Samuel Jones

Overview

Samuel Jones was a formerly enslaved Black man who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry while the regiment was stationed near Natchitoches, Louisiana during April 1864. Military records noted that he was twenty-nine years old at the time of his enlistment in the Union Army, but unlike the index card entries in the Pennsylvania Civil War Veterans’ Card File which provide physical descriptions of other formerly enslaved Black men, Samuel Jones’ Pennsylvania Civil War Veterans’ Card File entries are devoid of such data.

Note: Researchers for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story theorize that this 47th Pennsylvania Freedman’s surname may be different from what was shown on regimental muster rolls because no index cards have been located for him in the U.S. U.S. Civil War Pension General Index or the U.S. Veterans’ Pension Payment systems, and there are very few other U.S. military records currently available for him, which may indicate that this 47th Pennsylvania Freedman had been enrolled, initially, under the surname of his former enslaver and had opted, post-war, to change that surname in order to disassociate himself from that enslaver (as was the case with Aaron French, who had been initially enrolled at Natchitoches, Louisiana under the name of his former enslavers, the Bullard family).

To view the local, state and federal records that are being collected for this 47th Pennsylvania Freedman by researchers associated with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers’ project, please see:

Samuel Jones: State and Federal Census Records (not yet available);
Samuel Jones: State and Federal Military Records (partial collection).

Formative Years

According to U.S. military records, Samuel Jones was born sometime around 1835. Based on data obtained from U.S. Compiled Military Service Records and U.S. Civil War Pension files for other formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in Natchitoches, Louisiana around this same time, who were documented in those records as having been born in Louisiana or Mississippi and enslaved near Natchitoches, researchers for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers’ project currently theorize that Samuel Jones had also likely been born into the system of chattel slavery which existed in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Note: According to historian Carin Peller-Semmens, “To understand the emotional and practical legacies of slavery in northwest Louisiana it is imperative to begin with the fact that slavery was about power.

Power—racial, economic, and personal—was never equally distributed between owner and owned or between former slaveholders and the newly emancipated. Under slavery, power rested completely in the grips of whites and in freedom, power remained heavily tilted to white favor. On the rare occasions that African Americans asserted real, substantive power—notably during Radical Reconstruction—Red River whites responded violently and vituperatively…. Racial power undergirded every aspect of Red River life, from the loans extended by banks to slaveholders, to the levees built by slaves, to the cotton planted and picked by thousands of field hands. The political leanings of the region were solidly pro-slavery and the deep emotional and financial investment of Red River slaveholders in slaveholding made it ideally suited to become the Confederate capital of the Trans-Mississippi West….

The manner in which settlement unfolded in the Red River [region] and the capitalist nature of this expansion underscores the true composition and the dependent relationship of slavery and capitalism in one of the most dynamic, exploitative regions of the South…. Crude yet thoroughly embedded in national and transatlantic commerce, slavery etched its own indelible foundation [as] slaveholders leveraged the power to ‘command people as property’ to relocate their chattel to burgeoning regions and to organize their labor resources as they saw fit….

The movement of those enslaved to new cotton lands increased cotton production from ‘1.2 million pounds in 1790 to 2.1 billion in 1859.’ The British textile industry was dominated by American cotton by the 1830s. The Bank of the United States (B.U.S.) was the single biggest lender in the nation and by the 1830s the Natchez and New Orleans branches ‘lent out a full third of the capital of the B.U.S., much of it used to buy thousands of enslaved people.’ Slaveholders thus began amassing wealth in the form of slaves—actively investing in more humans than ever before…. Slavery rapidly became a reasonably secure method of holding individual wealth, largely because the federal system of taxation ‘protected both wealth and rights in slave property’ and financial institutions were founded and funded on enslaved bodies and the cotton extracted from them.

According to historian Madison Faizon, state law also played a significant role in embedding slavery into “Louisiana’s social and economic society.”

By 1808, Louisiana enacted its first Civil Code, entitled the Digest of the territory of Orleans. The Digest was the first article of modern legislation to include slave law. This legislation … legitimized the tightening system of enslavement in the territory. According to Louisiana’s Civil Code, ‘A slave is one who is in the power of his master, to whom he belongs. The master may dispose of his person, his industry and his labor, he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any thing but what must belong to his master.’

Peller-Semmens adds further insights to how interwoven slavery was with the U.S. and Louisiana economies during the early to mid-1800s, noting that “On the rural frontier, slave mortgages—or the income accrued from slave rentals—were essential to the process of migration.”

