Pennsylvania, 1891.
A group of Union veterans converged to bury one of their own, Thomas Sylvanus.
Sylvanus fought at the Battles of Mine Run, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania.
He was in the color guard when the 81st
Pennsylvania charged the breastworks at Cold Harbor and
when the rest of his detail fell, he took the National colors from the hands of a wounded man and
Carried them the rest of the day. Captured during the Siege of Petersburg
He survived starvation and abuse in Andersonville Prison, then returned to Pennsylvania
after the war to marry and make a home.
He became naturalized, voted, and drew his pension like any other old soldier
But the name on his gravestone was an adopted title to match his adopted land.
In his home country, Thomas Sylvanas was known as Ah Yee Way.
Born in Hong Kong on the 4th of July, 1845.
When we think of soldiers serving in the U.S. Civil War,
we usually conjure up a certain image, one instilled by
documentaries, novels, and films. The troops we picture are largely white,
or in the case of the US Colored Troops, black, or on occasion,
sometimes we highlight the service of recent European immigrants,
who came fleeing the instability that followed from the Irish potato famine, or revolutions of 1848.
But there were also others serving in the armies of the United States and the rebel Confederacy
people that the wider public is only beginning to learn about, and whose incredible stories historians are beginning to bring to light,
and that's important, because in looking at these stories we get a better picture of America at the time of the Civil War.
So today we're going to do just that, because while troops like Thomas Sylvanas were rare,
they were not unheard of. Research has started to uncover more veterans from Asia and the Pacific Islands,
many of which had escaped earlier historical accounts,
because they enlisted under English names.
In fact,
the National Park Service has begun keeping a list to try to collate and
verify their service records, and as of this episode, it has over 300 names.
Looking at the US Navy enlistment rolls, you'll see men with birth places like Bombay, Shanghai, Java,
Singapore, Lahore, Manila, Samoa, and Tahiti.
Men whose naval captains either hired in foreign ports, or lured them away from the whaling industry.
But sadly, we know little about these men except for their dates of enlistment and discharge
Those who fought in the infantry by contrast gained a certain amount of media attention.
Two Chinese infantrymen, Joseph Pierce and John Tomney, fought at Gettysburg. Pierce survived.
But Tomney, renowned in his unit for humor and personal bravery ,died in the peach orchard when cannon shot severed both of his legs.
His obituary ran in the New York Times.
A few Asians served in the Confederacy as well. A group of Filipinos living near New Orleans enlisted in a Louisiana
Regiment and before the war Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese twins who hailed from present-day Thailand,
retired from show business and bought a plantation in North Carolina. When the South seceded, each had a son join a Cavalry Regiment
But of all the Pacific nations, the Kingdom of Hawai'i sent the most men into combat.
Though officially neutral, Hawai'i's links with New England whalers and missionaries made it a hotbed for
abolitionism. In mock presidential elections, Lincoln pulled better in
Honolulu than in the US and when one southern born resident dared to fly a Confederate flag, her neighbors tore it down.
Over a hundred Hawaiians and Hawaiian-born Americans served in the US Army and Navy during the war signing up for adventure,
money, or to battle slavery. The highest ranking was General Samuel Armstrong the Hawaiian-born son of New England missionaries
who rose to command an African-American regiment, and in the trenches of Petersburg
he was shocked to run into Native Hawaiian soldiers serving as privates with the US Colored Troops.
One soldier had links to the royal family, and some of these men stayed in the army even after the war, joining the infamous
African-American Buffalo Soldiers, but there were others who fought closer to home.
March 28, 1862. Glorieta Pass, New Mexico Territory.
Two men look down from the top of the mesa, hearing gunfire in the distance.
One is the commander of a Colorado unit, but he's been brought here by Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Chavez,
whose largely Mexican American outfit, the 2nd New Mexico Volunteers, know this area
well. Many of their families have lived in the area since the 1600s, when the Spanish established missions there.
