Daviess County U.S. Colored Troops
Owensboro, Daviess County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Daviess Co. U. S. Colored Troops in the Civil War. In 1864, several hundred enslaved African American men joined the Union army here. Enlisting in the army meant eventual freedom for the men and their families. Units raised in Daviess Co. took part in important operations at Richmond, Petersburg, and Lee's surrender at Appomattox, as well as campaigns in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Louisiana. (Reverse) Recruits served in the 100th, 109th, and 118th U.S. Colored Infantry and the 5th and 6th U.S. Colored Cavalry. There was much opposition among pro-slavery Kentucky Unionists to the recruitment of slaves. Therefore, black men in Daviess Co. took great risks to themselves and their families by enlisting in the army.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
In 1864, several hundred enslaved African American men in Daviess County left bondage to enlist in the Union army, a choice that promised eventual freedom for themselves and their families. They served in the 100th, 109th, and 118th U.S. Colored Infantry and the 5th and 6th U.S. Colored Cavalry, fighting at Richmond, Petersburg, and Appomattox and across the western theater. In a Kentucky where pro-slavery Unionists bitterly opposed Black recruitment, enlisting was an act of extraordinary courage and risk.
Why it matters
It marks the moment enslaved Kentuckians seized their own liberation by taking up arms, a pivotal chapter in the Civil War and the long struggle for African American freedom.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By 1864, Kentucky occupied one of the strangest positions in the Civil War. It was a slave state that never left the Union, and that in-between status made it a place of bitter contradictions. Many white Kentuckians who supported the Union also supported slavery, and they clung to the belief that the war could be won without disturbing the human property on which their economy rested.
Into that tense landscape came the Union army's growing need for soldiers. As the war ground on, the federal government turned to a source of manpower it had long refused: the enslaved and free Black men of the border states. Recruiting stations opened, and Daviess County, on the Ohio River in western Kentucky, became one of the places where enslaved men could step forward.
Owensboro and the river country around it were farm and trade country, tied to the waterways that carried goods south and west. For the men held in bondage there, the arrival of Union recruiters meant that the distant national struggle had suddenly opened a door in their own county — a door that led, at real and immediate risk, toward freedom.
People & events
In 1864, several hundred enslaved African American men in Daviess County made a decision that changed their lives and their families' lives forever: they walked away from bondage and enlisted in the Union army. Under federal policy, enlistment carried the promise of eventual freedom, not only for the soldier but for his family as well. That promise was worth risking everything for.
The men from Daviess County were mustered into a range of units — the 100th, 109th, and 118th U.S. Colored Infantry, and the 5th and 6th U.S. Colored Cavalry. From there, they were carried into some of the war's decisive campaigns. Kentucky units took part in the long operations around Richmond and the grinding siege at Petersburg, and they were present in the final act of the eastern war, the surrender of Lee's army at Appomattox. Others served across Kentucky, Tennessee, and Louisiana.
What sets this story apart is the danger these men faced simply for enlisting. In a state where pro-slavery Unionists fiercely opposed the recruitment of enslaved men, a Black man who put on the uniform exposed himself — and often his wife, children, and kin still living in bondage — to retaliation. Their courage was not only the battlefield kind. It was the everyday courage of defying the entire social order of their home county.
Its place in the American story
Nearly 180,000 Black soldiers served in the Union army by the war's end, and their service transformed the meaning of the conflict. What had begun as a war to preserve the Union became, through their participation and through emancipation, a war for freedom itself. The men of Daviess County were part of that national turn.
Their story also lays bare the special agony of the border states. In places that stayed loyal to the Union, emancipation did not arrive as a single clean stroke; it was won piece by piece, and for many enslaved Kentuckians, military enlistment was the actual mechanism of their liberation. These men did not wait to be freed. They took up arms and freed themselves and their families, changing the law's reach by their own action.
That is why this marker matters far beyond one Kentucky county. It records the moment when enslaved Americans became soldiers of the republic, and in doing so helped remake the nation that had held them in chains.
If you visit
Standing in Owensboro today, you are on the ground where an extraordinary act of collective courage unfolded — a place where hundreds of men chose freedom under threat. Take a moment to read both faces of the marker; the reverse, with its list of regiments and its plain statement about the risks these men ran, is where the human weight of the story lives.
Let the river setting sink in. This was a working river town, a crossroads of movement and trade, and it was also a departure point for men marching toward Richmond, Petersburg, and Appomattox. The distance between this quiet spot and those famous battlefields is part of the story: local men carried the fight all the way to the war's end.
If you're building a trip around Kentucky's Civil War landscape, this is a stop that reframes the whole era. It asks you to remember the war not only as generals and campaigns, but as a decision made by ordinary enslaved men who staked their lives — and their families' lives — on the promise of freedom.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related events
- · Siege of Petersburg
- · Surrender at Appomattox
- · American Civil War
Themes & tags
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