Powhatan Beaty

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Powhatan Beaty
Union Baptist Cemetery
, Cincinnati, Ohio
Allegiance
Service/branch
Years of service1863–1865
Rank
5th Regiment United States Colored Troops
Battles/wars
Awards Medal of Honor
Other workActor

Powhatan Beaty (October 8, 1837 – December 6, 1916) was an

Richmond–Petersburg Campaign. He received America's highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, for taking command of his company at the Battle of Chaffin's Farm
, after all officers had been killed or wounded.

Following the war, he became an orator and actor, appearing in amateur theater productions in his home of

Cincinnati, Ohio. His most well-known stage performance was an 1884 appearance at Ford's Opera House on 9th Street in Washington, D.C., opposite Henrietta Vinton Davis
.

Early life

Beaty was born into

cabinet maker[2] and eventually worked as a turner.[1] He continued to study acting privately and received training in the field from several coaches, including James E. Murdock, a retired professional stage actor from Philadelphia.[2]

A year after the outbreak of the Civil War, with the Confederate victory at the Battle of Richmond, Kentucky, on August 30, 1862, rumors of an impending Confederate attack on Cincinnati began to circulate.

Richmond was 106 miles from Cincinnati, and no organized Union troops lay between the two cities. An attack by Confederate Colonel John Hunt Morgan, who had led his cavalry on a raid behind Union lines in Kentucky the previous month, was also feared.[3] On September 2, the men of Cincinnati were organized into work units to build fortifications around the city.[4]

Although Cincinnati's African Americans were initially pressed into service at bayonet point, after the appointment of William Dickson as commander of the black troops their treatment improved significantly.[5] Dickson promised that they would be treated fairly and kept together as a distinct unit, to be called the Black Brigade. He then allowed them to return home to prepare for military service, with orders to report the next morning for duty.[6] About four hundred men were released that day, September 4, and the next morning about seven hundred reported for duty.[7] Among those men was Beaty, who served in Company Number 1 of the Brigade's 3rd Regiment.[8] Despite the danger of Confederate attack, the unarmed unit[9] was assigned to build defenses near the Licking River in Kentucky,[10] far in advance of the Union lines.[9] For the next fifteen days, they cleared forests, constructed forts, magazines and roads, and dug trenches and rifle pits.[10] The brigade was disbanded on September 20, the threat of attack having receded.[11]

United States Colored Troops service

A portion of the 127th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, later re-designated the 5th USCT, in Delaware, Ohio

By June 1863, Ohio had not yet fielded an African American combat unit, but Ohio blacks were being recruited for service in the regiments of other states.

5th United States Colored Troops.[1] After three months of recruitment and organization in Camp Delaware, on the Olentangy River outside of Delaware, Ohio, the unit set out for Virginia.[14]

By the Battle of Chaffin's Farm on September 29, 1864, Beaty had risen to the rank of

Benjamin Butler[2] and seven months later, on April 6, 1865, awarded the Medal of Honor.[16]

Beaty continued to distinguish himself in the 5th Regiment's further engagements. His actions during the

commissioned officer. Nothing came of Colonel Shurtleff's requests, however Beaty did receive a brevet promotion to lieutenant. By the time he was mustered out of the Army he had participated in thirteen battles and numerous skirmishes.[2]

Post-war life

After the war, Beaty returned to Cincinnati and raised his family. His son,

elocutionist among the African American community of Cincinnati. Through the 1870s he acted in local theaters and directed music and drama exhibitions in the city.[2] He wrote a play about a rich southern planter entitled Delmar, or Scenes in Southland, which was performed in January 1881 with himself in the lead role. Set in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Massachusetts, the work covered the end of slavery and transition to freedom for blacks from 1860 to 1875.[17] The privately run play was well received, but Beaty did not engage in self-promotion and it never moved into public theaters.[2]

Henrietta Vinton Davis

In January 1884, Beaty was working as an assistant engineer at the Cincinnati water works when Henrietta Vinton Davis, a prominent African American actress, came to perform in the city. Together, he and Davis put on a large musical and dramatic festival in Melodeon Hall which proved to be very successful.[2] Included in the show were productions of Ingomar, the Barbarian[18] and Robert Montgomery Bird's The Gladiator, in which Beaty took the role of Spartacus. The culmination of the festival was a performance of selected scenes from Macbeth, with Beaty playing the title role and Davis as Lady Macbeth. Newspapers in both the black and white communities of Cincinnati praised the performances of the two actors, with the Commercial stating that Beaty "threw himself into his part with masterly energy and power".[2]

The successful festival led to Beaty being invited to play as a principal actor in a

New York Globe wrote of the performance "[t]hus leap by leap the colored man and woman encroach upon the ground so long held sacred by their white brother and sister".[18]

Beaty continued to tour with Davis and performed a show in Philadelphia before returning to Cincinnati. He helped form his city's Literary and Dramatic Club and, in 1888, became the organization's drama director.[17]

He lived out the rest of his life in Cincinnati and died at age seventy-nine on December 6, 1916; he was buried at

Union Baptist Cemetery.[15]

Medal of Honor citation

Citation:

Took command of his company, all the officers having been killed or wounded, and gallantly led it.[16]

See also

  • List of American Civil War Medal of Honor recipients: A–F
  • Melvin Claxton and Mark Puls, Uncommon valor : a story of race, patriotism, and glory in the final battles of the Civil War, (Wiley, 2006) (
    ISBN 0471468231
    )

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Hanna, 2002, p. 16
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Hill, 1984, pp. 61–3
  3. ^ a b Claxton and Puls, 2006, pp. 54–5
  4. ^ Clark, 1969, pp. 5–6
  5. ^ Clark, 1969, pp. 7–9
  6. ^ Clark, 1969, p. 17
  7. ^ Clark, 1969, p. 18
  8. ^ Clark, 1969, p. 28
  9. ^ a b Clark, 1969, p. 10
  10. ^ a b Clark, 1969, p. 19
  11. ^ Clark, 1969, p. 20
  12. ^ Williams, 1888, p. 133
  13. ^ a b Williams, 1888, p. 134
  14. ^ "5th Regiment, United States Colored Infantry". Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System. National Park Service. Archived from the original on April 10, 2008. Retrieved April 18, 2008.
  15. ^ a b c d Hanna, 2002, p. 17
  16. ^ a b "Civil War Medal of Honor recipients (A–L)". Medal of Honor citations. United States Army Center of Military History. April 27, 2005. Archived from the original on September 2, 2012. Retrieved January 8, 2007.
  17. ^ a b Hill and Hatch, 2003, pp. 82–3
  18. ^ a b c Hill, 1984, pp. 67–69

References

External links

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