Many families that chose to move to the Red River valley did not have liquid funds or the means to finance their journey and had to take out loans or lines of credit to move their possessions. Others had to use credit to purchase additional slaves or to move their slaves with them. Slaves were consequently often hired out near the plantation of origin in order to pay for relocation costs…. Slaves might also be liquidated in times of personal and national economic distress. Additionally, slaves were used as collateral to raise significant sums of cash and credit through informal networks that ‘operated alongside, but not directly through’ the emerging banking system. Slave property was thus the ’critical link’ in antebellum credit relations and much of the banking in Louisiana was ‘conducted directly with factorage firms rather than banks.’

“The presence of small slaveholders and yeoman farmers on the Red River [also] led to other developmental changes,” explains Peller-Semmens:

Federal census data shows that land acquisition and settled population grew rapidly in the antebellum decades and by 1850 the {Red River] regional population was 46,015 including slave and free inhabitants. By, 1860, the total regional population was 78,845. Cotton was the principal cash crop and in the final decade of the antebellum era, the region expanded production with crop values increasing four-fold from just over $9.6 million to over $41.6 million.… As Louisiana, and especially the cotton-producing region of the Red River, boomed and attracted new residents, slaves were transferred in unprecedented numbers from areas of the South where there was deemed to be an excess to areas where slaves were most in demand….

For slaveholders residing in the Red River [region], the aim was not to recreate the luster and grandeur of the sugar parish homes in the southern part of Louisiana or to transplant the polish of Upper and Lower South plantation homes. The slaveholders who relocated to this region were fuelled [sic] by the ethos of westward expansion and informed by the increasing international need for cotton. The demand transformed slavery into a lucrative, modern, export-driven enterprise where slaves and cotton were traded indeterminately as human and agricultural commodities…. It was this commitment to land, cotton, and slaves that propelled regional growth from frontier holdings to settled plantations by [the] mid-1850s. Though the region contained more free women and established holdings by 1860, the solid base of this society was slavery and cotton. Small slaveholders and mid-sized planters dominated cotton operations but all shared a region-wide commitment to slavery, cotton, and the race-based power of the antebellum South. The rough-hewn nature of the region spawned a brutal culture….

Enslaved men, women and children “toiled in the fields from sunup to sundown, caring for growing cotton plants, turning the soil, picking, ginning and finally packing the crop for market,” according to Peller-Semmens.

The cotton cycle began shortly after January first and stretched throughout the year. During the winter months, when the ground was still hard and frost enclosed the topsoil, slaves felled trees, split logs, hauled and repaired rails, and cleared the underbrush and briars from the established fields….

In late January or early February, they “planted the cotton seeds” and “the care and maintenance of the crop commenced,” adds Peller-Semmens:

From mid-February through to June, slaves labored in the field plowing, picking weeds, and skimming [using a mule-drawn tool to ‘clean weeds while sparing the crop plants’]…. In midsummer slaveholders tasked their bondspeople with thinning or ‘chopping’ cotton, a laborious process wherein ‘hoe-wielding slaves’ created foot-wide intervals between growing plants, chopped weeds, plowed, and tended the corn and sundry sustenance crops…. [In June, they] ran plows through the rows with a ‘mould board’ [to free] the plants of grass and weeds…. Finally, late summer and autumn brought the cotton harvest…. Demands on enslaved labor grew significantly during the harvest and the workdays were oppressive, long, and more taxing…. Picking slaves carried a voluminous sack tied about the waist into which they placed the cotton. Once full, overseers or drivers weighed the sack—those individuals who did not meet the required poundage were whipped as punishment—before emptying the contents into a basket. Each hand had a set amount of cotton to pick, and these targets often reached at least two hundred pounds a day….

But that heartrending, perilous life would change dramatically for Samuel Jones with the arrival of the Union Army in Natchitoches during the spring of 1864.

American Civil War

After enlisting with the Union Army at a recruiting depot in Natchitoches, Louisiana on 5 April 1864, Samuel Jones was officially enrolled on that date as an Undercook with Company C of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry by that regiment’s third-in-command, Major William H. Gausler, and was then officially mustered in under that rank on 22 June 1864 while the regiment was stationed at Morganza, Louisiana.

Military records at the time described Samuel Jones as a twenty-nine-year-old “field hand” who was 5’6” tall with black hair, black eyes and a black complexion, documenting for posterity that he had been enslaved just prior to the time of his enlistment with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Then, sometime during this same tenure of enlistment, he was promoted to the rank of Private, according to the “Registers of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865” (47th Regiment, Company C), which are maintained by historians at the Pennsylvania State Archives as part of the collection, “Records of the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs.” Remaining with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry for the entire duration of its final nineteen months of service to the nation, he was honorably mustered out with his regiment at Charleston, South Carolina on 25 December 1865.

