Under duress, people do what they must to survive—kill, eat human flesh, move to Texas. In 1861, Henry James, a Black man from Chester County, even volunteered for slavery. Fortunately, his version of bondage only lasted the few weeks it took him to get out of the South. Safely back home, he enlisted in the Union army to fight the slaveholders.
Born free in Pennsylvania, James was living on East Union Street in West Chester’s Black section when a reporter for Chester County’s Daily Local News heard his tale in 1891. Sometime in 1860, he was hired as a servant by William P. Chambliss, a lieutenant in the 5th Cavalry Regiment, who was born in Virginia. Though Chambliss was stationed at Camp Cooper, about 150 miles west of Fort Worth, Texas, he’d spent the past 18 months on recruiting duty in Pennsylvania at the U.S. Army Carlisle Barracks.
Upon his return to Texas in 1860, Chambliss was assigned to Camp Cooper. James accompanied him as his body servant, an employee who maintained an officer’s uniform, equipment and horse livery. “I went as a free man and at perfect liberty to come and go when I pleased,” James told the Daily Local. “Most of the officers in the army were of Southern birth and, in those days, would take one of their slaves along as a personal attendant.”
Camp Cooper was a hellish collection of tents and makeshift buildings made of mud, stone and wood established in 1856 by Col. Albert Sidney Johnston, who later joined the Confederacy and was killed at Shiloh. The place was plagued by severe weather, insects, dust and irregular supply trains. Rattlesnakes were such an issue that the chicken coop had to be built well above ground. Troops campaigned actively against the Comanche in 1857 and ’58, but local unrest declined after 1859, when the nearby reservation closed and its 400 residents were moved farther west. By then, Camp Cooper’s military use had almost expired.
On, Feb. 1, 1861, Texas became the seventh Southern state to secede from the Union, charging (among other things) that the federal government had failed to prevent Indian attacks. Unerringly loyal to the Union despite his Southern roots, Chambliss wanted to fight on Feb. 25, when Camp Cooper and its 200 men were surrounded by 500 Texas troops demanding surrender. Accounts differ on the specifics, but the camp ultimately surrendered. The terms allowed members of the garrison to leave with their personal property, including the officers’ slaves.
This presented a problem for a free Black man like James. By Confederate logic, if James didn’t belong to any of the men, he must be federal property. Chambliss realized that his employee would likely be seized and sold. “Every Negro found in camp was asked, ‘Who do you belong to?’ I promptly proclaimed myself as belonging to Lt. Chambliss,” James recalled. “The lieutenant acknowledged the ownership, and I was duly inventoried among the personal belongings of the lieutenant.”
According to James, his time in “slavery” lasted from Feb. 25 to March 31. That day, Chambliss and the rest boarded the Coatzacoalcos, a steamer chartered by the federal government to bring them home. Along the way, James undoubtedly had to behave as a slave, which couldn’t have been easy for any man born free. “I had a tolerably good education,” he noted. “But the lieutenant cautioned me not to display my knowledge. ‘Don’t read a paper,’ said he, ‘and be as stupid as possible.’”
The Coatzacoalcos arrived in New York on April 11. Chambliss and James likely parted there.
Chambliss later participated in the Manassas and Peninsula campaigns, the siege of Yorktown, and the battles of Williamsburg and Hanover Court House. In June 1862, while leading his command in a charge in the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, he was wounded six times and ended up in Richmond, Virginia, as a prisoner of war.
James worked for a year as a wagon driver. In 1863, he enlisted in the 3rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment, where he became a sergeant major. “My close observance of army affairs while serving as body servant for Lt. Chambliss made me familiar with the drill,” he told the newspaper. “So I was proficient in the duties of a soldier.”
Trained at Camp William Penn in Philadelphia, the 3rd took part in operations around Charleston, South Carolina, including the sieges of Fort Wagner and Fort Gregg. After the war, James remained a soldier for another 10 years, fighting Indians in Texas and New Mexico. He returned to West Chester in 1883.
James had done what needed doing. There was no more talk about him being anyone’s slave.
Taken from the archives of Mark E. Dixon’s Retrospect column, a fixture in Main Line Today for 16 years.
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