Samuel Petty: Union Sailor, Legislator, and Builder of Black Civic Authority in Florida

By Jerry Urso

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War on the Water: A Young Floridian Enters History

Samuel Petty was born on March 15, 1842, in Duval County, Florida — at a time when the state was still young, raw, and unsettled. Florida in the 1840s was not yet the mythic peninsula of citrus groves and railroads. It was a frontier society defined by river systems, coastal trade, and the brutal economics of slavery. Ports such as Fernandina and Jacksonville were commercial lifelines, and the men who worked their docks and waterways understood tides and currents long before they understood politics.

By the time Petty reached adulthood, Florida had seceded from the Union. The Civil War fractured not only the nation but the daily rhythms of coastal life. Yet unlike much of the Confederate interior, Florida’s shoreline did not remain firmly in Southern control for long. In March 1862, Union naval forces seized Fernandina without resistance. Fort Clinch, overlooking the harbor, passed into Union hands. The Stars and Stripes flew again over Amelia Island.

This mattered.

Fernandina became a Union naval stronghold in North Florida. Ships of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron moved in and out of its harbor. The St. Johns River became a corridor of federal patrol. Gunboats enforced the blockade, disrupted Confederate supply lines, and secured occupied coastal towns.

For Black men living in the region, the Union presence represented danger and possibility in equal measure. Slavery had not yet legally ended, but the geography of freedom had shifted. Where Union ships anchored, federal authority followed. Where federal authority followed, enlistment opportunities emerged.

Samuel Petty would step into that moment.

In a sworn deposition dated March 26, 1895, Petty testified under oath:

“I enlisted in 1862 in the Gunboat Pembina and then on the Oleander and was discharged I think in April 1864…”¹

This single sentence reorients the beginning of his life story. He was not merely a bystander in a Union-occupied town. He enlisted.

The USS Pembina, a side-wheel gunboat, operated in Florida waters as part of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Its duties included patrol, interception of blockade runners, and support of Union movements along the coast and inland rivers. Ships like the Pembina were not glamorous vessels of grand naval battles; they were working ships — disciplined, relentless, enforcing control through constant presence.

The USS Oleander, on which Petty later served, likewise operated in Florida’s coastal and river systems. These were ships that knew the currents of the St. Johns River and the shifting shoals near Amelia Island. They moved through the very waters Petty had known since youth.

The Union Navy, unlike the Union Army, was integrated from the beginning of the war. Black sailors served alongside white sailors in operational roles. By 1865, approximately one in every five Union sailors was African American.² On vessels like the Pembina, Black sailors worked as seamen, landsmen, firemen, and deck crew. In southern theaters, especially coastal ones, many were local men who already possessed maritime skill.

Petty’s background makes sense within this structure. Before and after the war, he was associated with maritime labor. The 1870 census would later list him as a “Seaman.”³ The Navy did not recruit randomly; it drew from men who knew the water.

Service aboard a Union gunboat required discipline. Life on such vessels was rigidly structured. Watches rotated. Coal had to be loaded. Engines maintained. Signals transmitted. Orders followed instantly. Federal authority was not abstract — it was embodied in routine, in chain of command, in daily accountability.

Petty enlisted in 1862. That year was pivotal in Florida’s coastal theater. Union forces consolidated their hold on occupied towns. Naval patrols ensured supply lines and guarded against Confederate reentry. A sailor aboard the Pembina would have seen the fragile, contested nature of Union authority in Florida. He would have witnessed both the promise of emancipation and the hostility that simmered beneath it.

He was discharged, according to his testimony, in April 1864. That placed him among those who served during the critical early consolidation period of Union control in North Florida.

This experience mattered far beyond the war itself.

Military service in the Union Navy meant federal recognition. It meant documentation. It meant participation in a national struggle that redefined citizenship. For Black Floridians, that mattered profoundly. Naval service was not simply labor; it was a declaration of allegiance and a claim to belonging.

When the war ended and Reconstruction began, Petty did not have to imagine federal authority. He had lived inside it.

And when he returned to civilian life, he returned to the water.

 

From Sailor to Citizen: Reconstruction and the Making of a Local Statesman

When Samuel Petty left naval service in 1864, the war was not yet over. The Confederacy would fight on for another year, but Union control of Fernandina and Amelia Island remained secure. For men like Petty, the port city did not revert to its antebellum structure. It had already changed.

