Mary Lee Brady, Ph.D.

Thomas E. Hemings, a private in the Union Army was enlisted as a White man, served honorably and died on January 1, 1865 we assume from wounds suffered during December 1864 in the Battle of Nashville.  And, because he died before war's end and without a wife or children to mourn him as is so often the case in war, ... there was little known or remembered excepting perhaps by parents like Beverly, Madison, Eston and their sister Harriette.  But, the pain evaporated when the parents died and memories of men like Thomas E. Hemings did also.  Such is the reality of wars and memories of wars.  Except for government records and archives worth viewing, we should never have known that our freedoms and liberties were paid for by young men like Thomas E. Hemings we never knew.

http://freepages.music.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~edgmon/cwallquiet.htm

Equally significant for youth generations to know is that throughout the Union states prior to and during the war were an unknown but significant percentage of offspring of mixed heritage who enlisted as Whites and men of color in the Union cause.  It is speculative as to why any man offers up his liberty and life for a cause but for certain that many young men did and we have the liberty to speculate that thousands of young men like Thomas Eston Hemings made the choice to not only vote for Abraham Lincoln but also answer his call to arms in honor of what most held most dear, ... their sense of self.

The institution of slavery as existed in America was a constant threat to free men of color and those passing for White.   Few had any doubt they could be kidnapped in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, carried down river into Virginia or another slave holding state and sold into bondage.  It was a common occurrence and the laws of the land were more efficient in capturing run-away slaves living in free states than it was in rescue and return of liberty to freemen, women and children illegally captured by so-called bounty hunters. 

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