the Union Army’s Department of the South, and finally the War Department. Only then if all censors approved the letter would it be sent to the White House. Gooding violated the army’s chain of command and dreaded that if caught he would end up bucked and gagged, or worse.

On September 30, after the siege, the paymaster returned a third time. Although penniless and with suffering families at home, the Fifty-Fourth refused to accept anything less than full pay. When Colonel James Montgomery heard of their third rejection, he stormed into camp and ordered the men to assemble. Dressed in full uniform, soldiers fell into formation and waited as the old colonel let them stew in the sticky South Carolina heat. Sweat trickled under Stephens’s woolen uniform and rolled down to his socks.

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