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In June 1863, General Robert E. Lee, commander-in-chief of the Confederate Army in the American Civil War, led the army of Northern Virginia, the main force of the Southern Army's Eastern Theater of Successive Victories, to invade Pennsylvania, hoping to complete the battle and eliminate the Potomac Army, the main force of the Northern Army's Eastern Theater, in a decisive battle, and end the war. The Potomac Legion did indeed come from Washington to meet the battle, and the two sides encountered the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and a hasty decisive battle.
In this peak duel, General Lee, disturbed by diarrhea, and the former judges, jackson, the most powerful assistant, the "stone wall" Jackson, who can be called the soul of the legion, was accidentally wounded and died in the last battle, and the generals of the Northern Wei Legion were collectively in disorder. The Potomac Legion was on the verge of a decisive battle three days before the decisive battle, and the new commander, Meide, was confused in the decisive battle, allowing the front-line commanders to fight separately. At the juncture when they had been defeated in repeated battles, changed commanders several times, and their morale had reached the bottom, the officers and men of the Northern Army showed unprecedented fierceness and tenacity, and won this decisive victory with their blood and lives.
At the last moment of the battle, General Lee forced the Pickett Division to make a deathly charge, and 5,000 Virginia athletes braved the fierce enemy artillery fire to storm the Northern army positions. In the face of the roaring enemy, the officers and men of the Connecticut 14th Infantry Regiment defending the forward position were extremely nervous, and George Stutt took out his notebook, intending to record the actual situation of the battlefield, but did not know what to write. He looked around nervously, smoke from his position, and saw only a braid, the pig's tail they ridiculed, and hurriedly wrote: "This is the only Chinese of the Potomac Corps." ”
The braided comrade Stutt saw was a Chinese from Guangdong, a 22-year-old cook in the regiment, whose English name was Joseph L. Pierce, whose name Chinese was impossible to verify, and who was a farmer before the war.
Six months later, President Lincoln made his famous speech in the town known for the battle, and Gettysburg established the National Cemetery. Since then, books commemorating the battle have emerged, including a book called "The Face of Gettysburg" that collects photographs of the soldiers who participated in the battle, including a photo of Pierce in a tuxedo and braids, which makes Americans firmly remember the chinese figure on the battlefield of the Civil War.
In the 1860s, when the Civil War in China triggered by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was finally about to be revealed, the long-standing feud between the South and the North in the distant United States finally led to a great war in North America. Beginning in 1861, in four years, more than three million people participated in the war, and 620,000 soldiers died in the battle alone. At that time, there were 31 million people in the United States, about 5 million white people in the South, and more than a million people went to the battlefield, so it can be said that adult men basically joined the army.
In this era of more than five feet of soldiers, foreign immigrants in the United States will naturally not be forgotten, not to mention that the United States is originally an immigrant country, so there is also the shadow of Chinese soldiers in the Civil War.
The Chinese were the first Asian immigrants to come to the United States, dating back to the 18th century. The gold rush in California in the mid-19th century attracted a large number of Chinese immigrants, and in 1851 there were 25,000 Chinese near San Francisco, California. After the war, in 1870, there were nearly 100,000 overseas Chinese in the United States. Although most of the Chinese lived in the west during the Civil War, according to existing sources and scattered photographs, it is possible to count about 50 Chinese who fought in the civil war, but unfortunately the names of most of them Chinese are not known as Pierce.
Pierce enlisted in the army in 1862, and Gettysburg was promoted to corporal after the war, fortunately surviving the war. There are three different versions of how Pierce came to america, one theory being that his father sold him to Captain Pick of America for $6, the second theory being that his brother bought him and asked Him for $60, and the last saying that Peak saved him from the sea. Pierce followed Pitt to his native State of Connecticut, where he took his name in 1853 using the surname president Pierce.
