Richard Etheridge, 1842-1900

Richard Etheridge, 1842-1900. “In Behalf of Humanity”. , Richard Etheridge was a 19-year-old slave in the fall of 1861, when thousands of Confederate soldiers came to fortify Roanoke Island. Their defeat that winter began an influx of black refugees, slave and free. The U.S. Army evacuated some from the mainland. Others came on their own for a chance at freedom though many remained legally enslaved under Union authority. Still the Army housed the newcomers in the Confederate barracks and even paid them for their labor. As the "contraband camp" expanded onto confiscated property that may have included the Aquarium site, the Army brought in Northern abolitionists to help manage it. Soon the ambitious experiment known today as the Freedmen's Colony had schools, churches, fledgling industries, and about 3,500 residents, nearly six times the island's pre-war population., What could you hope to achieve if you had been enslaved?, Life was hard, however, and options were few until President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, freed millions of slaves in current and former Confederate territory and made them eligible to serve in the U.S. armed forces. In the following months, Etheridge and other black men on Roanoke Island volunteered. Some went to war with assurance that their families at the Colony would be cared for., Etheridge rose quickly through the ranks of the 36th U.S. Colored Troops, helped liberate more than 3,000 slaves in two states, and fought in the Battle of New Market Heights, Virginia. Outraged by reports of corruption and abuse at the Colony, he sent a letter of protest to the Freedmen's Bureau "in behalf of humanity." While guarding the Mexican border after the war, he advanced to regimental commissary sergeant, a position of considerable responsibility., He could have made a new life in Texas or elsewhere; but he returned home, where new battles awaited. He helped thwart a federal effort to remove black natives from Roanoke Island along with the last refugees. He bought land for the first time and helped black neighbors do likewise. He also resumed commercial fishing with his former master, started a family, became active in his church, and held at least three county offices between 1870 and 1878., Like many other slaves in coastal North Carolina, Etheridge was involved in maritime occupations such as fishing, sometimes alongside his master, sometimes unsupervised, and he became an accomplished waterman at an early age. Despite laws against slave education, he also learned to read and write. All these skills served him well during and after the Civil War., "Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship." -Frederick Douglass, , (caption) Harper’s Weekly engraving courtesy of the Outer Banks History Center. Background map: Battle of Chaffin’s Farm, New Market Heights, courtesy of the Library of Congress.