Lieutenant Colonel George Washington Williams, A Soldier's Story
.png "A Soldier’s Story: Lieutenant Colonel George Washington Williams, Civil War and Western Frontier")
Lieutenant Colonel George Washington Williams, A Soldier's Story
Lieutenant Colonel George Washington Williams was born on October 16, 1849, in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania. He was educated at home during his early childhood and later trained as a barber while residing at the Pennsylvania House of Refuge. At the age of fourteen, Williams ran away from the institution to enlist in the United States Army during the final year of the Civil War.
Despite his youth, he served during the closing campaigns of the war, witnessing the conflict that would shape both his military path and his lifelong commitment to justice and historical truth.
After the Civil War, Williams enlisted in the Mexican Republican Army, fighting in support of the republican cause against the French-backed empire of Maximilian I. Following his service in Mexico, he returned to the United States and reenlisted in the U.S. Army in 1867.
Williams was assigned to the 10th U.S. Infantry Regiment and stationed on the western frontier, serving during the postwar expansion into the Plains region near present-day Oklahoma. During a military engagement, he was shot in the chest, suffering a perforated lung, and was subsequently medically discharged from service.
Following his military career, Williams pursued higher education, enrolling at Howard University before transferring to Newton Theological Institution in Massachusetts. In 1874, he became the first African American to graduate from the institution. He was ordained as a Baptist minister and served congregations in the Washington, D.C., area. During this time, he also founded and edited a weekly journal titled The Commoner.
Williams later moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he studied law and opened a private practice. He served as a judge advocate for the U.S. Army and, in 1880, became the first African American elected to the Ohio General Assembly.
That same year, Williams began work on History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880, the first comprehensive scholarly history of African Americans. The two-volume work was published in 1882 and remains a foundational contribution to American historiography.
From 1885 to 1886, Williams served as the United States Minister to Haiti. He later published A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion in 1887, documenting the critical role of Black soldiers in the Civil War.
In 1889, Williams traveled to Europe as a correspondent for S. S. McClure’s Associated Literary Press. While abroad, he met King Leopold II of Belgium and was invited to visit the Congo Free State. Appalled by the brutal treatment and exploitation of the Congolese people, Williams authored An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo on July 18, 1890. In it, he publicly condemned the atrocities and exposed what he described as slavery under colonial rule, making him one of the earliest international human rights critics of the Congo Free State.
While returning to England, Williams fell seriously ill. He died of tuberculosis and pleurisy in London on August 2, 1891. Lieutenant Colonel George Washington Williams is buried at Layton Cemetery in Blackpool, England.
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