Buffalo Sergeant: First Sergeant Mingo Sanders

By Brian Smith

This is a true story of the life of Mingo Sanders. Freed from slavery during the Civil War, he arose to become the First Sergeant of the U.S. Army Bicycle Corps and leads his company through two deployments in the Spanish American war, first Cuba and later the Philippine Islands. In the shadow of the Buffalo Soldiers legacy, his honor was crushed into the dust of Brownsville, Texas by the Rough Riders Colonel. Time rights the wrongs done to him when President Theodore Roosevelt's actions are overturned by the first U.S. Army Equal Opportunity Office. Why haven't you ever heard of him? No longer living, and with no living relatives, his legacy has never been fully restored. Can it be when government institutions, corrupted by baked in racism, have worked for so long to keep his story from blemishing the Medal of Honor recipient and face of Mount Rushmore?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781304780287

Brian Smith

Hi my name is Brian Smith and I created Sid after becoming involved in Green Building. Sid is an eco-sensitive turtle that wants to share his experiences whatever they may be. EBooks are a great way for writers and illustrators to publish their works, it is however a different perspective for the consumers because it isn't tangible. I guess this is why we price them so low in hopes of getting enough eBooks sold to warrant going to a real paper book which is a fantastic concept and saves the lives of thousands of trees!

Book preview

Buffalo Sergeant

Sergeant First Class (Ret.) Brian M. Smith

Buffalo Sergeant 

First Sergeant Mingo Sanders 

Enlisted Records

Washington, D.C.

Buffalo Sergeant

First Sergeant Mingo Sanders

Enlisted Records

Copyright © 2024 by Brian Michael Smith, all rights reserved.

All references to historical events, real people, or real places are just that, real and not fake. They have been researched, cited, and will be made available upon request. While I am a historian, I am not an official U.S. Army, D.O.D., or White House Historian. I am an enlisted soldier and that is why this story is told from an enlisted soldiers’ point of view. Any views or opinions within are my own, or those who shared them, and not those of my employer the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the White House.

LCCN 2023923805

ISBN 978-1-304-38737-0 hardback

ISBN 978-1-304-83476-8 paperback

ISBN 978-1-304-78028-7 ebook

Imprint lulu.com

Enlisted Records, LLC

self-publishing in Washington, D.C.

www.enlistedrecords.org

[e-mail]

Wednesday, December 6, 2023, this book is dedicated to my first grandchild who changed my life, to my children who let me be a father to them even though I am not the same color, and to my wife who has supported me throughout my service to the U.S. Army.

Saturday, December 25, 2023, this book is also dedicated to all of the African American soldiers who I have ever served with, especially the following: Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Lieutenant General (Ret) Nadja Y. West, Major General (Ret) Patrick D. Sergeant, Colonel (Ret) Andrea Taliaferro, Lieutenant Colonel Altwan Grate-Whitfield, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Fiddermon, Captain William B. Taliaferro III, First Lieutenant Cara Taliaferro, Command Sergeant Major (Ret) Michael Gragg, Sergeant Major (Ret) Keith Roach Top, Master Sergeant (Ret) Nickcola Noble, Sergeant First Class (Ret) Bobby Mann Jr. Drill Sergeant, Sergeant First Class (Ret) Rodney Shivers my Recruiter, Las Vegas Recruiter Sergeant First Class Eric H. Jackson, Sergeant First Class Gary Tuggle, Sergeant First Class Danita Cotton, Staff Sergeant (Ret) George Spicer, Sergeant (Ret) Jamal Tylor, and Specialist Alex Hatcher.

