My Family Died For The Republic We Have Just Lost

Many of our service members died in darkness. We Cannot fail them by sulking.

Photo: The Death registry of the US Army for my great Great Grand-uncle William Henry “Hank” Nance. (Photo: US Army)

William Henry Nance, was an African-American man aged 37. He was sweating profusely in a US Army Hospital bed in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. At that time, the fort was one of the last major government outposts protecting what would be known as Indian country. Wagon trains and lone riders were heading west to populate land allotments given to them by the US government. Of course the land was taken from the Native Americans, but they were not considered people.  The US Army provided protection to these settlers.

Photo: Troops of 9th Cavalry, Buffalo Soldiers (Photo: US Army)

One of those soldiers who protected the great white migration was the then 26-year-old “Hank” Nance. He had run away from slavery in northern Alabama in 1864, just 15 years old, where he was a slave laboring in the agriculture fields. He had to be powerful in physique to convince the recruiter for the first Alabama volunteers he was worthy to fight. This unit was a union, all Negro Regiment.  They let him enlist with his brother Green.

By all accounts, passed down through the ages, they both hated the duty they were given in the army. This is universal to soldiers who have boring duties during a war. They wanted action. When the regiment was transformed into the US Army’s 111^th US Colored Troops, they guarded supply lines and conducted heavy labor. The difference was they were now freed men wearing the blue of the US Army. They were fed at least twice daily and given weapons, but they never saw real heavy action … so Hank implored his brother to join the Navy.

Hank was more impetuous than his brother Green and convinced himself that life on a US Navy river warfare boat would be the way he would get into action. So, he enlisted in the US Navy as a Landsman, a person who is not a professional sailor. He did the same work as in the regiment—backbreaking work, moving coal, food, and ammunition. 

After a short stint on the USS Great Western in Illinois, he was assigned to the USS General Burnside, an ironclad riverboat.  In the battle at Decatur, he helped stop Confederate attacks on the Union forces by sidling alongside rebel positions and pounding them with explosive shots from their 20 and 24-pound Dalghren boat cannons.  He would have been used in three roles for a strong, young black man. One was a “powder monkey,” bringing charge bags full of explosive powder and cannonballs to gun positions during the battle.  With cotton stuffed into his ears Green would wait for the gunners mates to swab the barrel, shove in charge bags, and wadding.  They would then set the fuse while the young Negro landsmen would swiftly heave up the 18-pound round shot into the barrel.  Guns would fire off hundreds of rounds, and on occasion, the barrel wear would cause it to burst, killing or wounding the crew. 

When the war ended, Hank was a combat veteran on land and at sea.  He tried civilian business, but he was now an American warfighter, so he returned to army service in 1875 as a cavalryman in the Lima Company, 9th Cavalry as a Buffalo Soldier.  He patrolled from Kansas to California for nine years, often down to the New Mexico border or as far north as Fargo, North Dakota.  Patrols would be months long, riding on a horse. 

As my father told it and confirmed by the medical report of the US Army, Hank fell off his horse one day and was admitted to the base infirmary at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The diagnosis was an inner ear infection.  In that era, the infection would have quickly led to septicemia after facial paralysis from spreading into the bone and causing an abscess in the brain …

He died in 1886 after a long and painful ordeal.

At age 37, Green Nance gave his life to an America that hated him. 

He served over two decades in a country that reviled his presence until it needed him only because of the color of his skin.  He was a professional soldier, but his skill, experience, and love of the nation of his birth were dismissed by people with white skin.  He lies in grave B-2129, in Fort Leavenworth army cemetery, in the one place where all Americans are equal.

Hank suffered years of indignities from the farmers and settlers who wanted nothing to do with the black soldiers.  They only wanted the comfort of his 1874 Springfield carbine and blue uniform.  The whites would spit in their faces and say, “Niggers don’t deserve no horse.” Or “Niggers shouldn’t have them guns.” Because in that version of America, white skin was the privilege that trumped all other aspects of life.

What Hank never envisaged was that 138 years after his death, Americans would vote consciously to return to being a white supremacist nation.  Granted, only 33% of the electorate voted for Donald Trump, but the effect on his followers has been predictable.  They have become like beasts.  They believe they own America and even took this Veterans Day to attack other veterans for being less equal than them.

We cannot become like them.  Yes, you have my permission to engage in verbal combat, but we cannot allow their heartlessness and disrespect for the day when Americans honor the glorious dead, who, like Hank, gave their lives so this Republic may live. 

They do not own patriotism, or the armed forces, or even the words We The People.  They use symbols of loyalty in the Constitution, such as when Trump uses diapers. We must start today to take them back.

Before I set you on a path of resistance this week, I want you to take Hank into your heart and understand he watches all of us.  We must use the next 70 days to learn how to resist, communicate, and coordinate our actions to show that Trump and his hateful white supremacists are not We The People but are the very Red Coats we liberated ourselves from.

We stand on the precipice of the moment this great nation may transform itself from a free liberal Democracy into a willful white dictatorship.  How will your parents, grandparents, and ancestors feel if we made America into a light version of Nazi Germany … and let 33% of the people convince another 33% to kill or treat as enemies the last remaining third who are true to our national values?

This is precisely what happened to Germany in 1933 … and here we stand.

Imagine for one moment that Green was sitting with your parents and ancestors who have passed.  I can only imagine George Washington telling him, worry not.  America shall prevail.  Then Washington squeezes his shoulder and says about Trump the words he called General Charles Lee when he betrayed us at the Battle of Monmouth … He is a “Damned Poltroon.” 

Look it up.