Alexander Thomas Augusta - Civil War Service

Civil War Service

Augusta went to Washington, D.C., wrote Abraham Lincoln offering his services as a surgeon and was given a Presidential commission in the Union Army on October 1862. On April 4, 1863 he received a major's commission as surgeon for African American troops. This made him the United States Army's first African American physician out of eight in the Union Army and its highest-ranking African American officer at the time. Some whites disapproved of him having such a high rank and as such he was mobbed in Baltimore during May 1863 (where three people were arrested for assault) and Washington for publicly wearing his officer's uniform. October 2, 1863 he was commissioned Regimental Surgeon of the Seventh U.S. Colored Troops.

On 1 February 1864, Dr. Augusta wrote to Judge Advocate Captain C. W. Clippington about discrimination against African-American passengers on the streetcars (it was most likely a horse drawn streetcar) of Washington, D.C.:

Sir: I have the honor to report that I have been obstructed in getting to the court this morning by the conductor of car No. 32, of the Fourteenth Street line of the city railway.

I started from my lodgings to go to the hospital I formerly had charge of to get some notes of the case I was to give evidence in, and hailed the car at the corner of Fourteenth and I streets. It was stopped for me and when I attempted to enter the conductor pulled me back, and informed me that I must ride on the front with the driver as it was against the rules for colored persons to ride inside. I told him, I would not ride on the front, and he said I should not ride at all. He then ejected me from the platform, and at the same time gave orders to the driver to go on. I have therefore been compelled to walk the distance in the mud and rain, and have also been delayed in my attendance upon the court.

I therefore most respectfully request that the offender may be arrested and brought to punishment.

His letter was printed in New York and Washington newspapers. On 10 February 1864, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner introduced a resolution in Congress:

Resolved, That the Committee on the District of Columbia be directed to consider the expediency of further providing by law against the exclusion of colored persons from the equal enjoyment of all railroad privileges in the District of Columbia.

To support his resolution, Sumner read the letter of Dr. Augusta to the assemblage.

Edward Bates, the Attorney General in President Abraham Lincoln's cabinet, belittled the incident and senators who supported Sumner.

Augusta wrote a letter of protest against the unfair treatment put upon African Americans who ride trains to Major General Lewis Wallace. That letter preceded Plessy vs Ferguson in attempting to eliminate racial segregation on transportation in the U.S. On March 13, 1865, he was brevetted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

On February 26, 1868, Dr. Augustus testified before the United States congressional Committee on the District of Columbia in regards to Mrs. Kate Brown. Mrs. Brown, an employee of Congress, had been injured when an employee of the Alexandria, Washington and Georgetown Railroad forcibly ejected her from a passenger car. The railroad was prohibited by its charter from discrimination against passenger because of race.