Acknowledgements 

I have a few people to thank for providing me with records and encouragement while writing this book. First, thank you to Edward Adams, LTC, US Army, the Department Chair of Military Science at Gonzaga University, for validating my curiosity and motivation that this is a story that can and should be told. Also, for helping to identify the different stories being told. Thanks to Emma Selfors, and The Historical Museum of Fort Missoula, I was able include Mingo’s physical descriptions by the physician who wrote his medical waivers, and the great lengths his chain of command went to keep him in the Army. Thanks to Dennis Michael Edelin, Chief, Archives Research Room at the National Archives, for providing me with Mingo Sanders official military record from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. Also, the Citizen Archivist program at the National Archives was helpful to focus my efforts on the mission of telling the enlisted soldier's story, along with the records of the Returns of the Adjutant General digitized by Ancestry.com. Another source I relied on was familysearch.com which provided the records of enlistment for every soldier I looked for in this book. I would also like to thank in advance any people at various other organizations who may yet get back to me on my requests for information, so that I may update this later. 

Buffalo Sergeant

Chapter 0, Origins

Chapter 0.1, Childhood

Chapter 0.2, Adolescence

Chapter 1, First Enlistment

Chapter 1.1, Raw Recruit

Chapter 1.2, Luella

Chapter 1.3, Villain

Chapter 2, Second Enlistment

Chapter 2.1, Sergeant

Chapter 3, Third Enlistment

Chapter 3.1, Three Strikes

Chapter 3.2, Mother of Invention

Chapter 4, Fourth Enlistment

Chapter 4.1, Halcyon Years

Chapter 4.2, Bicycle Corps

Chapter 4.3, Cuba

Chapter 4.4, Medal of Honor

Chapter 5, Fifth Enlistment

Chapter 5.1, Philippines

Chapter 5.2, First Sergeant

Chapter 5.3, Father

Chapter 6, Sixth Enlistment

Chapter 6.1, Eye of the Storm

Chapter 7, Seventh Enlistment

Chapter 7.1, Abandoned

Chapter 7.2, Brownsville

Chapter 7.3, Testimony

Chapter 7.4, Drumming Out

Chapter 7.5, Discharge Without Honor

Chapter 8, No Home for the Holidays

Chapter 8.1, Onward

Chapter 8.2, Upward

Chapter 9, Capital Witness Part 1

Chapter 9.1, Capital Witness Part 2

Chapter 9.2, Capital Witness Part 3

Chapter 10, Advocate

Chapter 10.1, Attorney

Chapter 10.2, Apathy

Chapter 11, Messengers

Chapter 11.1, Watchmen

Chapter 12, Arc

Chapter 12.1, Exoneration

Chapter 12.2, Vote

Chapter 0, Origins

I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, springtime, or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege.

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

___________________

January to March 1857, on an unknown day Mingo was born in Florence. If he was accounted for in the 1860 United States Census, it was on the South Carolina Slave Schedule and was merely a number with an age and sex under a slave owners name likely that of Sanders. The first official document establishing his identity wouldn’t come until he joined the U.S. Army. Mingo was an enslaved black American child living in the low country of South Carolina where his family worked on a farm plantation, and while his recruitment paperwork said he was from Marion County, South Carolina, he was likely basing that on what he had been told over the years by those who raised him. He could have very well been brought there early in life from a place further south on the underground railroad. His father is the only family member known; his name was Julian Saunders, listed on Mingo’s death certificate. Maybe he never knew his mother, she could have died in childbirth?

Low Country

Mingo Swamp is fed by the Black Creek which drains into the Peede River before reaching the Atlantic Ocean between Myrtle Beach and Charleston, the greater area is known as the low country of South Carolina. This region is scarred by historical markers from the Revolutionary War and heralded irregular heroes like Andrew Pickens, Francis Swamp Fox Marion, and Thomas Gamecock Sumter, known for their irregular warfare tactics. I like to call Mingo Sanders the original Black Panther for his lifelong focus on the prize of freedom, which he did with the patience of a black panther stalking down its prize through the suffering of life. The American Black Panther that once roamed the swamps and forests of the south has now died out, so too has Mingo’s lineage. Yet still to this day his legend roams the low country as Brakeman, it wanders up and down the western frontier from the Dakotas to Mexico known as Buffalo Soldier, it forges a way from Montana to Missouri as Iron Rider, on baseball fields as a Black Panther All-Star, on the Philippine Islands and Cuba as a Hill Climber, and from the White House to the halls of Congress as the late First Sergeant.