As an adult, Pierce worked as a farmer in Connecticut, and during the Civil War he joined F Company, 14th Volunteer Infantry Regiment of Connecticut, where he served for three years. Just after joining the army, it was called the bloodiest day in American history, when the 14th Connecticut Regiment killed 20 people, missed 48 people, and wounded 88 people, including Pierce, who fell into the ditch during the battle. After a month in the hospital, he was physically exhausted after discharge and became a cook. A few days later, the old wounds recurred, and he was hospitalized for many more months, until he returned shortly before the Battle of Gettysburg.
At the Battle of Gettysburg, Pierce was very brave, not only charging forward, but also volunteering to join the death squad, and was busy treating the wounded after the war. After retiring from the army, he became a silversmith, married a Polish woman, and had two sons. He was rejected because he was of Chinese descent when applying for a civil war pension, and left his life in the process of appeal, where he died in 1916.
The famous battlefield record of Stutt is not accurate, in fact, in his own regiment, there is a Chinese soldier named Chinese John Lee, who is not as lucky as Pierce and was killed in this decisive battle.
In addition to these two, there is at least one Chinese soldier in the Northern Army, and his story is much more exciting.
On October 19, 1863, more than three months after the End of the Battle of Gettysburg, a new monument was added to the Memorial Cemetery. Corporal John Tommy of D Company D of the 70th Infantry Regiment in New York, wounded on July 2, fought death for 3 months and 17 days and finally failed. The army records that John Tommy lost both hands and feet in battle, a brilliant and brave warrior from China.
John Tommy arrived in New York shortly after the Civil War and was just in time for the conscription. An 18-year-old Tommy who could not speak English was drafted into the army in May 1861, but his adaptability was outstanding, and he soon became the darling of the regiment.
In March 1962, during the march of the troops in Prince William County, Virginia, John Tommy was left behind and captured by the Confederates. During the Civil War, prisoners of war were treated rather leniently, and in most cases they were released on the spot after signing a declaration that they would no longer participate in the war. Many of these released captives returned to the army, spending a few months in logistics before going to the battlefield, or being captured again and possibly punished.
The capture of John Tommy by the Confederates was so unexpected that it caught the attention of General John Magrud. Magrud, nicknamed Prince John, was leading a division of men to defend the southern capital of Richmond, and when he heard that an Indian who had joined the Northern Army had been captured, he was very interested, and when he met and asked, he knew that it was Chinese. Maglod's curiosity grew stronger and asked Tommy what conditions would make him join the Confederates?
Tommy blurted out: If I were to be the brigade commander, I would join the Confederate Army. The brigade commander of the Confederate Army was the rank of brigadier general, and at the beginning of the war, the brigade commanders of the Confederate Army were all generals who had participated in the Mexican War, and the famous Stonewall Jackson, who was a professor at the Victorian Military Academy at the time, and the identity of a Mexican war hero, commanded the cadet army of the military academy before the war, and was only a brigade commander when the war began. This sentence made Tommy the most arrogant prisoner of war in history.
General Maglod laughed at him, threw him back into the prisoner-of-war camp, and continued his southern conquest of the Northern War, defecting to the Mexican Emperor after the war, becoming the only three-nation general in the history of the United States army: first fighting for the American army in the Mexican War, then fighting for the Confederate army in the civil war, and finally becoming a royal Mexican general.
Tommy won the respect of his enemies and the love of his comrades-in-arms, and became the boss of the prisoner of war camp. At this time, the commander of the Northern Army, McClellan, landed on the peninsula with 100,000 horses, and the Southern Army was fully prepared for war, flawlessly guarding the prisoners of war, and releasing all the prisoners of war in May 1862. Tommy returned to the Confederate Army, where he took care of the wounded during the Sept.
The Seven-Day Campaign made General Lee famous, forcing McClellan's Potomac Regiment into the sea, and then joining forces with Jackson to return to Monassas, where at the end of August lincoln lincoln's American Legion was wiped out and many prisoners, including Tommy, who was considered to be the second to enter the palace.
Lee then invaded the north, and because important information fell into the hands of the enemy, he had to fight backwaters at Antiim. After the bloodiest day, the elite soldiers lost more than half of them, and fortunately the whole army was not destroyed. The two sides have again moved into a stalemate. By December, the Potomac Corps had finally begun to attack again, and the Confederates had to prepare for battle, including, of course, the release of prisoners, and Tommy returned to the 70th Infantry Regiment in New York.
