Thomas Wentworth Higginson 
Army Life in a Black Regiment 

‘Army Life in a Black Regiment’ is an account by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized black regiment, in which he described his Civil War experiences. Higginson’s account is particularly important owing to the fact that he contributed to the preservation of Negro spirituals by copying dialect verses and music he heard sung around the regiment’s campfires.

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911) was an American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, and soldier. He was active in the American Abolitionism movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism. He was a member of the Secret Six who supported John Brown. During the Civil War, he served as colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized black regiment, from 1862–1864. Following the war, Higginson devoted much of the rest of his life to fighting for the rights of freed people, women and other disfranchised peoples.