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Sgt. William Carney of New Bedford and the flag that never touched the ground

An SC360 Special for Veterans Day on the New Bedford man behind the words "the old flag never touched the ground," told from his own 1863 letter, his regiment's history and the newspapers of his time.

By the SC360 Community Desk | Published Oct. 31, 2026 | Last verified Oct. 31, 2026, 8:34 a.m. ET

NEW BEDFORD On the evening of July 18, 1863, a New Bedford seaman who had enlisted at 22 picked up the national flag of the 54th Massachusetts near Fort Wagner, South Carolina, carried it to the top of the fort's earthen wall and, when the attack broke, brought it back with two wounds. Sgt. William H. Carney of Company C received the Medal of Honor for it 37 years later, on May 23, 1900, and he spent most of the years in between carrying the mail on New Bedford's streets.

From Norfolk to New Bedford

Carney was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on Feb. 29, 1840, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. In a letter printed in the abolitionist paper The Liberator on Nov. 6, 1863, which the Massachusetts Historical Society has transcribed, he wrote that his mother, Ann Dean, had been "the property of one Major Carney" and was freed with all of his people under the major's will. In his fourteenth year, he wrote, he attended "a private and secret school kept in Norfolk by a minister," and as a teenager he worked in the coasting trade with his father, William Carney.

In 1856, the letter says, his father went looking "for a place to live in peace and freedom," passed through Pennsylvania and New York and settled on New Bedford, "where 'Liberty Hall' is a sacred edifice," then sent for his family. The son found work as "a jobber of work for stores" and joined a church led by the Rev. Mr. Jackson. "Previous to the formation of colored troops, I had a strong inclination to prepare myself for the ministry," Carney wrote, "but when the country called for all persons, I could best serve my God by serving my country and my oppressed brothers." The rest, he wrote, was short: "I enlisted for the war."

Company C

Luis F. Emilio, a captain in the 54th who published the regiment's history in 1891, wrote that New Bedford was "chosen as a fertile field" for recruits and that James W. Grace, a young New Bedford businessman, was selected as recruiting officer and commissioned Feb. 10, 1863, then opened an office on Williams Street near the post office and hung the United States flag across the street. Grace visited the city's Black churches and arranged for William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, among others, to address meetings. Emilio wrote that Grace was often taunted by people who said the men would run at the first sight of the enemy, and that his young son was mocked at school.

The recruits briefly called themselves the Morgan Guards, and at camp the New Bedford men, "some seventy-five in number," became the core of Company C, which Emilio described as "recruited largely in New Bedford." The regiment's roster lists Sgt. William H. Carney as enlisting Feb. 17, 1863, at 22, single, a seaman from New Bedford.

The night at Fort Wagner

Fort Wagner was an earthwork on Morris Island, south of Charleston, built to defend the city's harbor. Col. Robert Gould Shaw's regiment landed on the island on the afternoon of July 18 with 600 enlisted men, according to the official report his successor, Col. Edward N. Hallowell, filed afterward and Emilio reprinted. At dusk they went forward at the head of the Union column, the pace "gradually increasing till it became a run" as canister and musketry, in Hallowell's words, "began to tell on us."

Emilio described the regiment wading a ditch with two or three feet of water in it and climbing the slope beyond while defenders fired down from the crest. "Both flags were planted on the parapet," he wrote, "the national flag carried there and gallantly maintained by the brave Sergt. William H. Carney of Company C." Shaw reached the top, shouted "Forward, Fifty-fourth!" and was shot dead. The state flag was torn from its staff in the fighting, and its silk was found by the enemy in the moat.

The Liberator's account of Aug. 28, 1863, also transcribed by the historical society, says the flag had been carried by Sgt. John Wall of Company G until he fell into a deep ditch near the fort, and that Carney "caught the colors, carried them forward, and was the first man to plant the Stars and Stripes upon Fort Wagner." When the men fell back, the paper said, Carney, wounded in the chest, "brought the colors off, creeping on his knees." Wounded soldiers, Black and white, rose from the straw in the hospital and cheered when he crawled in with the flag, and he told them, "Boys, I but did my duty; the dear old flag never touched the ground." Emilio wrote that Carney brought the flag from the parapet "at the cost of two grievous wounds." His book's frontispiece, the image at the top of this story, carries the shorter form of his words: "The old flag never touched the ground, boys."

The assault failed, and Hallowell's report counted 256 enlisted men of the regiment killed, wounded or missing, and Emilio put the total Union loss that night at 1,515 against 181 killed and wounded among the fort's defenders. In his report, Hallowell named four enlisted men "for especial merit," Carney among them.

Home, and the mail route

The roster records Carney's discharge on June 30, 1864, at Morris Island, and the historical society says it was for disability. When the regiment came home and was disbanded in Boston in September 1865, Company C rode the cars to New Bedford, where, Emilio wrote, a large number of citizens, a reception committee, the New Bedford Band and the Carney Guards met some 22 veterans and marched them through crowded streets to City Hall. That October, according to the historical society, Carney married Susanna Williams in New Bedford, and they had a daughter, Clara.

In 1869 he became a letter carrier in New Bedford, one of four in the city and its only Black carrier, according to The Postal Record, the magazine of the National Association of Letter Carriers. The union says the March 20, 1890, charter of its New Bedford Branch 18 carries his signature as vice president, and that he carried mail for nearly 32 years before retiring at 61. In 1901 he went to work as a messenger in the Massachusetts secretary of state's office at the State House.

