Скачать или смотреть History Is Lunch: Jefferson Mansell, "Enslavement to Enlistment: The Men of the 58th Infantry USCT"

On February 14, 2024, Jefferson Mansell presented “Enslavement to Enlistment: The Men of the 58th Infantry USCT” as part of the History Is Lunch series.

Federal troops arrived in the Natchez District on July 13, 1863, and with them came freedom for the enslaved population. Freedmen were encouraged to join newly organized regiments of the United States Colored Troops. Most of those men enlisted at the Forks of the Road, a former slave market where only a few years earlier they had been trafficked as part of the domestic slave trade.

“More than 175, 000 free blacks and freedmen served during the last two years of the Civil War,” said Mansell, lead historian for the Natchez National Historical Park. “In Natchez, formerly enslaved men filled the ranks of the 58th, 70th, and 71st Infantry regiments and the 6th Heavy Artillery, along with other USCT units. The 58th Infantry assisted in the construction of Fort McPherson in the northern suburbs of the city.”

Natchez National Historical Park is acquiring a 17-acre district associated with the Forks of the Road slave market and formulating a development concept plan for the nationally significant site.

“Park staff is researching the soldiers’ stories through the enlistment papers of the various USCT regiments,” Mansell said. “Those records can contain not just the soldiers’ name, age, length of service, and profession, but also their place of birth and the name of the formerly enslaved person’s owner.”

Pickens native Jefferson Mansell is lead historian for the Natchez National Historical Park, a unit of the National Park Service. He earned a BA in history, a BA in communications/public relations, and an MEd in counseling from Mississippi State University and an MA in history and historic preservation from Middle Tennessee State University. Before coming to the National Park Service, Mansell worked with the Historic Beaufort Foundation in South Carolina, the Landmarks Association of St. Louis, the Roslyn Landmark Society of New York, and the Tuscaloosa Preservation Society in Alabama.

History Is Lunch is a weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History that explores all aspects of the state’s past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.