ELECTION DAY

 WILLIAM HARVEY CARNEY

Does that name ring a bell?  Mr. Carney is a man who won the Congressional Medal of Honor - our nation's highest and most esteemed decoration given to a military service member.  It is given to a person who performed some great act of personal bravery while defending America. This man risked his life, during our Civil War, to save our flag - an action in battle that encouraged all those who witnessed it to fight on.

During the Union assault on the Confederate stronghold of Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina, the Rebels had mortally wounded the Union color guard - the flag bearer.  In those times. the color guard led the assault so that all could see how far they should advance.  That encouraged all soldiers to keep moving forward.  Carney saw that the color guard had gone down; he ran to where the flag was standing in the ground, picked up the American flag and marched forward with it.  He planted it on a small hill near the fort from where he and the other soldiers could fire with protection. When the retreat order was given, he again grabbed the flag and brought it back though severely wounded.  He proudly boasted that "the flag never touched the ground."

William Harvey Carney was born in 1840 in Norfolk, Virginia.  He was born a slave.  Carney had made his way to New Bedford, Massachusetts and freedom via the underground railroad.  As the Civil War raged in 1863, he volunteered to serve with the 54th Massachusetts Infantry.  That unit was part of the Union Army's siege of Fort Wagner. 

He was the first African-American to earn the Medal though not the first to receive it. The act occurred in 1863 and the award from Congress came in 1900. The Congressional citation reads, "When the color sergeant was shot down, this soldier grabbed the flag, led the way to the parapet, and planted the colors thereon.  When the troops fell back, he brought off the flag under a fierce fire in which he was twice severely wounded." 

Mr. Carney passed in 1908.  His legacy leaves an elementary school in his name in New Bedford, a six-foot tall granite statue on the U.S. Military Academy grounds at West Point and his image on the African-American Medal of Honor Recipients Memorial in Wilmington, Delaware.  A postman much of his life, after the war, he founded the National Association of Letter Carriers. We should all know William Harvey Carney.

Recently, the Shaw Memorial located in Boston Commons was defaced in rioting following the George Floyd incident.  That memorial honors the first all-volunteer black regiment of the Union Army in the Civil War - Carney's 54th Massachusetts Infantry.