The Union Navy had brought more than ships and cannons. It had brought bureaucracy, record-keeping, wages, discipline, and federal oversight. It had introduced new relationships between Black labor and federal authority. Petty stepped back into civilian life not as a passive resident of a Southern town, but as a man who had served in the armed forces of the United States.

The 1870 United States Census records him as twenty-eight years old, residing in Fernandina, and employed as a “Seaman.”³ This detail is more important than it appears at first glance. It confirms continuity. He did not drift aimlessly after discharge. He returned to the maritime economy that had defined both his youth and his wartime service.

Fernandina in the late 1860s and early 1870s was a town suspended between worlds. On one hand, it remained economically dependent on shipping and rail connections. On the other, its political structure had been overturned. Slavery was gone. Federal troops still influenced state governance. Black men were registering to vote in unprecedented numbers.

In 1867 and 1868, Samuel Petty’s name appears on the Florida Voter Registration Rolls for Nassau County, Precinct 1.⁴ That registration was not symbolic. It was transformative.

For the first time in Florida’s history, formerly enslaved men and free Black laborers stood as legal voters. The Reconstruction Acts required new state constitutions and mandated Black suffrage as a condition of readmission to the Union. Registration was supervised under federal authority.

Petty’s inclusion on those rolls marked his formal entry into political citizenship.

The act of registration itself required courage. White resistance to Black suffrage was immediate and often violent. Yet the port cities of North Florida — Jacksonville, Fernandina, St. Augustine — were somewhat different from interior plantation counties. Union presence had disrupted Confederate power structures. Black men who had worked in maritime trades had often interacted with federal officials. They had, in some cases, worn Union uniforms.

Petty was one of those men.

By 1870, the transformation from sailor to civic actor was already underway. That year he began his first term on the Fernandina City Council.⁵

Municipal governance may appear minor compared to state politics, but in Reconstruction Florida it was foundational. City councils controlled local budgets, infrastructure repair, public contracts, and basic administrative functions. In port towns, council decisions affected shipping, docks, sanitation, and commercial regulation.

Serving on the Fernandina City Council required more than symbolic presence. It required participation in the practical mechanics of governance.

Petty would serve four separate terms on that council: 1870–1872, 1875–1879, 1881–1882, and 1888–1889.⁵ The pattern of those dates reveals something essential. His service spanned not only the height of Reconstruction but also the years when federal enforcement weakened and white Democratic “Redeemer” forces sought to reclaim political control.

Many Black officeholders in the South were driven from office after 1877. Petty, however, returned again and again.

This endurance suggests a political base grounded in community trust. Fernandina’s Black population, many of whom labored in maritime trades, recognized in Petty a man whose experience reflected their own. He had served in the Union Navy. He had returned to maritime labor. He had registered to vote at the earliest opportunity. He did not arrive in politics as an outsider; he rose from within the community.

The political atmosphere of Nassau County during the 1870s was anything but calm. Florida’s Republican Party itself was divided between factions — some aligned with so-called “carpetbaggers,” others with local Black leadership. White Democrats worked persistently to undermine Reconstruction reforms. Violence, intimidation, and economic pressure were tools regularly employed.

Against this backdrop, Petty did not retreat into private life. Instead, he deepened his involvement.

City council service placed him in negotiation with white officials, business interests, and shifting party dynamics. It required fluency in procedure and law. It required the ability to endure criticism.

It also prepared him for something larger.

By 1873, only a few years after his first municipal term, Samuel Petty was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, representing Nassau County.⁶

The transition from sailor to seaman to city councilman to state legislator was not accidental. It was cumulative.

The discipline learned aboard naval vessels, the logistical awareness of maritime labor, and the administrative exposure of municipal governance converged. Petty was no longer merely a participant in Reconstruction; he was shaping it.

Before moving into his legislative career, however, one must understand the fragile nature of the political world he entered. Reconstruction was not secure. Federal support was conditional and wavering. Southern Democrats were organizing their return to power.

Petty stepped into the Florida House at a time when the future of Black political authority in the state was uncertain.

He did not hesitate.

 

In the Legislature: Conflict, Courage, and the Struggle for Political Survival

When Samuel Petty took his seat in the Florida House of Representatives in 1873, he entered a chamber charged with instability. Reconstruction governments across the South were under pressure. Federal oversight still existed, but its moral certainty had begun to fray. Republican coalitions were divided between factions — Black officeholders, northern transplants, and white Southern Unionists — each maneuvering within fragile alliances.

Petty represented Nassau County, a port district with strategic economic importance.⁶ His election itself was a testament to the power of Reconstruction enfranchisement. Only a few years earlier, Black men in Florida had no vote. Now one of them occupied a legislative seat.

The Florida House during this period confronted issues that cut to the core of postwar governance: public education for freedmen, rebuilding of infrastructure, protection of civil rights, and fiscal management in a state economically devastated by war. For Black legislators, the challenge was twofold — they had to legislate while also defending the legitimacy of their own presence.

Samuel Petty did not serve quietly.

In 1874, during a public political dispute involving Liberty Billings — a prominent Radical Republican who served in the Florida Senate — Petty emerged as a forceful defender of his reputation and political position. A contemporary newspaper account described the confrontation in vivid terms:

“The work of demolition fell to The Hon. Samuel Petty, the present representative from this county, and that the young man did himself great credit by his plain and his earnest and indignant denial of the charges circulated by carpetbagger Liberty Billings.”⁷

The language is striking. “Work of demolition.” “Earnest and indignant denial.” Petty was not portrayed as deferential. He was described as dismantling accusations publicly and decisively.

The reference to Billings as a “carpetbagger” reveals internal fractures within Republican ranks. Reconstruction politics was not a unified moral crusade; it was a contested field of ambition, ideology, and factionalism. Black legislators often had to navigate disputes between northern arrivals and local leadership. Petty’s performance in this confrontation suggests independence. He did not simply follow party hierarchy; he defended his own integrity.

Such public disputes were not mere theatrics. They reflected the precariousness of Black political authority. Any charge of impropriety could be weaponized in an environment already hostile to Reconstruction governance.

Yet even as internal disputes simmered, external pressure intensified.

The election of 1876 would become one of the most contested in American history. Nationally, it pitted Rutherford B. Hayes against Samuel J. Tilden. In Florida, as in other Southern states, allegations of fraud, intimidation, and coercion were widespread.

Petty would later provide testimony regarding conditions surrounding that election. He described how Black railroad workers were compelled to vote Democratic tickets under employer surveillance. Ballots were marked and tracked. Those who failed to comply risked dismissal.⁸

This was not rumor. It was sworn testimony.

The mechanisms Petty described reveal a shift in the nature of political suppression. Earlier Reconstruction violence had often been overt — beatings, mob attacks, night riders. By 1876, economic coercion became a powerful tool. Employers, particularly in industries like railroads and shipping, wielded job security as leverage.

For a maritime and rail-connected community like Fernandina, such pressure would have been acute. Black workers whose livelihoods depended on port commerce could be easily threatened.

Petty’s willingness to testify about these conditions demonstrates continued political courage. He had served in the Union Navy. He had stood in the legislature. Now he documented the erosion of the very rights Reconstruction had promised.

The national outcome of the 1876 election would reshape Southern politics. The Compromise of 1877 effectively ended federal military enforcement of Reconstruction governments. Federal troops withdrew. “Redeemer” Democrats consolidated control across much of the South.

In many states, Black officeholding collapsed almost overnight.

But Samuel Petty did not disappear from public life.

Instead, he adapted.

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Redemption in Florida did not mean immediate total disfranchisement. That process would unfold over the next two decades. But the atmosphere shifted. Federal protection weakened. White Democratic control solidified in key institutions.

In such a climate, Black political survival required flexibility and institutional grounding. Petty’s foundation in municipal service and maritime federal appointments would now prove essential.

He had already served multiple terms on the Fernandina City Council. He would return again.

He had established a reputation not only as a legislator but as a man comfortable within federal structures — naval service, administrative discipline, record-keeping. Those traits translated into credibility.

And in the years that followed, his career would take on a new dimension — one tied once again to the sea.

Federal Trust and Constitutional Turning Points

When Reconstruction’s political structure began to weaken after 1877, many Black officeholders across the South vanished from public office. Some were defeated. Some were intimidated. Others withdrew under threat. Yet Samuel Petty’s career did not end with the collapse of federal military enforcement. Instead, it shifted.

