From Enslavement to Union Soldier to Exoduster

By Geoffry Monteith

George B. Booker

April 11, 1846 – December 6, 1907

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Sergeant George B. Booker, born April 11, 1846, had the great distinction of serving in the 17th Regiment of Colored Infantry during the United States Civil War.[1]   Born into slavery, George Booker endured the grim realities of living as an enslaved person in the American South.[2]  Post-war census and military records place Booker’s birth in Maury, Tennessee, but family history states he was born in Virginia.[3]  Either way, it appears George Booker was given to final owners as part of an estate, and went to a plantation in Madison County, Tennessee.[4]  However, while George Booker lived the first part of his life enslaved, his opportunity for freedom came in his late teens.  The outbreak of the American Civil in 1861 signaled the coming end of slavery, and George Booker joined the fight when he was eighteen.[5] In March of 1864, Booker enlisted in the Union Army’s 17th Colored Infantry Regiment.[6]  The 17th, mustered in Nashville in December 1863, mainly saw defensive action during the war.[7]  The original purpose of the 17th, and its fellow African-American regiments, was to guard the important rail lines which ran through Nashville.[8]  Booker’s record shows he was caught asleep while on guard duty in August of 1864; his sentence was to wear a ball and chain, and perform labor around the camp “until further notice.”[9]  His redemption came four months later, however, when Booker partook in the Battle of Nashville in December of 1864 - a decisive Union victory resulting in the utter defeat of the Confederate Army of Tennessee under the command of General John Bell Hood.[10] 

[28]

After the Union capture of Atlanta in 1864, the Confederate Army badly needed a success.[11]  One such attempt to turn the tide of war came in General Hood’s invasion of Tennessee.  The Confederate Army of Tennessee, though badly damaged in the Battle of Franklin, managed to press as far as Nashville before Union forces halted them.  On December 15, 1865, the Union Army of the Cumberland – with Booker and the 17th Colored Infantry included – counterattacked the rebels besieging the city and nearly eviscerated Hood’s forces.  The decisive Union victory in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign struck a great blow to the Confederate war effort, and severely damaged their strength in the west.[12]

African American soldiers in the Civil War were known for their gallant service, and the 17th was no exception.  The regiment banner, a gift from the “Colored Ladies of Murfreesboro,” had five of its standard-bearers fall during the Battle of Nashville.[13]  Shortly after, the New York Times wrote of the event and said of black troops: “One of the most brilliant charges made … was by the 12th, 13th, 17th and 18th Colored Regiments.”[14]  The commanding officer of the First Colored Brigade, which included the 17th, said of his men after the battle: “When the second and final assault was made the right of my line took part … I watched that noble army climb the hill with a steady resolve which nothing but death itself could check.”[15]  Booker himself continued to serve the Union Army until his enlistment ended in 1866.[16]

After the war ended, Booker left the Army and worked as a farm laborer in Maury, Tennessee.[17]  Most likely, this means he lived as a sharecropper – a type of tenant-farmer common in the post-bellum South, a position created from a farm labor system designed to keep blacks, and poor whites, in a dependent station. Instead of rent, the sharecropper gave a portion of their harvest to the landowner, yet unscrupulous tactics practiced by landowners created an inequitable labor system that maintained black poverty with no chance at economic advancement.[18]  

On October 5, 1867, Booker married Clarissa Gantt.[19]  During this time of Reconstruction, African Americans enjoyed a brief moment of raised hopes and opportunities regarding their role in the political and social life of the United States.[20]  However, as Reconstruction ended, and as white Southerners regained control and federal troops withdrew from the South, the era of Jim Crow began to take hold.[21] Jim Crow represented government-sanctioned segregation and disenfranchisement laws that enforced white supremacy through racial intimidation, terror, and violence against blacks.  Those African Americans who were able began to leave the South to start new lives in the North and West.  Those who went west became known as “Exodusters,” and a popular destination for many – the Bookers included – was the young state of Kansas.[22]   George and Clarissa Booker moved to South Bend, Kansas, in 1876 and purchased a small plot of land.[23] There, the couple lived for the next thirty years. In Kansas, George and Clarissa raised four children: George Jr., born in 1871; Anderson, born in 1872; Maggie, born in 1876; and Willie, born in 1878.[24]  On December 6, 1907, George Booker passed away in Great Bend, Kansas.[25]  Booker’s obituary describes a great gathering of African Americans at his funeral who came to pay their respects to the honored veteran of the Civil War.  However, while the local obituaries report Booker was laid to rest in the local cemetery, something occurred wherein the exact whereabouts of his grave are unknown.[26]  In 2011, recognizing George Booker’s service to his country, a headstone was laid, and a memorial service was held with military honors, at Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver, Colorado.[27]  Though there is no body beneath, the case of George Booker exemplifies the meaning of “more than a headstone.”

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Footnotes ↓

[1] “George Booker,” U.S. Colored Troops Military Service Records, ancestry.com, accessed July 21, 2020.

[2] Tina Griego, “History of Family, U.S., Intertwined,” The Denver Post, August 7, 2011, B-01.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid. And “George Booker, “U.S. Colored Troops Military Service Records. It is possible Booker enlisted even earlier, in 1863. One enlistment document shows a George Booker joining the 1st Arkansas Infantry (African Descent). The 1st Arkansas formed before even the Emancipation Proclamation, making it one the oldest regiments of black soldiers in the Union Army. However, the records for George Booker with the 1st Arkansas overlap the confirmed records for his service with 17th after March of 1864 – but not irreconcilably – so it is unclear whether they are for the same person.

[7] “17th Regiment, United States Colored Infantry,” National Parks Service: Battle Unit Details, accessed July 21, 2020, https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UUS0017RI00C.

[8] Bobby L. Lovett, “The Negro’s Civil War in Tennessee,” The Journal of Negro History 61, no. 1 (January, 1976), 42, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3031531.

[9] “George Booker,” U.S. Colored Troops Military Service Records.

[10] Ibid. And “Battle of Nashville,” American Battlefield Trust, accessed July 22, 2020, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/nashville.

[11] “Franklin-Nashville Campaign - September - December 1864,” American Battlefield Trust, accessed August 9, 2020, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/franklin-nashville-campaign-september-december-1864.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Lovett, 42.

[14] Ibid, 48.

[15] Ibid.

[16] “George Booker,” U.S. Colored Troops Military Service Records.

[17] “1870 Federal Census,” database, ancestry.com, accessed July 21, 2020, entry for George B Booker, Maury, Tennessee.

[18] “Sharecropping,” Digital History, accessed September 7, 2020, https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3100.

[19] “George Booker,” Tennessee Marriage Records, 1781-2002, ancestry.com, accessed July 22, 2020.

[20] “Reconstruction and its Aftermath,” Library of Congress, accessed August 28, 2020, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african-american-odyssey/reconstruction.html.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid.

[23] “Funeral of G.B. Booker,” The Daily Item (Great Bend, Kansas), December 9, 1907, 1.

[24] “1880 Federal Census,” database, ancestry.com, accessed July 22, 2020, entry for George B Booker, Great Bend, Kansas.

[25] “Funeral of G.B. Booker.”

[26] Griego, “History of Family.”

[27] Ibid.

[28] "Battle of Nashville," History.com, accessed November, 11, 2020, https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/battle-of-nashville.

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