This time it ended in a crushing defeat for the Northern Army, and with its demographic and economic strength, Lincoln once again reorganized the Potomac Regiment, and Tommy was promoted to corporal in February 1863.
At the Battle of Gettysburg, Tommy finally made it to the battlefield. His brigade fought eighteen battles before and after the campaign and was hailed as the bravest brigade, and he was known as one of the bravest soldiers of the brigade. During the fierce battle on July 2, he was hit by shrapnel and seriously injured, and died three months later.
There was also a Chinese soldier from Connecticut, whose English name was Antonio Dardelle, who joined the army in 1862 and belonged to Company A of the 27th Volunteer Infantry Regiment of Connecticut, who served for nine months, often told others that he was a war hero after retiring, and was shot in the right shoulder at the Battle of Fort Ferredrick, and he was wounded and went to the battlefield after a few days in the hospital.
According to the National Archives, Dadler was hospitalized from December 1862 to June 1863. Hospital records record that he fell ill, fell ill, and fell ill again, and was hospitalized after two months of enlistment, stayed in two hospitals for a total of half a year, and was discharged after a month of discharge.
After retiring from the army, Dadler became an American citizen with nine months of experience as a soldier, married a foreigner's wife and gave birth to three daughters, and worked as a tinsmith and plumber. In 1907 he went to apply for a veterans' pension, and the staff told him that he could enjoy a pension of 12 yuan per month according to his self-reported age of 62. However, when he handed in the form, there was no date of birth on it.
Dadler, an orphan adopted by David White, an American captain and his wife in a Chinese port, left no proof of his date of birth, so it was nothing more than determining his date of birth. After eight years, he went to reapply or did not approve, until 1916 his application was finally approved, the date of birth was set at 1844, he worked until the age of 81, died at the age of 89, in that era is a long life; in the process of paying the pension for civil war veterans, most Chinese veterans have Pierce and Dadler' experience, which is a direct manifestation of discrimination against Chinese.
On August 11, 1878, a prison housed four Chinese who were imprisoned for selling cigarettes without paying taxes and unable to pay a 250-knife fine. A reporter saw that the signs of Chinese exclusion had come, and made a special trip to the prison to interview, but he did not expect that one of the blind people was a veteran. This man, John Akomb, worked as a waiter and then a cook on the gunboats of the Northern Navy during the war, and was almost blind after the battle. After the war, he married a foreigner named Katie as a wife, had three children but died, and had no choice but to sell cigarettes to live. The life of the disabled soldier was so bleak that the reporters published the newspaper with indignation, which aroused a strong reaction from public opinion, and the law enforcement agencies quickly released AhComber.
Another Chinese man who joined the Navy was John Ah Heng, who joined the army to naturalize, and when he naturalized 12 years later, his name was changed to William Hang, and when he went to New York to work as a cigarette manufacturer, his business card was printed with HANG KEE KANG. A few years later, the license was lost, and when the license was reapplyed, the name was changed to John Hang.
Hang, a native of Guangdong, came to the United States at the age of 17 and enlisted in the army at the age of 22, serving as a class sailor on several ships during the war. After the war, Hang opened a grocery store, and citizens waited 17 years after taking the oath before they were officially approved as American citizens. Unexpectedly, four years later, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, and the New York Supreme Court stripped him of his citizenship. Hang had nowhere to say, but someone was worse than him. He had been an American for four years, and there was a comrade-in-arms who wanted to be an American who couldn't be there?
In December 1845, an American sailing ship named Kauvota returned from Shanghai, and after going to sea, it was found that two children had been secretly brought up, the six-year-old did not survive, and the four-year-old survived. Tell Captain Dai that he is from Suzhou, that his father drowned when the Yangtze River was flooded, and that he was an orphan wandering around and took the opportunity to get on the boat. Captain Day named him Edward, plus his own surname and ship name, and his full name was Edward Day Cohota. As for the name of the child's Chinese, even he did not know.
