Aaron Hurvey (third from right) pictured here with the 57th U.S. Colored Infantry. (Photo courtesy of the UALR Archives)

Ronnie Nichols (second from right) at drill during the filming of the motion picture "Glory." Aaron Hurvey is Ronnie's Great Uncle.

The following passages are from a statement that Hurvey filed on May 3rd, 1909, at the age of seventy for a military pension.

"I have no record of my age and know of none other public, baptism, family or Bible record. I was a slave and my parents before me slaves without the knowledge to keep or appreciate records or to read or write. What little I can do I learned since Slavery… I was sold with the whole plantation and everything in 1858 and I was knocked down for $1,500.00 and since then I was with the speculators [slave traders] and know nothing until I joined the U. S. Army." 

During the Civil War, Hurvey escaped from his owner in Mississippi and crossed the Mississippi River to Helena, Arkansas. In 1911, when he was applying for an increase in his service pension, Hurvey succeeded in getting his old friend, Burrill Eastman, to give the following testimony on his behalf: 

"I first knew Claimant in Cohoma Co., Miss. when old Boss Dickenson bought Claiment for 19 years of age in 1859. I already belonged to Dickenson and I was 18 in 1859 and get Pension at $20.00 per month. He and I ran off and joined the same Company and same Regiment together at Leavenworth, Kansas… We came back to Little Rock, Arkansas together and have resided here ever since." 

The 57th United States Colored Infantry in which Aaron Hurvey and Burrill Eastman served, were engineers and bridge train guards during General Frederick Steele's expedition to Camden, Arkansas. The regiment participated in several skirmishes near Little Rock in April and May, 1864, as well as in operations against Confederate forces led by General Joseph Shelby north of the Arkansas River in May, 1864.

More than 180,000 black men enlisted in the Union Army and more than 29,000 manned Union ships. Almost one out of every ten men in the Federal Army was black.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, abolitionists urged President Lincoln to free the slaves and use them as soldiers. Frederick Douglass, ex-slave and abolitionist, in an effort to put black troops into service, said:

"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S.; let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pockets, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States." 

Former slaves from Arkansas served in Union regiments in Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Iowa, and Mississippi.

Black regiments raised in Arkansas were: 1st Arkansas Infantry, African Descent; 2nd Arkansas Infantry, African Descent, organized May, 1864 (changed to 54th U.S.C.T.); 3rd Arkansas Infantry, African Descent, organized August, 1863 at St. Louis, Missouri (changed to 56th U.S.C.T.); 4th Arkansas Infantry, African Descent, organized at Helena in December, 1863 (changed to 57th U.S.C.T.); the 11th, organized at Fort Smith, December, 1863; the 112th, organized in Little Rock, in April, 1864; and the 113th. A new 113th regiment was formed from a consolidation of the 11th, 112th, and 113th regiments.

The 1st and 2nd Kansas Colored were made up mostly of runaway slaves from Arkansas and Missouri. As the first of the black regiments raised west of the Mississippi, they served the majority of the war in Arkansas. The 1st Kansas Colored suffered major losses escorting a large forage train to Camden in southern Arkansas.

Black soldiers participated in over 39 major battles and hundreds of skirmishes during the Civil War. The all-black 25th Army Corps aided in the capture of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox.