Thomas Morris Chester

Civil War Correspondent

(1834-1892)

The was carefully observed by all the nations of the western world. Correspondents came from all over Europe to cover this epic conflict. Hundreds of foreign correspondents arrived in the to record the events, battles and personalities of one of America’s bloodiest wars. The outcome of this struggle would have significant implications for this young nation’s future and the race was on to document the conflict from beginning to end. Among all of these correspondents only one was an African American; only one was chosen by a major American daily newspaper; only one was assigned to the Union’s Army of the Potomac; that reporter was Mr. Thomas Morris Chester. He was hired by the “Philadelphia Press,” a Philadelphia daily newspaper.

Thomas M. Chester was the son of an escaped slave. He was born in Harrisburg, on May 11, 1834. As an adult and a member of the American Colonization Movement, he traveled to and from Monrovia, Liberia several times as well as studying and teaching there. While in Liberia he also became the editor of that nation’s newspaper, the “Star of Liberia.” He moved back to the United States once the Civil War was a full-fledged military engagement. He joined the Union cause, helped raise the 54th and 55th Massachusetts regiments and in 1863 led two regiments of the United States Colored Troops into battle at Gettysburg. By 1864 he was working for the Philadelphia Press newspaper as a war correspondent. With his hiring, Chester became the first African American to be a war correspondent for an American daily newspaper.

Mr. Chester’s assignment took him into the Petersburg/Richmond area of Virginia and he reported on the siege of both of these Confederate strongholds. He worked in that arena from August 1864 to June 1865. His proudest moment came on April 3, 1865, when one of his final dispatches described the entrance into the captured Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia by the forces of the ’s 25th U.S. Army Corps, Second Division, First Brigade, 7th U.S. Colored Infantry (Maryland) under Lieutenant Colonel Oscar E. Pratt.

According to the dispatch of Mr. Chester to his editors at the Philadelphia Press, dated April 10, 1865…” The colored troops had orders not to pass through the city, but to go around it and man the inner fortifications…To General Draper belongs the credit of having the first organization enter the city (Richmond)…General Draper’s brigade is composed of the 22nd, 36th, 38th and 118th U.S. Colored Troops, the 36th being the first to enter Richmond.”

In Chester’s April 6, 1865 dispatch, he reports that, “The great event after the capture of the city (Richmond) was the arrival of President Lincoln in it. He came up to Rocket’s wharf in one of Admiral Porter’s vessels of war, and, with a file of sailors for a guard of honor, he walked up to Jeff Davis’ house, the headquarters of (U.S.) General Weitzel…By the time he (President Lincoln) reached General Weitzel’s headquarters, thousands of persons had followed him to catch a glimpse of the Chief Magistrate of the United States.” Mr. Lincoln was then given a tour of the city of Richmond. “The carriage (with Lincoln and his youngest son in it) drove through the principal streets (of Richmond), followed by General Weitzel on horseback, and a cavalry guard. There is no describing the scene along the route. The colored population was wild with enthusiasm. Old men thanked God in a boisterous manner, and old women shouted upon the pavement as high as they had ever done at a religious revival.” President Lincoln’s entrance into Richmond was probably the highest point of Thomas Chester’s career as a journalist.

After the Civil War, Chester went on to study law in and became England’s first black barrister (lawyer). He returned to the United States in the early 1870’s, where he settled in for several years. In 1873, Chester became the brigadier general of the Louisiana militia, and then in 1875 he became the superintendent of that city’s schools. In 1788, after Democrats returned to power in the government, he moved back to Harrisburg, finding work with the federal government. In 1888, Chester and his wife Florence returned to New Orleans, but illness caused him to move back to his childhood home in Harrisburg. He died there at his mother’s home in 1893. He is buried in Penbrook’s Lincoln Cemetery in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

For further reading about the life and times of Thomas Morris Chester, please obtain the book, “Thomas Morris Chester: Black Civil War Correspondent; His Dispatches from the Virginia Front” by R.J.M Blackett, Louisiana State University Press, 1989.