Military engagements undertaken by the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during his tenure of enlistment included the:

1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana (occupation of Natchitoches, early April 1864; Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, 8 April; Battle of Pleasant Hill, Virginia, 9 April; occupation of Grand Ecore, 11 to 22 April; encampment at Cloutierville, 22 April; Battle of Cane River/Monett’s Ferry, 23 April; occupation of Alexandria, Louisiana and construction of Bailey’s Dam near Alexandria, 26 April to 13 May; march toward Marksville, 14 to 15 May; Battle of Mansura/Marksville, 16 May; march through Simmesport to Morganza, 17 to 20 May; encampment at Morganza, 20 May to late June; New Orleans, late June to early July);
Transportation by U.S. Steamship McClellan from New Orleans, Louisiana to Fort Stevens, District of Columbia (7 to 12 July 1864) and a potential, memorable encounter with President Abraham Lincoln (12 July 1864);
Battle of Cool Spring/Snicker’s Gap, Virginia (18 July 1864);
Major-General Philip Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign across Virginia (Battle of Berryville, 3 to 4 September; Battle of Opequan/Third Winchester, 19 September; Battle of Fisher’s Hill, 21 to 22 September; Battle of Cedar Creek, 19 October);
Encampment at Camp Russell, near Winchester, Virginia and defense of the Washington, D.C. area (late October through mid-December 1864);
Railroad Guard Duties and Winter Quarters, Camp Fairview, Charlestown, West Virginia (20 December through early winter 1865);
Defense of the Washington, D.C. area through the end of the American Civil War and in the wake of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln (various duty stations, February through early June 1865); and
Provost and Reconstruction-related duties in Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina (early June 1865 until Samuel Jones’ honorable discharge at Charleston on 25 December 1865 upon completion of his term of enlistment).

Samuel Jones’ last entry in the regiment’s final muster-out roll for December 1865 noted the following: “Amount of clothing drawn since last settlement $70.99.” According to that same muster roll, he still owed $2.00 to Company C’s sutler for additional supplies that he had purchased sometime after 31 August 1864—an outstanding debt that was likely due to the fact that he and multiple other members of Company C had not been paid for their military service by the federal government since 30 June 1865.

To view the state and federal military records of Samuel Jones that have been collected by 47th Pennsylvania project researchers to date, see: Samuel Jones: State and Federal Military Records.

Post-War Life

Researchers for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story have not yet determined what happened to Samuel Jones after he was honorably discharged from the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. They are continuing to search for archival documents that may provide details about his post-war life, and also plan to obtain his U.S. Compiled Military Service Records (CMSRs) and, if available, his U.S. Civil War Pension file from the U.S. National Archives.

Moving forward, they hope to document details of his life during the time of his enslavement, military service record during the American Civil War, and additional details of his post-war life and the lives of his family members, as well as his burial location, and will update his biography when those records are received.

Note: You can help ensure that the story of this Black Civil War soldier’s life is uncovered by making a donation in support of our work. Please visit our Support Us page today.

Sources:

Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers: 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
Faizon, Madison. “The Emergence and Evolution of Slavery Legislation in Antebellum Louisiana,” in Pittsburgh Undergraduate Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (July 21, 2021; accessed September 1, 2022: https://www.pur.pitt.edu/pur/article/view/22). Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Frederick Honors College, The University of Pittsburgh.
“Jones, Samuel,” in Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
“Jones, Samuel”, in General Index Cards, U.S. Civil War Compiled Miliary Service Records. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
“Jones, Samuel,” in U.S. Civil War Muster Rolls (47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Company C). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
“Jones, Samuel,” in “Roll of Co. C, 47th Regiment, Infantry,” in Registers of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865 (47th Regiment, Company C), in “Records of the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs.” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives, retrieved online 10 February 2020.
Mullen, Lincoln. “The Spread of U.S. Slavery, 1790–1860” (interactive map). Fairfax, Virginia: Department of History and Art History, George Mason University, retrieved online 1 September 2022.
Peller-Semmens, Carin. “Unreconstructed: Slavery and Emancipation on Louisiana’s Red River, 1820–1880” (Thesis: Doctor of Philosophy, April 2016), pp. 12, 16, 25-26, 33-34, 46, 52, 56-57, 63-64, Brighton, England: The School of History, Art History, and Philosophy, The University of Sussex.
Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
Snyder, Laurie. 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story, 2014-present.