Thomas Morris Chester: Civil War Dispatches

Thomas Morris Chester pursued a number of careers, including teaching, law, and journalism. As the first and only African American journalist to cover the Civil War for a major daily American newspaper—the Philadelphia Press—he filed dispatches about the progress of the war. In his Civil War Dispatches, including the two from August 1864 reproduced here, he emphasized the exploits of “colored troops,” that is, African American soldiers who fought during the later stages of the Civil War. As such, his reports became important documents in the ongoing debate about the place of African Americans in American society, whether they should be allowed to defend the nation’s interests as members of the military, and what their future would be after the war. Chester’s dispatches from Virginia, specifically from near Richmond, the Confederate capital, and Petersburg, a vital city to its south, give the modern reader a ground’s-eye view of the progress of the war and the part that African American troops played in it.