55th United States Colored Infantry Regiment
Union Army infantry regiment
The 55th United States Colored Infantry Regiment was a United States Colored Troops infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It was first organized as the 1st Alabama Volunteer Infantry Regiment (African Descent) in May 1863, serving on garrison duty at Corinth, Mississippi and Memphis, Tennessee. It was redesignated as the 55th United States Colored Infantry in March 1864, continuing its garrison service in Tennessee and fighting at the Battle of Brices Cross Roads. After the end of the war, the regiment was mustered out in late 1865 after garrison duty in Louisiana.
History
Corinth
After the Emancipation Proclamation, runaway slaves began pouring into Corinth and the Union forces occupying the town were compelled to feed and shelter them. In November 1862, the Federal commander, Brigadier General Grenville M. Dodge decided that the former slaves, called contrabands, needed a protected campsite. At first the former slaves were housed in old tents or sheds. Dodge appropriated an abandoned plantation and asked the African Americans to grow their own food. Dodge also used some former slaves as scouts in a large military intelligence network that he set up in the western Confederacy. He made the contraband camp official in December 1862, giving James M. Alexander, the chaplain of the 66th Illinois Infantry Regiment authority over it.
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This entry incorporates text from “55th United States Colored Infantry Regiment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.