In 1879, he was appointed lighthouse keeper at Amelia Island.¹⁰

The Amelia Island Lighthouse stood as both a practical and symbolic structure. Perched above shifting shoals and Atlantic currents, it guided vessels navigating the Florida coast. To be appointed lighthouse keeper was to be entrusted with vigilance. The light had to burn without interruption. Oil had to be measured. Wicks trimmed. Weather logged. Signals maintained. Ships relied on that beam for safe passage.

The federal government did not appoint lighthouse keepers casually. These were positions requiring reliability, literacy, and discipline. A lighthouse was a node of federal authority — visible, steady, and technical.

For Samuel Petty, the appointment represented continuity. He had served in the Union Navy aboard vessels that patrolled these waters. He had returned to civilian maritime labor. Now he was entrusted with safeguarding navigation along the same coastline.

The image is powerful: a former Union sailor now maintaining a federal beacon over the Atlantic approaches to Florida.

The appointment also reveals something deeper. Even as state-level Reconstruction weakened, federal maritime authority remained intact. Ports and customs were lifelines of national commerce. The federal government continued to exert influence through such positions. Petty’s career illustrates how Black civic leadership could persist through federal channels even as state politics shifted.

His service did not end at the lighthouse.

Petty also served as a United States customs inspector in Fernandina.¹¹ The customs office was not ceremonial. It monitored cargo manifests, enforced tariff regulations, and ensured compliance with federal revenue laws. In a port economy, customs enforcement represented the intersection of commerce and governance.

This role again required administrative competence and integrity. Customs inspectors were responsible for record-keeping and inspection of goods moving through the harbor. The position linked local maritime labor to national fiscal policy.

Petty’s movement from naval service to lighthouse keeper to customs inspector reflects a consistent maritime administrative arc. He did not drift between unrelated occupations; he remained within federal maritime systems.

Yet while he held these federal posts, Florida itself was undergoing constitutional change.

In 1885, Samuel Petty served as a delegate to the Florida Constitutional Convention.⁹

This convention marked a pivotal moment in the state’s political trajectory. Although full-scale disfranchisement mechanisms would not crystallize until the 1890s, the 1885 Constitution laid groundwork for restrictions that would later curtail Black voting power. Structural adjustments to governance and taxation created avenues for exclusion.

Petty’s presence at the convention reveals that Black leadership had not vanished from state-level deliberation. Even as white Democratic control strengthened, Black delegates remained engaged in constitutional debate.

It is crucial to understand that the period between 1877 and 1890 was not an immediate blackout of Black political life. Instead, it was a contested transition. Black officeholders continued to operate within municipal governments, fraternal institutions, and select state roles.

Petty embodied this transitional endurance.

His earlier legislative service during high Reconstruction positioned him as a seasoned political actor. His federal appointments shielded him, at least partially, within maritime administrative structures less vulnerable to immediate state-level racial retrenchment.

But the climate was tightening.

By the late 1880s, white political consolidation in Florida was increasingly firm. Poll taxes, bureaucratic hurdles, and local economic coercion would soon intensify. Black political participation would shrink dramatically in the 1890s.

Yet even as that storm gathered, Petty continued to serve.

He returned to the Fernandina City Council once more in 1888–1889.⁵ This return is significant. It demonstrates that even in the late 1880s, his community still recognized his leadership.

Municipal governance during this era required navigation of changing racial power structures. Black council members often had to operate within councils increasingly dominated by white Democrats. It required negotiation rather than confrontation. It required strategic presence.

Petty had already demonstrated his willingness to confront accusations publicly, as seen in the Liberty Billings episode. But he also understood adaptation. Survival required balancing federal authority, local credibility, and shifting political tides.

While state-level disfranchisement loomed, another sphere of Black institutional life flourished — fraternal organization.

And in that arena, Petty would once again assume leadership.

 

Fraternal Authority, Institutional Endurance, and the Architecture of Black Leadership

As the political climate of Florida hardened in the late nineteenth century, formal avenues of state power narrowed for African American leaders. Yet civic authority does not disappear simply because legislative seats grow scarce. It relocates. It reorganizes. It builds parallel structures of influence.

For Samuel Petty, one of those structures was Prince Hall Freemasonry.