The low country made South Carolina a rich colony, even before the Revolutionary War. Skilled laborers from the upper Guinea Coast of Africa were brought there as slaves. These workers had the agricultural knowledge in rice cultivation that slave owners lacked, which was vital to transforming the low country swamplands into rice fields by harnessing the tide. On the other side of Francis Marion National Forest is an area known as Moncks Corner where the Mepkin Plantation once existed as the home of Henry Laurens, a founding father, merchant, slave trader, and rice planter. Mepkin was in Marion County in the 1770’s, present day Berkeley County, near Charleston, South Carolina. Today it is known as Mepkin Abbey under the care of Trappist Monks of the Cistercian Order who observe strict interpretation of the Rule of St. Benedict. The Flagg Plantation was located a few miles east, by Flagg Creek on the eastern branch of Cooper River off Cainhoy Road. The surname of the owner of the Flagg Plantation was Sanders. This is one possible place of origin for Mingo Sanders. Charleston was one of the largest markets for international slave trade. Slaves were sold in the open air of Charleston until a city ordinance forbade it, then moved indoors at places like Ryan’s Mart, known today as the Old Slave Mart Museum. Henry Laurens company called Austin and Laurens started as a mercantile business importing rum and mercantile goods from the British and exporting rice to Spain. The Austin and Laurens Company entered the international slave trade in cooperation with Grant, Oswald and Company that operated Bunce Castle slave outpost in Sierra Leone. The Austin and Laurens Company provided for the slaves once they were offloaded until they were sold. The volume of slaves his company trafficked exceeded 8,000 Africans in the decade of 1770’s. By 1860 the cotton industry had become the most profitable industry in the United States. It was producing over 2 billion pounds annually, or roughly two-thirds of the global supply, by slave labor.

Tracing Mingo Sanders, or any former slave's, heritage from the upper Guinea Coast of Africa, or the Sierra Leone, through the slave mart in Charleston, to a low country plantation like Mepkin or Flagg Creek has a few problems. They are the following: less than 20% of freedmen in that area took their former masters name as their surname, before the 1870 U.S. Census only age and gender were recorded for people held in slavery, records of ownership only listed an enslaved persons first name, and enslaved people were often transferred through wills, or bills of sale, before the Civil War. Each obstacle is like a brick in the wall blocking people researching the ancestry of slaves. Any progress tracing Mingo’s story before the 1870’s is halted by the brick wall.

During the Civil War the low country swamps became a shelter for liberated slaves and freedmen who wanted to avoid being recaptured. It was safe in the swamps because the Confederate Army would avoid being bogged down by traveling through the swamp. Many slaves escaped with the outbreak of fighting and the remainder were freed with eventual occupation of the Union Army. One result of the Civil War was that freedmen and refugees could establish and begin to document their identities. With the end of the Civil War came citizenship for the freedmen. The low country produced heroes who fought racism in the U.S. Army but risked becoming slaves of another name, that of a Colored Soldier.

This is a story about Mingo Sanders, whose example of inner strength, self-confidence, and resilience became an example for every American Soldier and who’s peaceful protest in uniform and out of it became an example for the future Civil Rights movements. It is also unfortunately a story about the social tactics that were tested and proven on the Colored Infantrymen during the Jim Crow era and later weaponized against the black communities of America. Look back and learn from his story but take caution because your concept of American history, particularly of the progressive era leaders like Theodore Roosevelt, may be disrupted. History leaves its mark on everything, and no amount of obfuscation can erase it. Banning its teaching only makes the learner more curious about it, and when the truth comes to light those who work to keep it unknown end up paying the dearest price.

We will always need to remain vigilant against racism, because no matter how much progress we make to get rid of it, there will always be a chance for it to come back. Don’t become complacent and take equality for granted. Even when we make great advances towards equality there is still a need to push on, ever onward. We must move onward because we cannot stay where we are amidst human suffering. We must see things differently to see how they need to change. We cannot see things the same way, because our views will always be skewed towards our own opinions and there will always be people left out and left behind. We can look to the past to find hope. We can look to the past for encouragement. We can even look far enough into the past where the things we are dealing with today were not a problem, but then there are things they struggled with back then which we do not even think about today. Do not take life for granted because what you take for granted will be taken from you. When you fall, get back up. When you are blocked by obstacles find a way around them and move onward, onward on this journey towards equality.

