U.S. Colored Troops Grand Review
Harrisburg, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Excluded from a May 1865 "Grand Review of the Armies" in Wash., DC, U.S. Colored Troops from Penna. and Mass. regiments assembled here at State & Filbert Sts. on Nov. 14, 1865 for a parade honoring their courage during the Civil War. Grand Marshal T. Morris Chester led them through Harrisburg to Sen. Simon Cameron's Front St. home to be gratefully acknowledged. Octavius Catto, William Howard Day, Gen. JB Kiddoo, & the Rev. Stephen Smith spoke.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
When the great "Grand Review of the Armies" paraded through Washington in May 1865, the United States Colored Troops who had fought and bled for the Union were pointedly left out. In answer, Black regiments from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts assembled here at State and Filbert Streets on November 14, 1865, for their own triumphant review. Grand Marshal T. Morris Chester led them through Harrisburg to Senator Simon Cameron's home, where leaders including Octavius Catto and William Howard Day honored their service.
Why it matters
This overlooked parade insisted that Black soldiers be recognized for saving the Union, a demand for dignity that prefigured the long struggle for equal citizenship after the Civil War.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the autumn of 1865 the Civil War was over, the guns had fallen silent, and a weary, victorious North was still sorting out what its triumph had cost and what it had meant. In late May, Washington had staged the "Grand Review of the Armies" — two days of blue-clad regiments pouring down Pennsylvania Avenue past cheering crowds, a national thank-you to the men who had saved the Union.
But tens of thousands of those men were not invited to march. The United States Colored Troops — Black soldiers who had enlisted by the hundreds of thousands once the Union finally opened its ranks — were absent from that celebrated parade. Their courage at places across the war had been real and costly, yet the capital's great public tribute left them out.
Pennsylvania's capital sat squarely in this moment. Harrisburg had been a crucial Union supply and recruiting center, a gateway between the loyal North and the contested border. Here, at the corner of State and Filbert Streets on November 14, 1865, the answer to Washington's omission took shape on the city's own streets.
People & events
On that November day, Black regiments from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts assembled in Harrisburg for a review of their own — a parade held expressly to honor the service and sacrifice that the capital's pageant had overlooked. It was not a consolation. It was an assertion.
Leading the procession as Grand Marshal was T. Morris Chester, a striking choice. A Black Pennsylvanian who had reported on the war, Chester was exactly the kind of figure the day was meant to celebrate — proof that Black Americans had been full participants in the Union's cause, not bystanders to it. He led the marchers through the city to the Front Street home of Simon Cameron, the powerful Pennsylvania senator who had served as Lincoln's first Secretary of War, where the soldiers were formally and gratefully acknowledged.
The speakers that day form a roll of Black leadership in the Civil War era. Octavius Catto, the young Philadelphia activist and educator; William Howard Day, the orator and organizer; the Reverend Stephen Smith, a minister and one of the wealthiest Black businessmen of his time; and General J. B. Kiddoo all addressed the gathering. Together they turned a parade into a public argument: that the men who had worn the Union blue had earned not just thanks, but a place in the nation they had fought to preserve.
Its place in the American story
The Harrisburg review speaks to one of the central unfinished questions of the Civil War's end. The fighting had settled whether the Union would survive and whether slavery would continue. It had not settled whether the Black Americans who helped win that victory would be treated as full citizens of the country they had defended.
By staging their own grand review after being excluded from Washington's, the USCT veterans and their allies made that question visible. They insisted that recognition delayed was not recognition denied — and that they would claim the dignity owed them even if the national stage would not grant it. It was a demand for respect that ran straight into the coming struggles of Reconstruction.
That through-line is sobering. Octavius Catto, who spoke here, would be killed a few years later amid violence around Black voting in Philadelphia — a reminder that the equal citizenship these soldiers demanded would be contested for generations. The parade at State and Filbert was an early, determined note in a much longer fight for civil rights, one whose echoes reach well into the century that followed.
If you visit
Stand at the corner of State and Filbert Streets in Harrisburg and you are standing on a parade route — one that most history books never mention. There is no grandstand, no avenue of monuments, just a working city street. That plainness is part of the point: the tribute these soldiers received happened here, on ordinary ground, because the grander stage had been closed to them.
Take a moment to look toward the Front Street corridor along the Susquehanna, the direction the marchers moved as they made their way to Senator Cameron's home. Walking even part of that line gives you a sense of a community turning out to honor its own.
If you're building a day around Pennsylvania's Civil War story, this marker pairs naturally with the capitol district and Harrisburg's role as a Union hub. Read the names on it slowly before you go. Each one carries a larger story — of soldiers, orators, and organizers who refused to let their service be forgotten, and who chose this spot to say so.
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 people
- · T. Morris Chester
- · Octavius Catto
- · William Howard Day
- · Simon Cameron
- · Stephen Smith
Related events
- · U.S. Colored Troops Grand Review, Nov. 14, 1865
Themes & tags
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