The medal, and a monument

The Medal of Honor came on May 23, 1900. Its citation reads: "When the color sergeant was shot down, this soldier grasped the flag, led the way to the parapet, and planted the colors thereon. When the troops fell back he brought off the flag, under a fierce fire in which he was twice severely wounded." The Congressional Medal of Honor Society calls his charge the first Medal of Honor action by an African American. A cabinet card by the New Bedford studio Headley and Reed, now at the historical society, shows him wearing another decoration, the medal Maj. Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore first issued in October 1863 to troops under his command in South Carolina for "gallant and meritorious conduct."

Three years before the medal, on May 31, 1897, Boston dedicated Augustus Saint-Gaudens' monument to Shaw and the 54th, which faces the State House. Booker T. Washington, speaking at the dedication, said "that old flag, that emblem of progress and security which brave Sergeant Carney never permitted to fall upon the ground," would "still be borne aloft by Southern soldier and Northern soldier," according to the city's printed record of the day. Harvard's Houghton Library notes that Carney carried the flag once more as the regiment's survivors paraded.

The last act

In late November 1908, Carney was crushed by an elevator at the State House, and he died of his injuries at City Hospital in Boston in December, the New-York Tribune reported. The State House flags were lowered in his honor, the Springfield Weekly Republican wrote, an honor the paper likened to one paid to a president or a governor, and it noted that his walk to work each day took him past the Shaw monument. The paper reprinted a tribute that Col. N.P. Hallowell, who had commanded the 55th Massachusetts, wrote for the Boston Transcript. Carney was stepping aside to make room for another, Hallowell wrote, when his leg was caught and crushed. "It is fit that the last act, the act which cost his life, should be one of courtesy," he wrote. "Sergeant William H. Carney was a gentleman."

After he lay in state in Boston, his body was taken by train to New Bedford for the funeral, the historical society says, and he is buried in the city's Oak Grove Cemetery.

Read it yourself

South Coast towns mark Veterans Day on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Find this year's parades and ceremonies in our Veterans Day listings.

Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.

Notes

Carney's early life and his reasons for enlisting come from his own letter in The Liberator of Nov. 6, 1863, and the hospital scene and his words from The Liberator of Aug. 28, 1863, both as transcribed by the Massachusetts Historical Society. The recruiting, the assault, the official report and the losses, the roster entry and the 1865 homecoming come from Luis F. Emilio's 1891 history of the regiment. The medal citation and date come from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, his postal career from the National Association of Letter Carriers, and his death and the State House honors from the New-York Tribune and the Springfield Weekly Republican of December 1908. The accounts differ on the day of the elevator accident and of his death, so the story gives the month. We read them on Oct. 31 and checked each date and weekday against a calendar. Not heard: no one was contacted.

Corrections

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Sources (8)

  1. Luis F. Emilio, History of the Fifty-fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1863-1865 (Boston, The Boston Book Co., 1891) | Internet Archive (Cornell University Library copy)Copyright page checked (1891); preface, Chapter I (recruiting, pp. 9 to 10), Chapter V (the July 18 assault, with Col. Hallowell's report on pp. 89 to 91), the 1865 return (p. 321) and the Company C roster read in full. Frontispiece is the lead image. Read Oct. 31, 2026.
  2. "Boys, I but did my duty; the dear old flag never touched the ground": Sergeant William H. Carney, a Hero of Fort Wagner | Massachusetts Historical Society, Object of the Month, July 2023Transcribes The Liberator, Aug. 28, 1863, p. 2, and Nov. 6, 1863, p. 4; marriage, discharge, accident, funeral and burial; the Headley and Reed cabinet card. Read Oct. 31, 2026.
  3. William Harvey Carney | Congressional Medal of Honor SocietyCitation, action date and place, presentation date May 23, 1900, birth Feb. 29, 1840, Norfolk, Va., burial at Oak Grove Cemetery. Read Oct. 31, 2026.
  4. Exercises at the Dedication of the Monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the Fifty-fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Infantry, May 31, 1897 (Boston City Council) | Internet ArchiveAddress of Booker T. Washington read in full. Read Oct. 31, 2026.
  5. New-York Tribune, Dec. 10, 1908, page 7, "William H. Carney" | Library of Congress, Chronicling AmericaObituary dispatch from Boston: State House messenger, elevator accident, death at City Hospital. Read from the page text Oct. 31, 2026.
  6. Springfield Weekly Republican, Dec. 17, 1908, page 3 | Library of Congress, Chronicling AmericaState House flags lowered in his honor; Col. N.P. Hallowell's tribute from the Boston Transcript. Read from the page text Oct. 31, 2026.
  7. "Postal pioneers," The Postal Record, September 2020 | National Association of Letter CarriersLetter carrier from 1869, one of four carriers, Branch 18 charter of March 20, 1890, retirement and the State House messenger job. Read Oct. 31, 2026.
  8. How Sergeant William Harvey Carney Rescued the Old Flag in the Assault on Fort Wagner in the American Civil War | Houghton Library, Harvard University, June 14, 2020The 1897 parade with the flag. Read Oct. 31, 2026.

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