Corhouta returned to Massachusetts with Captain Dai and joined the 1st Company of the 23rd Infantry Regiment of Massachusetts during the Civil War. In 1864, he participated in several fierce battles, his hair was charred with shrapnel, and there were several bullet holes in his clothes, but he was not injured. After the war, Kohota continued to serve in the army, stationed on the Dakota border, where he met a beautiful Norwegian girl Anna who worked as a nanny, the two married and had six children, Kohota retired after 35 years as a soldier, took the west as his home, died in 1935 at the age of 94, a rare high life in that era.
In 1912, Kahuta asked the government for land under the Homestead Law, only to discover that he was not An American. Because the second naturalization paper is handed before the Chinese Exclusion Law, you can become a citizen. Because he thought he was an American when he was a soldier, he did not hand over the naturalization paper, and he would never become an American, so he could not get land. Although Kaohou Tower is more than seventy years old, it is still very angry and has begun to petition for more than 20 years. In addition to citizenship, he also had to fight for military pensions, civil war veterans and other entitled benefits, find judges and lawyers, politicians, senators, and finally the interior minister, becoming the first indomitable petitioner in the United States.
At this moment, a veteran named William Lou recalled to the children that during the battle in the cold spring harbor of Virginia, he was hit in the jaw by an enemy bullet and fell into the pile of dead people, but fortunately a comrade named Cohouta saw it. Kaohouta carried him behind a rock in the shade of a tree and hid him, and continued to fight, and after the battle stopped after dark, Kaohouta carried him to the rear ambulance station, and this life was saved.
The grace of saving lives will never be forgotten, and the children of lou asked everywhere where Kaohou Tower was, and in 1928, they finally found the 87-year-old Kaohou Tower and invited him to his home. At this time, Lou was already deaf and blind, and did not react at all to the things around him. When everyone was completely disappointed, Lou suddenly hugged Theohouta's feet and shouted his name with tears in his eyes, and everyone present was moved to tears.
Later in the Civil War, General Stonemen of the Northern Army pursued Southern President Davis to North Carolina. Because there were not enough manpower, they ordered conscription after arriving in the enemy area. Draw lots by name and forced enlistment in the recruits. Under the bayonet, the people of the south had to accept their fate. The conscription went very smoothly, and after the end of the subordinate report, there was one more. General Stonemen was a very serious man, and unless he was voluntary, he was not allowed to force a conscription without a draw. The subordinate said that the extra one was not voluntary, but it could not be done. General Stonemen, who later became the governor of California, looked at it and turned out to be so, and counted that neither of them should enlist in the army.
Because this is the only two conjoined twin bengke brothers in the United States. One named Eng Bunker and Chang Bunker, an overseas Chinese from Thailand, was 54 years old when he was drafted. The two were connected by chests, sharing a liver, and it was Yingge who was drawn. The two were sold to Americans by their mothers as children, traveled the world to perform, and soon became global celebrities. Ten years later, the brothers, tired of the lifestyle of going around showing off, bought hundreds of acres of land in North Carolina. Because of his fame, he quickly naturalized, bought dozens of slaves, and became a landlord. The brothers traveled south and north to see a lot, using the most advanced methods of the time to grow high-grade tobacco leaves and crops, and also engaged in aquaculture and made a fortune.
In 1843, the brothers married and married a pair of sisters, which caused an uproar in the local area, and the woman's parents also opposed it, and they all felt that the four of them were in the same bed. But the sisters are willing, and both marry Bengke. The couple had a total of 21 children, and the brothers died together in 1874 at the age of 63. During the Civil War, the Bengke family actively supported the Confederate Army, not only paying for food, but also two of the second generation joined the Confederate Army. Chang's son, Christopher, joined the Confederate Cavalry and belonged to the I Company of the 37th Battalion of virginia cavalry. In 1864, he accompanied General McCooselan on a surprise attack on Pennsylvania, and his cousin Stephen had just joined the army and was in the same ranks.