In fact, they'd lived in Mexico where slavery was illegal until the border moved south after the Mexican-American War.
Now they were Americans fighting for the Union, but they know that some of the enemy below them are Mexican Americans as well.
Those who had chosen the other side due to differing beliefs,
economic ties to the south, or anger at the US government over the Mexican-American War.
At the bottom of the mesa, Chavez sees 200 Confederates guarding a baggage train, Texans who've invaded the New Mexico Territory
hoping to seize Union gold mines in Colorado. If that succeeds, they can link Texas with Confederate sympathizers in southern California,
gaining Pacific ports to break the union's naval blockade. Chavez doesn't know it,
but the Union has already lost this battle, like it has with the last several.
With resources stripped for the war in the east, it seems like the US troops can do nothing to stop this
Confederate drive across the southwest, unless they act.
unless they act. The Mesa is steep,
so they find anything they can tie together: ropes, lariats, saddle harnesses, and they begin to descend the cliff.
The Confederates see them and open fire with a cannon. Under a rain of shot,
the Union soldiers rope down the steep mesa and form ranks.
And once they advance, it's all over. The Confederate baggage train guards scatter and the main Confederate force
celebrating victory will return to find their supplies looted and burned, pack mules killed or
scattered, and they will have no choice but to walk back to El Paso in the hungry grip of winter. This
Mexican American militia has just broken the Confederate invasion of the southwest.
But Hispanic troops served in more areas than just the southwest.
Up to 20,000 of them served as everything from naval officers to blockade runners, spies to engineers.
In fact, when the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumterm
it was a Cuban officer, Colonel Ambrosio José Gonzales, who handled much of the artillery, and in the final clash of the war
conducted after the Confederate government had already fallen,
Hispanic Texans served on both sides. When Union sappers blazed a crater in Confederate defenses during the Siege of Petersburg,
it was the half Argentinean mining engineer Henry Pleasants who proposed and managed the operation. at
At Gettysburg, when Pickett's charge smashed into the Union lines at Cemetery Ridge,
a color bearer named Joseph de Castro rushed forward into enemy ranks,
battling an enemy color bearer hand-to-hand. Knocking the man down with his flagpole,
he snatched the enemy flag and ran both standards through the swirl of combat,
delivering the captured colors to his colonel. For his actions,
he became the first Hispanic American to receive the Medal of Honor. In the Navy, two Hispanic seamen received the award,
one for defending the Union blockade, and the other, a Chilean dispatch runner
who was one of only six men to breach Confederate defenses during an assault on Fort Fisher.
Many men serving in the north were immigrants recently arrived to the US,
but many Hispanic families who fought on the Confederate side actually predated the revolution.
Hispanic plantation owners living in Florida and Louisiana had settled during the Spanish colonial days,
inheriting that empire's own complicated history with slavery, and due to their social status
they often served as officers. But there were people who had been in the United States even longer who faced a wrenching choice.
Nearly 29,000 Native Americans served in the war, fighting on both sides.
They were scouts, frontier raiders, sharpshooters, harbor pilots, and crack cavalry. And others served no side.
clashing with US Army troops and settlers who abused them and violated agreements. Some tribes that sided with the Confederacy were slaveholders
who wanted to maintain their way of life,
while others who did the same were disillusioned with the US government due to decades of broken treaties.
They pledged military aid to the Confederacy in exchange for a better deal.
in fact this tragic choice of which side to fight for
divided the Cherokee Nation, with its Principal Chief John Ross supporting the Union until ousted and replaced by Stand Watie,
who led the nation to war for the Confederacy. It became in effect a civil war within a civil war,
but that's a story that deserves its whole own episode.
Until then, I'll leave you with this. When Lee and Grant met for the surrender at
Appomattox, Lee noticed that the man who drafted the surrender terms
was Grant's secretary, the Seneca Chief and Lt. Colonel, Ely Samuel Parker.
"I'm glad to see one real American here," Lee quipped. Parker responded,
"We're ALL Americans."