Chapter 0.1, Childhood

When the man, who but a few weeks ago was First Sergeant in Company B of the Twenty-fifth Infantry was a boy, schools for the youth of his race in Marion Co. S. Carolina, where he was born, were very rare indeed. Even when there were schools and the desire to learn, the poverty of a child's parents frequently made it impossible for him to avail himself of the educational advantages offered and to gratify his thirst for knowledge. This was the case with Mingo Saunders. After attending school just long enough to read and write a bit, his parents were obliged to put him to work. From his earliest recollection, he says, he wanted to be a soldier.

A Sketch of Mingo Sanders, by Mary Church Terrell

Voice of the Negro, March 1907.

___________________

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Monday, December 24, 1860, the news of the succession of Confederate States as a reaction to the election of the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln as president was propagated by the Charleston Mercury. Mingo probably couldn’t read it but news of such magnitude probably resonated with the community and was known to them.

Wednesday, January 9, 1861, the American Civil War began. Mingo was just a few years old when the shots rang out in Charleston harbor, fired by Citadel cadets at the Star of the West, a federal cargo ship enroute to resupply Fort Sumter. The sound of those opening volleys would not have reached the children's ears on the cotton farms of Marion County, but war was coming.

Monday, March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln, who campaigned on anti-slavery sentiment, was inaugurated as President of the United States.  Mingo turned four by the time the reverberation from those first shots oscillated into open rebellion, escalating from a blockade of federal supply ships, to attacks against Fort Sumter with Confederate artillery. Before his fifth birthday Charleston, the capitol of the south, was laid to ruins by retaliatory fire from Union guns. There is a picture of Charleston in ruins.

Thursday, January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation took effect and slaves were now allowed to join the Army and fight for their freedom against the rebel Confederacy. The First and Second South Carolina Volunteer (Colored) Infantry had quietly been recruited and were ready to join the fight as soon as they could. If Mingo’s father was one of the many volunteers, where would it have left Mingo? Without a mother in the picture, was he an orphan at the age of five?

Tuesday, June 2, 1863, The Combahee River Raid, hundreds of enslaved families had been living on rice plantations unaware of their emancipation until nurse and spy, Harriet Tubman led Colonel James Montgomery to liberate them by guiding the Union Army Ships through the torpedoed waters to locations near the Combahee River Ferry in Beaufort County. The Second South Carolina (Colored) Infantry off loaded the transports while elements of the Third Rhode Island Heavy Artillery gunships provided a barrage which forced the Confederate troops to retreat. The ships were then loaded with refugees and transported them to a resettlement camp on St. Helena Island which had recently been taken from the Confederates by the Union Navy. The operation lasted through the night and into the next day carrying over 700 men, women, and children to freedom.

Some stayed safely behind Union lines, on Saint Helena Island where a schoolhouse for children was built through donations from Reconstruction supporters. A stereoscopic picture of the free children at Penn School, on Saint Helena Island, South Carolina was taken in 1865. Many reconstruction schools have been a target of terror and burned down but the Penn School is still standing today and is open to the public serving as an African American cultural and educational center.

Others continued to follow their Conductor Harriet Tubman to the next stop on the Underground Railroad going about 75 miles to Charleston, another 137 miles brought them to Florence, and some continued north as far as Canada. In Florence, Mingo was just reaching school age and he began to learn how to read and write. If Mingo was from the Combahee River Plantations it would have been wise to never admit it to him and teach him otherwise to prevent him from becoming enslaved again by some slave-hunter. Had Mingo’s father joined the Second South Carolina Volunteer Infantry he could have liberated his own family and found a family for them in Florence while he continued to fight in the war.