Fraternal institutions in the post–Civil War South were not merely social clubs. They were disciplined, hierarchical organizations with charters, officers, treasuries, ritual structures, and internal governance systems. They functioned as training grounds for leadership and as networks of mutual aid. In an era when access to public institutions was increasingly restricted, fraternal bodies became spaces of continuity and strategy.

Petty was a member of Island City Lodge No. 3 in Fernandina. By 1889, he was serving as acting Grand Treasurer of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge of Florida.¹³

The office of Grand Treasurer was not honorary. It required oversight of financial accounts, maintenance of records, and stewardship of institutional resources. In a time when Black economic capital was vulnerable to discriminatory systems, the management of lodge funds carried immense responsibility.

His elevation to acting Grand Treasurer indicates trust at the highest level of Prince Hall Masonry in Florida. It demonstrates that his leadership extended beyond municipal politics into statewide institutional governance.

The same qualities that marked his earlier career reappear here:

• Naval discipline
• Administrative competence
• Financial responsibility
• Public credibility

Prince Hall Masonry during this era often paralleled civic government. Lodge halls functioned as meeting spaces, organizing centers, and places where political discussion occurred outside white supervision. Officers of the Grand Lodge frequently overlapped with civic leaders. Fraternal networks enabled coordinated response to economic and political pressure.

In this sense, Petty’s service in the Grand Lodge represents not a retreat from politics but a continuation of institution-building by other means.

The pattern of his life becomes unmistakable.

As a young man, he served the Union at sea, contributing to federal authority in Florida waters. As a civilian, he returned to maritime labor, grounding himself economically in the port community. He registered to vote at the first opportunity under Reconstruction. He served four terms on the Fernandina City Council. He represented Nassau County in the Florida House of Representatives. He confronted political accusations publicly and forcefully. He testified under oath against voter intimidation in the volatile election of 1876. He participated in the 1885 Constitutional Convention. He maintained federal maritime roles as lighthouse keeper and customs inspector. He assumed financial leadership within the Prince Hall Grand Lodge.

This is not the career of a transient political figure. It is the career of a builder.

To understand Samuel Petty’s legacy, one must resist the temptation to measure influence solely by legislative victories. Reconstruction politics is often narrated as a rise and fall — a brief moment of Black officeholding followed by swift collapse. Yet Petty’s life complicates that arc.

He did not vanish after 1877. He did not disappear when federal troops withdrew. He did not abandon civic engagement when white Democratic consolidation intensified.

Instead, his career shows adaptation.

When the legislature narrowed, he returned to municipal office. When municipal authority became constrained, he reinforced fraternal institutions. When state politics grew hostile, he maintained federal roles tied to maritime administration.

His professional life formed a chain:

Naval service → Maritime labor → Municipal governance → State legislature → Federal maritime authority → Fraternal financial stewardship.

Each link reinforced the next.

Even his 1895 deposition, given decades after the war, reveals something about his sense of identity. In that testimony, he did not minimize his service. He stated plainly that he enlisted in 1862 and was discharged in 1864.¹ That memory remained central to his self-understanding. Naval service was not a footnote; it was foundational.

It also explains why federal appointments trusted him. A man who had worn a Union uniform and served aboard naval vessels during the war embodied federal loyalty. In a state where Confederate memory loomed large, that loyalty mattered.

Samuel Petty’s life unfolded during the slow transition from Reconstruction optimism to Jim Crow entrenchment. Florida’s 1885 Constitution and subsequent laws would eventually narrow Black political participation dramatically. By the 1890s, disfranchisement mechanisms would reduce the Black electorate significantly.

Yet the institutions built by men like Petty did not vanish. Municipal memory persisted. Lodge records endured. Maritime federal service left administrative traces. The architecture of Black civic authority did not crumble entirely; it recalibrated.

He belonged to a generation that understood freedom as something maintained through structure. Ships required disciplined crews. Lighthouses required constant tending. City councils required attendance and procedure. Lodges required financial stewardship. Freedom, like navigation, required maintenance.

When historians consider Reconstruction Florida, they often focus on dramatic episodes — elections, riots, constitutional debates. But the quieter work of institution-building is equally vital. Samuel Petty represents that quieter continuity.

He was not a governor. He was not a national icon. He was something perhaps more enduring: a local and state leader who translated wartime federal service into decades of civic presence.

