In the days and weeks following the fall of New Bern to Union forces in 1862, federal troops swarmed the surrounding county and forcibly seized slaves from local plantations. Some escaped bondage and made their own way to town. Others followed returning troops in what amounted to a free-form parade.
They traveled on horseback, by boat and afoot. However they came, the town was soon overflowing with thousands (the number 10,000 is often cited) of former slaves in need of assistance. Union General Ambrose Burnside turned for help to a man who had been a professional artist in New York City before the war.
Vincent Colyer was appalled by the suffering of the troops he’d seen first-hand following the July 1861 Battle of Bull Run. In response, he founded of the United States Christian Commission to provide supplies, medical aid and religious support for the Union soldiers. When the Burnside Expedition headed for North Carolina, Colyer followed. He first ministered to Union wounded and newly-freed slaves on Roanoke Island in February 1862, and continued along with Burnside to New Bern the following month.
General Burnside soon asked Colyer to take charge of the welfare of the newly-freed “refugees” – as Colyer called them – who were crowding the streets, alleys and open spaces of New Bern. Colyer accepted the challenge and was named “Superintendent of the Poor.” His duties included the provision of food, clothing, shelter and spiritual sustenance to the displaced former slaves.
Born in Bloomingdale, N.Y. in 1825, he was the son of Quaker parents. Quakers in general opposed both war and slavery and one of Colyer’s biographers said “his faith was the center of his life and the inspiration for many of his activities.”
Before the war, he trained for four years as an artist before studying at the prestigious National Academy of Design where he was admitted to membership in 1851. From then until his war-time service commenced, he made his living as a painter in New York, N.Y.
Though his successor and the namesake of James City, Union Army chaplain Horace James, is better-known, it was Colyer who first began to organize care for the freed people at New Bern. In addition to assuaging the needs of Union soldiers and freed people, Colyer, in 1863, became one of the first to recruit and train the men of the United States Colored Troops.
Colyer wrote a small, but important book about his experiences that he saddled with the cumbersome title Report of the Services Rendered by the Freed People to the United States Army in North Carolina, in the Spring of 1862, After the Battle of New Bern. Nevertheless, the book, published in 1864, leaves a vital record of the period plus the historically-valuable artwork he used to illustrate its 85 pages.
He didn’t credit himself as the book’s illustrator. And we know that for more than two years Colyer was probably the most well-trained artist within New Bern. Thus, it’s easy to wonder how much of our familiar local Civil War-era artwork flowed unattributed from his pen.
At war’s end, carrying the rank of colonel, Colyer continued his humanitarian service for several years by going West as a “Peace Commissioner” to aid the Indians. His journeys reached as far as Alaska. He sketched and painted all along the way. Among other places, his artwork of Native American life appeared in Harper’s Weekly, the most popular publication of the period. Today, his paintings and sketches are in collections at Yale University, Boston’s Museum of Fine Art, the Albuquerque Museum of Art, and the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Colyer died July 12, 1888. He was 63. He’s buried at the Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, N.Y.
by Edward Ellis, Special Correspondent
Bear Talk • Eddie Ellis is the author of New Bern History 101 and other works about Craven County’s rich heritage. He can be reached at flexspace2@aol.com.