Sunday, April 9, 1865, the rebels surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse and soldiers began returning home. Seeing the Second South Carolina Volunteer Infantry marching through Charlestown on their way home was a memory that stayed with eight-year-old Mingo for the rest of his life. Maybe he was looking for his father to return home from the war assuming that he joined one of the South Carolina Volunteer Infantry units. Most likely he didn’t return that day, there were still areas of the country that had not heard that slavery was over and only one quarter of the four million slaves in the United States had been freed. I assume Mingo was now an orphaned refugee living with family relatives in Florence.

Saturday, April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford Theatre. Vice President Andrew Johnson was later sworn in as President.

Chapter 0.2, Adolescence

Once I saw a colored military company parading in Charleston, S.C., the soldiers in their uniforms complete with caps, packs, ammunition belts, and rifles made such an impression on Mingo that he remarked, I thought it was the prettiest sight had ever seen. He would never again be satisfied with the life of a farmhand resolving, I made up my mind right then and there that I would be a soldier someday, if I lived.

A Sketch of Mingo Sanders, by Mary Church Terrell

Voice of the Negro, March 1907.

___________________

On Monday, June 19, 1865, Juneteenth, Federal soldiers occupied Texas. After The War of Rebellion, de facto segregation existed in the state of South Carolina. Racism during the time of the post-war Reconstruction era from 1865-1877, was a challenge to live through for a young black man like Mingo. Segregation became racism, racism became the state's black code in 1865, which later became the Jim Crow laws after South Carolina was readmitted to the Union in 1868. Even though the state of South Carolina was under Federal supervision until 1877, the lost cause of reconstruction was defeated by de jure segregation creating conditions worse than slavery for freed blacks.

Trying to help sort through the postwar chaos, General Oliver Otis Howard was appointed as the commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, more commonly referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau. The Freedmen’s Bureau built schools for the children of freedmen and refugees, and it reclaimed abandoned lands for resale. Providing an opportunity for education was the only lasting benefit achieved by General Howard. The Historically Black College and University named after him in Washington, DC is one example of this.

Property value in Marion County had dropped during the war and only half of its pre-war value returned by 1880, but still it was not given freely. The Freedmen’s Bureau sold or leased it out to people. Those who wanted to continue farming on these lands had to pay for the land ceased by the Freedmen’s Bureau. Life was getting harder, and in many ways becoming a sharecropper was no different than before, some would say it was slavery by another name (without the chains). Eventually, property values returned but the sharecroppers could no longer afford them because the value of cotton had declined, and tobacco took over.

Reconstruction efforts were short lived and soon Mingo left school when his family was compelled to put him to work as a cotton hand. When cotton fields were replaced with tobacco there was less of a need for manual labor. Mingo looked for work elsewhere and began to explore beyond his small town. Railroad companies in South Carolina used enslaved African Americans as their primary source of labor before the Civil War. In the Reconstruction they continued to be the primary railroad builders, as free Blacks found more employment as a railroader than in any other industry.

Mingo found work as a railroader and traveled about the state. He worked on the Wilmington Coast Line (later called the Atlantic Coast Line) and was a brakeman on the route between Wilmington Station N.C. and Colombia Station S.C. Despite the racist laws, he never got in trouble with the law either finding ways to live with it, build support to change it, or look for his chance to leave the state.

In the early days of the railroad cars did not have automatic brakes. Trains had to be slowed by applying the brakes on individual cars manually. This required the employment of brakemen who rode in the caboose where they could quickly apply the brakes on the last car first and then work their way forward to the first one until the train was slowed or stopped. This would require them to walk on top of the cars to turn the crank wheel applying the brakes on each individual car. They sometimes carried additional duties or assisted the conductor with making sure no stowaways were riding along. Working in all-weather environments was a dangerous job, many brakemen fell off, some were run over, and lost their lives along the tracks across the country. An engraving, titled A Picnic," featured a brakeman on the cover of The Railroad Conductor, volume 7, number 15.