From the decks of the USS Pembina to the council chambers of Fernandina, from the Amelia Island lighthouse to the treasury of the Grand Lodge, his life forms a coherent narrative of disciplined leadership in turbulent times.

His story reminds us that Reconstruction was not simply a political experiment imposed from Washington. It was carried forward by men who had experienced federal authority firsthand — men who believed that citizenship required participation, responsibility, and structure.

Samuel Petty did not simply survive Reconstruction.

He helped build it — and when it receded, he preserved its institutional foundations as long as he could.

 

References

[1] Deposition of Samuel Petty, March 26, 1895, pension file testimony (Henry Hannahan pension file), National Archives.

[2] National Park Service, “African American Sailors in the Union Navy,” Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System.

[3] 1870 United States Federal Census, Fernandina, Nassau County, Florida, listing Samuel Petty as “Seaman.”

[4] Florida Voter Registration Rolls, 1867–1868, Nassau County, Precinct 1.

[5] City of Fernandina Beach Commission Records, Historical Officeholder List.

[6] Canter Brown Jr., Florida’s Black Public Officials, 1867–1924 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998), p. 116.

[7] Newspaper account of Liberty Billings dispute, 1874, quoted in contemporary Florida press.

[8] U.S. Congressional Testimony on Florida Election Conditions, 1876 (railroad worker intimidation testimony).

[9] Proceedings of the Florida Constitutional Convention, 1885.

[10] U.S. Lighthouse Service Records, Amelia Island Lighthouse appointment, 1879.

[11] United States Customs Service appointment records, Fernandina, Florida.

[12] Republican National Convention Delegate Lists, 1884 and 1888.

[13] Proceedings of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge of Florida, Fernandina Session, November 28, 1889.

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I. NEWSPAPERS USED

Semi-Weekly Times-Union

• September 21, 1897 – Page 5

• September 5, 1889 – Page 7

The Florida Times-Union

• April 7, 1886 – Page 1

• August 12, 1886 – Page 4

• August 22, 1888 – Page 1

• April 4, 1889 – Page 5

• June 18, 1890 – Page 4

• August 7, 1895 – Page 3

The Pensacola News

• June 7, 1898 – Page 2

• June 20, 1890 – Page 4

The Weekly Press

• November 12, 1896 – Page 4

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II. BOOKS USED

1. Canter Brown Jr., Florida’s Black Public Officials, 1867–1924. University of Alabama Press, 1998.

2. Rowland H. Rerick, Memoirs of Florida. (Used for political context when referenced earlier in screenshots.)

3. David R. Colburn & Jane L. Landers, The African American Heritage of Florida (Google Books screenshot context).

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III. GOVERNMENT / ARCHIVAL RECORDS USED

1. 1870 United States Federal Census – Fernandina, Nassau County, Florida.

2. Florida Voter Registration Rolls, 1867–1868 – Nassau County, Precinct 1.

3. Florida House of Representatives records (1873–1875).

4. Proceedings of the Florida Constitutional Convention, 1885.

5. U.S. Congressional Serial Set – 1876 Florida Election Testimony.

6. Pension Deposition of Samuel Petty – March 26, 1895 (Henry Hannahan pension file), National Archives.

7. U.S. Lighthouse Service Records – Amelia Island appointment (1879).

8. U.S. Treasury Department – Customs Service Register of Officers (Google Books screenshots shown).

9. Proceedings of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge of Florida – Fernandina Session, November 28, 1889.

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IV. WEBSITES USED (INCLUDING CONTEXTUAL)

1. University of North Florida – Florida History Online Project
   (21st USCT and North Florida naval context)

2. National Park Service – Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System

3. Lighthouse Digest – Amelia Island Lighthouse database entry

4. City of Fernandina Beach – Historical Officeholder Records

5. Wikipedia – “Samuel Petty” entry (used structurally, not as a primary authority)

6. Google Books – for:

   • Treasury Department Registers

   • Congressional documents

   • Memoirs of Florida

   • African American Heritage of Florida

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V. CONTEXTUAL MILITARY BACKGROUND SOURCES (Used for Narrative Framing)

These were used for historical explanation but may not appear as bracketed citations unless you chose to include them:

• South Atlantic Blockading Squadron operational histories
• U.S.S. Pembina service records
• U.S.S. Oleander service records
• General scholarship on African American sailors in the Union Navy