Abraham Galloway, American Hero
By Fay Mitchell
Freedom Fighter Abraham Galloway could not be contained by the words in the U.S. Constitution that declared him less than a man, just three-fifths of a person. Born Feb. 8, 1837 near Wilmington, N.C., he became an abolitionist, Union spy, guerilla war general, state senator, and beloved leader of people. Mercurial, brilliant and fearless, he did not need permission to be free. His mother was enslaved and his father was a white boat builder in the small town of Smithville, now Southport. Soon after an apprenticeship and becoming a master brick mason he moved to Wilmington with his owner. From there he hid in the cargo hold of a boat and nearly died from turpentine fumes while escaping to Philadelphia and on to Ontario to experience freedom.
Galloway became an abolitionist in Canada and traveled in the U.S. and Canada working for the cause of freedom for the enslaved. Handsome, self-assured and a skilled orator, he could win converts for the cause. He ventured into Haiti seeking recruits to organize a military attack on the American South which did not materialize. By now the Civil War was underway. He had to act.
Working within a network of bondsmen in eastern North Carolina, Galloway became a Union spy. He slipped in and out of Union lines providing valuable intelligence and was known as a ghost. He joined Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler to spy in North Carolina, Louisiana and Mississippi. He evaded slave patrols, enemy scouts, Confederate Army units and Rebel guerillas. After a failed attempt to build a canal in Mississippi, the Union troops withdrew, leaving the enslaved workmen at the mercy of their captors. Galloway was captured in Vicksburg in 1862 after being left behind but again cheated death, surviving injury, the swamps, and deprivation.
Back in Union held New Bern, an envoy from the Massachusetts governor and President Lincoln came seeking recruits among the formerly enslaved, with little success. Until one fateful night when he was led into a dark room and came face to face with Abraham Galloway — and a gun to his head. In the company of a group of other potential recruits, Galloway negotiated the terms under which they would serve in the Union army. Within months, 30 brigades were raised. The men were loyal and courageous fighters, active agents in securing their own freedom. Galloway became one of the Union Army’s most valued assets.
Fearless behind enemy lines or lost in a swamp, Galloway was not humbled at a White House meeting in April 1864. He led a delegation of black men to meet with President Lincoln. They presented Lincoln a petition, signed first by Galloway, thanking him for the Emancipation Proclamation, but also demanding suffrage. They quoted to Lincoln from the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal.” Lincoln was speaking with men who had risked their lives for their country and who pressed hard for the right to vote. Lincoln assured cooperation but made no commitment to political equality.
At the war’s end in 1865, many blacks were more cautious in demands for equality than Galloway, whether by pragmatism or economic hardship. He moved from New Bern back to Wilmington, but by 1868 he was again a favorite and was elected overwhelmingly to represent New Hanover and Brunswick Counties in the state senate. He addressed the most fundamental rights of freedmen and freed-women. He voted for the 14th Amendment, crack down on the Ku Klux Klan and the right for blacks to serve on juries. He fought for labor rights and introduced bills to allow women’s suffrage. He remained a man ahead of this time and was the embodiment of black radicalism and democracy found during Reconstruction.
Death came unexpectedly to Galloway in 1870 at the age of 33 years. Reports were that he succumbed to “fever and jaundice.” About 6,000 people came to his funeral, all of Wilmington’s blacks and some whites. The period of Reconstruction died soon afterwards.
This heroic figure might have remained unknown except for the many years of work and miles of travel of historian David Cecelski and his book, “The Fire of Freedom Abraham Galloway and the Slaves’ Civil War.” The world deserved to know of this American hero who believed and lived as if all people should be free.
