February 2021 Newsletter

WWW.MHCE.US Monthly Newsletter | 7
The men made it safely to the blockade set up by
President Abraham Lincoln at the outset of the
war. Awaiting them were the USS Cambridge
and the USS State of Georgia, which spotted
the two boats just after 8 a.m.
Initially, the men would be considered
contraband, a designation that Gould's greatgrandson,
William Benjamin Gould IV, would
later co-opt as the title of his book on his
ancestor, "Diary of a Contraband: The Civil
War Passage of a Black Sailor."
As the title suggests, Gould didn't just seek
refuge with the Union Navy boats just outside
the reach of the Confederacy and, therefore,
his now-former owner. He and several of the
other men he fled with joined the Navy, and he
almost immediately began keeping a diary of
his experience.
To enlist, he had to take what he referred to in
his writings as the "Oath of Allegiance to the
Government of Uncle Samuel" — what he
called Uncle Sam.
His diary is an essential text for Civil War
and African-American historians because it is
considered to be the only known naval diary
written by a former slave.
The entries in his diary range from simple
location updates as he began his service to
combat the very institution that had oppressed
him his entire life, to the various battles and
scuffles engaged in by the USS Cambridge and
later the USS Niagara, on which he served.
He wrote about his daily duties, the captured
Confederates his ship transported and often the
weather.
On board, he was given the rank of First Class
Boy, and later promoted to Landsman and Ward
Room Steward. He was a low-ranking member
of his ships, but he served with dedication.
He believed in the cause the Union was fighting
for and he wanted to support it any way he
could.
In his diary, he wrote that it was the "holiest of
causes, Liberty and Union."
Gould served for three years until he was
formally and honorably discharged from the
Charleston Naval Shipyard in Massachusetts.
Gould's diaries wouldn't be discovered for
decades after his death, in old boxes given to
William Benjamin Gould III.
The diaries cover his entire three-year service,
save for two periods when he was hospitalized
for the measles in 1863, and a time between
Sept. 1864 and Feb. 1865 when they have not
found any writing.
Now out of the service and with his full
freedom, Gould would waste no time to marry
his beloved Cornelia Williams Read inside
the African Baptist Church on Nantucket
Island, Massachusetts. The two likely met
in Wilmington before she was bought out of
slavery and moved to Nantucket in 1858.
Gould briefly reunited with Cornelia on his first
leave in the spring of 1863 in Boston. During
the war, the two exchanged at least 60 letters.
The Goulds finally settled in Dedham, Mass.
in 1871, where they would have two daughters
and six sons.
All six of his and Cornelia's sons would serve
in wars. The oldest, William Benjamin Gould
II, fought in the Spanish-American War in
1898, while the other five all fought in World
War I.
A now-famous picture of Gould surrounded by
his six sons, all in their military uniforms, ran
in The Crisis, the NAACP's first magazine in
December 1917.
Gould continued to pursue his own work later
in his life. The plastering skills he learned
in Wilmington brought him acclaim and
recognition in Dedham, most notably restoring
St. Mary's Catholic Church. He was a founding
member of the Episcopal Church of the Good
Shepherd and served in the GAR, the Grand
Army of the Republic on veteran's matters,
even ascending to the title of commander of
Post 144 in 1900 and 1901.
He died at the age of 85 on May 23, 1923.
It was announced recently that Dedham is
exploring its options for erecting a monument
to Gould. He is already acknowledged on a
North Carolina State Highway Historic marker
outside the Bellamy Mansion, a small and
necessary gesture of gratitude for his immense
contribution to our knowledge of what life was
like for a former slave who joined the fight.
Even when he was still with the Union Navy,
Gould began corresponding with the Anglo-
African, a black abolitionist paper that provided
reporting for the black soldiers and sailors
serving in the war.
He would begin contributing articles to the
publication under the nom de plume, Oley.
One of those articles detailed one of Gould's
few return trips to Wilmington after his escape.
He had returned in 1865 to find his birthplace
to be a different city.
The slave auction block that once stood near
Market Street was gone and the bell that once
rang to inform slaves of their 9 p.m. curfew was
silent. He saw black citizens actively involved
with trade and commerce, and they filled the
schoolrooms they were previously not allowed
to be in.
The aftermath of the Civil War would not be
a time of immediate or widespread acceptance
for the African-African community. But what
Gould saw was the beginning, something as a
child in Wilmington he probably feared may
never come.
"On the whole, Wilmington is changed," he
wrote.