The Colored Volunteer units of the Civil War were disbanded, but Mingo never gave up hope that he could one day serve as a soldier. In 1866, the Civil Rights Act declared all US born people to be citizens, another bill in 1868 guaranteed blacks the right to sue, serve on juries, testify in court, and enter legal contracts. This allowed blacks to join the military again which opened the way for Mingo to join the Army, if he could find a recruiter.

The 1870 U.S. Census showed a 17-year-old Mingo Sanders living in St. James Goose Creek Parish, South Carolina, later known as Marion County. It was the house of Samuel Sanders, 60-year-old, with 50-year-old Dafney, and 13-year-old John. Though the ages are off, this is the closest match and could have been his grandfather, grandmother, and brother. If this was his family, then he was enlisting under his brother's name and keeping his own birthday. The absence of a John Sanders in the 1880 U.S. Census and two Mingo Sanders, one born 1852 the other 1857 suggests this may have been the case. What circumstances may have led to enlisting under his brother’s name? Assuming there had never been a legal document establishing his name, he could have enlisted under any name, why choose to use his brothers? At this point to tell Mingo’s story you must tell the Army’s story, specifically the story of Company B, Twenty-Fifth Infantry Regiment, where he would spend his entire military career.

Company B

From 1812 to 1815 the first Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry Regiment served in the War of 1812 on the Lake Champlain Front and Niagara Frontier and after the war consolidated with the Sixth U.S. Infantry Regiment. According to the oldest returns of the Twenty-Fifth U.S. Colored Infantry maintained by the Adjutant General, the unit existed before 1867. It was reconstituted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in January 1864, and while most men were mustered out or were folded into the Eleventh Infantry, the regimental returns continued. In January 1867, the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Regimental Headquarters, Companies A, C, G, H, I, and K were stationed in Memphis, Tennessee. Companies B, D, E, and F were stationed at Chatanooga, Tennessee. This was the standard 12 company per battalion structure for the time where companies I and K were vacant. There were no J companies, just as there is no J Street in Washington, because the letter J had recently begun being used as a separate letter from I and was not officially adopted into American language. Captain Jacob Kline commanded Company B with First Lieutenant Cass Dunham, and Second Lieutenant Joseph M. Kennedy.

Wednesday, March 3, 1869, Congress directs consolidation of the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Colored Infantry Regiments into the Twenty-Fifth. Company B relocated to Humbolt, Tennessee. The unit was not intended to be related in any way to the former Twenty-Fifth. The Twenty-Fifth's Civil War era soldiers were replaced by the buffalo soldiers of the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth who had their own traditions. They in turn would be training the next generation of soldiers who would begin their own heraldry. The next day Hiram Ulysses Grant was inaugurated as the 18th U.S. President.

Thursday, April 15, 1869, the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Regiment Headquarters relocated to Atlanta, Georgia. Company B arrived at their new duty station Fort Jackson, Louisiana, and Captain Charles Bentzoni takes command with First Lieutenant Daniel Heart, and Second Lieutenant Owen J. Sweet assisting his leadership. Assignments of duties are issued to the Non-commissioned officers as follows:

October 1869 the enlisted men of the Twenty-fifth were discharged. At the time there were 36 serving in Company B and 25 were discharged. The previous month 32 had been discharged.

December 1869 most of the Civil War era Veterans in Company B had been discharged with the expiration of their term of service and with them the company’s 73 horses. The arrival of troops from the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Infantry filled the vacancies in the organization of the companies of the Twenty-Fifth Infantry.