Michael Coslan made a plan to encircle Wei and save Zhao, in an attempt to lure away the enemy who surrounded Richmond. However, at this time, the balance of power between the two sides was very large, and the Northern Army only sent a rearguard force to deal with him. Seeing that the plan did not work, McCooselan returned to Victoria after the Chambersburg arson and robbery, where he was attacked by pursuing enemy troops while camping, and almost completely destroyed. Christopher was also imprisoned in the largest prisoner-of-war camp in the North.
In 1854, american universities awarded their degrees to a Chinese for the first time, and The Chinese named Rong Hong, who received a Yale Degree of Literature, was the first student in China to study in the United States. Born in Guangdong, Yung later came to Macau with his father, attended a church school, and was brought to the United States by Pastor Brown. I went to prep school first, then I went to Yale. After completing the theory, he should return to China to preach, but Rong Hong felt that he should take other paths to save the country, and did not become a pastor, and the church did not care about it. Rong Hong became a U.S. citizen in 1852 and returned to China to work in Customs and the U.S. Legation.
In 1859, Rong Hong went to Nanjing, and Hong Xiuquan, the heavenly king of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, also gave him a fourth-class title, but he did not approve of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, refused to be knighted, and left Nanjing; in 1863, Zeng Guofan summoned Rong Hong, identified him as a talent, transferred sixty-eight thousand taels of silver from the official treasury in Guangzhou and Shanghai, and gave him the equipment to buy an arsenal in the United States. In the spring of 1864, Rong Hong returned to the United States, at this time the American Civil War was not over, the factories in the north were full of horsepower to make guns, no one would take his words, and it was difficult to find a factory in Massachusetts.
The work was finalized, and Rong Hong let his American assistant stare there, and ran to Yale for a class reunion. At the party, the patriotic enthusiasm of the students was high, and they were also infected with Rong Hong, and they impulsively ran to sign up for the army. This is the war has reached the late stage, the source of soldiers is not so tense, the recruiter may consider that he is a Special Envoy of the Qing Dynasty, turned him away, Rong Hong had to honestly wait for the equipment to be built and transported back. In 1872, he led the young children who stayed in the United States to return to the United States, and at the same time served as the deputy minister of the Qing Dynasty in the United States. After 10 years, the young children returned to China, and he also returned to China. Belonging to Kang Liang's party, he was in exile in Hong Kong and the United States, and after the Xinhai Revolution, Sun Yat-sen asked him to return, but he died of illness in the United States in 1912.
The person who participated in the Civil War and made a career in China was Wu Hongyu, a famous pastor in Shanghai. Wu Hongyu was born in 1834 in a poor peasant family near Changzhou, and when he was 13 years old, his father heard that the American Church in Shanghai had opened a school, so he sent his son to the church. Two years later, he was baptized and became the first generation of Chinese believers. A few years later, the school came to a new principal, which was very bad for the students, did not treat people as people, Wu Hongyu and others left the school one after another, and when the principal returned to the United States, they returned to the school to ask for continued school, but the school did not let it, and Wu Hongyu could only wander in society.
In 1853, General Perry led a fleet to Japan, let the Japanese see the power of foreign guns and artillery, and then continued to China. Two of the warships arrived in Shanghai. The crew went ashore and worshipped at the only American church. Wu Hongyu took the opportunity to ask the priest to help contact the ship to work, and became the servant of the ship's doctor, Miser Smith. Wu Hongyu came to Japan again with the fleet, witnessed the historical moment when Japan ended its isolation, and arrived in Philadelphia, the United States, in 1855. He followed Smith to his hometown of Lankester, so that Wu Hongyu became the first person in Shanghai to stay in the United States.
