United States Colored Troops: Buried in Wilmington

Buried here are approximately five hundred soldiers from the United States Colored Troops, Black men and their white officers who served in the Union Army between eighteen sixty-three and eighteen sixty-five and took part in the Wilmington campaign. The United States Colored Troops were authorized by the War Department in May eighteen sixty-three. By the war's end, more than one hundred seventy-eight thousand Black men had enlisted, making up roughly ten percent of the Union Army.

Several regiments participated in the assault on Fort Fisher and the capture of Wilmington in early eighteen sixty-five. The soldiers interred here gave their lives fighting for a Union that had, not yet fully, promised them freedom.