The responsibility of the Quartermaster-sergeant was combined with the role of a senior sergeant. After 1870, the First Sergeant position became a separate rank that held the responsibility of senior enlisted advisor to the unit commander. The returns of the Adjutant General accounted for them specifically. Accounted for by name and rank, the following solders were gained by Company B from the Fortieth Infantry: John Stanley, First Sergeant; Henry Carpenter, Sergeant; Robert Harris, Sergeant; James Harrison, Corporal; Charles Hill, Corporal; James Dent, Corporal; Peter Simmons, Corporal; Samuel Savage, Corporal; Charles Chase, Artificer; Charles Banks, Private; Jackson Barrett, Private; Samuel J. Benton, Private; George Boswell, Private; Grafton Brown, Private; Primus Brown, Private; George Bryant, Private; David E. Chase, Private; Nathaniel Collins, Private; Lewis Christy, Private; William Crump, Private; Chas H. Dent, Private; Caleb Dorsey, Private; Joseph Emmis, Musician; Ralph B. Gardner, Private; William Gillis, Private; Edward Glasby, Private; John W. Green, Private; John Harris, Private; George Harris, Private; John Hill, Private; Robert Hopkins, Private; John Jackson, Private; George Johnson, Private; John Johnson, Private; Joseph Johnson, Private; John H. Jones, Private; William A. Lane, Private; John H. Lewis, Private; Chas Lewis, Private; John Luckett, Private; Andrew P. Mitchell, Private; John D. Newman, Private; Elias Parker, Private; Adam Poole, Private; Charles Roaden, Private; John Runnells, Private; J. Smallwood, Private; Willis Smith, Private; Joseph Smith, Private; John Stewart, Private; John Ross, Private; Lucrin Suales, Private; Jacob Tilghman, Private; Moyer Walker, Private; George Washington, Private; William Hardin, Private; Benjamin Harrison, Private; Monroe Johnson, Private; Richard Johnson, Private; James H. Jones, Private; Charles Longworth, Private; Brice Lewis, Private; Benj Orguse, Private; Issac Rossmore, Private; James H. Summers, Private; Peter Steward, Private; Ambrose Skinner, Private; Alick Washington, Private; Chas Williams, Private; John Woodruff, Private.

January 1870, the discharge of soldiers continued until Company B numbered thirty enlisted men with three officers. There were two sergeants, three corporals, one musician, a blacksmith, and an artificer each.

Wednesday, March 30, 1870, the state of Texas officially rejoined the Union when their Congressional Representation was readmitted by President Grant following the approval of their new State Constitution. Shortly after the enactment of the Texas State Constitution the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Regiment was reassigned to be stationed throughout Texas. Five years later, a new Texas State Constitution was enacted and has been in place ever since.

May 1870, Company B relocated to Cibola Creek, Texas.

June 1870, Company B relocated to Turkey Creek, Texas.

July 1870, Twenty-Fifth Infantry Regimental Headquarters arrived at their duty station Fort Davis, and Company B departed for their next duty station at Fort Quitman, Texas.

August 1870, Company B relocated to Fort Quitman, Texas.

Thursday, December 15, 1870, Lieutenant Colonel George Lippitt Andrews is assigned to the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Regiment and in command of the unit.

Sunday, January 1, 1871, Lieutenant Colonel Andrews is promoted to Colonel.

May 1871, Company B relocated to Fort Bliss, Texas.

June 1872, Company B returns to Fort Quitman, Texas.

July 1873, First Lieutenant Washington Sanborn replaces Daniel Heart in Company B.

May 1875, Company A, Twenty Fifth Infantry assists the 10th Cavalry, and two companies of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry on an expedition led by Lieutenant Colonel Shafter crossed the Rio Grande above the Pecos into Mexico with tacit permission to pursue Comanches and destroy their sanctuary. Though successful, it infuriated Mexican citizens and the Mexican Army asserted pressure on them as they made their return across the border. Episodes like this, and border town raids, were common and recorded by the State Department. The importance becomes clearer as the telling of Company B’s story continues.

January 1876, Company B relocated to Fort San Felipe, Texas

February 1877, Company B is stationed at Fort Clark, Texas.

February 1878, Company B returns to station at Fort San Felipe, Texas.

April 1878, The United States officially recognizes Porfirio Dias dictatorial rule of the Mexican government despite the lawlessness along its side of the border occasionally causing disturbances on the Texas side.

Tuesday, June 11, 1878, Company B, with two officers and 22 men, left post and marched to Hackberry crossing to join Collonel Ronald S. Mackenzie and the Fourth Cavalry on an expedition into Mexico.