After Wu Hongyu arrived in the United States, he worked as an apprentice in a printing house, and seven years later he was discharged, and the civil war was already in full swing. Wu Hongyu, whose English name is WOO HONG NEOK, was naturalized in 1860. In 1863, the Confederate Army invaded Pennsylvania, pennsylvania was urgently mobilized, and Wu Hongyu also signed up for the war and joined the I Company of the 15th Infantry Regiment of the Pennsylvania Militia. After joining the army, there was no time for training, and he went directly to the defense near the capital, where the place was called the Shasqui haina River, to prevent the enemy from crossing the river. As it happens, the boat that Wu Hongyu took in the United States was called SHAS KUIHAINA.
General Lee entered Pennsylvania and divided his forces to plunder the land, and the Euver Department pointed directly at Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania. With a group of improvised militia, it was impossible to stop the enemy. Rumors arose for a time, and Harrisburg was shocked overnight, and many people burned valuable things and destroyed their homes, the most famous of which was Jose, who made chocolate, and burned the factory.
Wu Hongyu held out in Shasquihaina until July 2, saw no enemy, and the troops were ordered to return to Lankester, and then rushed to Harrisburg to prepare for death. Unbeknownst to them, however, on June 29, Youville received Orders from Lee to quickly return to the division and meet and fight a decisive battle at Gettysburg with the enemy's main army.
The fight on gettysburg was turned upside down, and Wu Hongyu changed into a new rifle in the state capital, put on a uniform uniform, and then made a train to Chambersburg, ready to go to reinforcements. By this time the great battle was over, and Lee's army had suffered heavy losses, leaving only half of its men and horses, and retreated to Victoria. Lincoln issued several orders to the Commander of the Northern Army, Meide, to pursue him quickly, and he must not let Lee escape. However, Mei De, who was seriously stimulated after the war, had a severe neurasthenia and could not command the troops at all, and the legion was leaderless, and the only thing that followed Li's army was Wu Hongyu's Penn militia, who had just engaged the enemy and let the Li legion calmly cross the river.
Wu Hongyu chased with the army to the Potomac River, and then alerted on the spot, and in August to see that there was no enemy situation, the 15th Regiment returned to the state capital and disbanded on the spot, and on August 15, Wu Hongyu ended his military career with one shot.
Wu Hongyu returned to the printing plant to continue working, at this time an old classmate from Shanghai came to the United States, saying that the old abbot of the American Church in Shanghai had seen God, and there was only Pastor Tang Qili alone to support him, and Wu Hongyu had a clever move.
In February 1864, WOO Hong NEOK boarded a ship from New York and returned to Shanghai as Wu Hongyu. But he was so poor that he couldn't sell tickets, so he worked for others to get tickets. After disembarking, he first went to the U.S. consulate to report, and then went to the church, which hoped that he would work immediately, but Wu Hongyu's mother tongue was almost forgotten, and he first studied Chinese for eight months, and then became Tang Aili's assistant. But the church didn't have the money to pay him, so he had to work as a translator in his spare time to make ends meet.
In the fall of 1866, the church rented a few rooms on the street and found a doctor named McGowan to give free medicine to the poor, and Wu Hongyu played as a pharmacist. After the clinic opened, its reputation grew and there were more and more patients, and the church decided to build a hospital. Wu Hongyu found a guangdong surnamed Li and raised 20,000 silver yuan to build a 24-bed Tongren Hospital. McGowan is the dean and Wu Hongyu is the deputy. Tongren Hospital was one of the first three hospitals in Shanghai, and later merged into St. John's, and the famous doctors in Shanghai were mostly from under the door, so Wu Hongyu became one of the pioneers of modern chinese medicine in Shanghai; Wu Hongyu did not have any medical education, and the only medical experience during his stay in the United States was to cut his finger when he was apprenticed in a printing house. Under the guidance of McGowan, Wu Hongyu practiced while reading books, and soon became able to stand alone, even minor surgeries. This is how modern medical careers began in China (mainly in Shanghai).
Wu Hongyu officially became a pastor in 1880, during which time he became a family, and his brother-in-law was Pastor Michelle Cao, who had participated in the Southern Army, and two Chinese soldiers who had fought for the North and south in the United States were smiling and hating each other in Shanghai.
These are the stories of the "Chinese" in that American Civil War.
@Headlines Military