Saturday, June 15, 1878, Mackenzie’s expedition crossed the Rio Grande into the Republic of Mexico as a show of force against the troops of the Republic of Mexico.

Wednesday, June 19, 1878, At Rey Molino, the expedition met the troops of the Republic of Mexico who tried to halt their advance but the U.S. Infantry advanced and marched directly through the Mexican troops line, who made way for them to pass.

Friday, June 21, 1878, Again the Mexican troops tried to halt the expedition before they recrossed the Rio Grande into Texas at Moncloria crossing, and again they fell back allowing the U.S. Infantry to pass without causing a skirmish.

Sunday, June 23, 1878, Company B returned to Fort San Felipe, Texas, having marched a total distance of about 160 miles.

September 5 to 19, 1879, Company B marched 279 miles relocating to Fort Stockton, Texas.

Thursday, June 3, 1880, the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Regiment Headquarters left Fort Concho, Texas and marched 240 miles to San Antonio, then traveled to Yankton, Dakota Territory by rail and from there by steamer to Fort Randall, Montana arriving June 29, total distance traveled 2,400 miles.

Sunday, June 27, 1880, Company B marched 82 miles to Griersons Springs, Texas, enroute to Dakota Territory.

Wednesday, June 30, 1880, Company B traveled 2,053 miles by rail to Marshall City, Iowa, arriving July 31.

Sunday, August 1, 1880, Company B traveled 103 miles on steamer Westerner arriving at Fort Randall, Dakota Territory at midnight August 2.

Chapter 1, First Enlistment

One day, when I was a right young man, I read in a newspaper that there was a call for soldiers and that there was a recruiting station in Charleston. Just as soon as I could get there, I went, and enlisted in the Army on the sixteenth day of May 1881.

A Sketch of Mingo Sanders, by Mary Church Terrell

Voice of the Negro, March 1907.

___________________

Charleston

Monday, May 16, 1881, at 81 Broadway, Charleston, South Carolina, Mingo stood before Lieutenant Earnist and the U.S. Colors, raised his right hand, and spoke the oath of enlistment:

I, Mingo Sanders, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

Before that day, Mingo Sanders was just a cotton hand from Marion County near Charleston. Another young man named Ransom Smart, a waiter from Beaufort, and four others joined him enlisting in the U.S. Army for five years that day at Charleston, South Carolina. The others were Jacob J. Tyler, Aleck Bennett, Colan Spencer, and Stephen Gibbs. Peter Simmons, a laborer from Charleston, joined on May 21. Thomas Sinclair, a 22-year-old laborer from Charlston, joined them on May 27. They had a few things in common, they were African Americans, they were from South Carolina, and they were sent to the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Regiment in the Dakota Territory. In all, there were 158 young black men from Charleston who were enlisted in the Army by Lieutenant Earnist in the four months from May to August 1881. A microfilm image from the U.S. Army Register of Enlistments shows Mingo and Ransom on the first several lines. The recruits shipped out by rail from Charleston, South Carolina.

Columbus Barracks

Arriving at Columbus Barracks, Ohio the colored recruits were assigned to one of the four training companies. They received instruction from the cadre on basic soldiering for one to four months. Once Mingo Sanders completed training, he was grouped with forty other recruits who shipped out by rail to the Running Water train depot, Dakota Territory, and then by ferry to Fort Randall, South Dakota. It was roughly a 1,500-mile journey west that likely took them through big cities like Chicago, and St Paul. The first thing they probably saw was the Randall Dam, holding back Lake Francis Case, when they arrived.

Fort Randall

Friday, July 8, 1881, the forty new recruits arrived in Fort Randall, and were assigned to companies within the Twenty-Fifth (Colored) Infantry Regiment. Private Mingo Sanders was assigned to Company B, and Private Ransom Smart to Company F. They served as infantrymen. Private Thomas Sinclair also arrived on the eighth but was assigned to Company K, at Fort Meade, Dakota Territory. He would become a musician as well as Private Peter Simmons who arrived on August 26 in a group of thirty recruits,