On July 18th, 1861, roughly three months after the outbreak of the American Civil War, my daughter’s great-great-great grandfather on her mother’s mother’s side, John Morgan Wages, enlisted in the 6th Regiment of the Arkansas Cavalry at the age of 16 years old to fight on the side of the Confederacy.
According to his enlistment papers, Morgan was 5’6” tall with fair complexion, blue eyes, and light hair, and prior to enlisting, he worked as a farmer.
Just a year prior, his father, Lemuel Wages, purchased “forty-six acres and twenty four-hundredths of an acre” of public land in Arkansas from the Federal government. While I haven’t found any record of Lemuel or his father, William, owning slaves, I did find a record in the 1810 U.S. Federal Census that Morgan’s great-grandfather, Dawson Wages, owned four slaves back when the family lived in Richland County, South Carolina.
I don’t know if Morgan fought for the Confederacy because he believed in white supremacy, or if he was “defending” his family’s land, or if he was “defending” his family’s property (i.e., slaves), but I do know he served as part of the Company G (the Ouachita Cavalry) and fought “for the Confederacy east of the Mississippi River.” After fighting for a year, he reenlisted in July 1862.
Three months later, in October 1862, at the Battle of Corinth, a critical rail junction in northern Mississippi, Morgan was either “severely” or “slightly” wounded in the head (a handwritten note says “severely,” but a typed note of the list of casualties from the battle says “wounded slightly”). Morgan is listed as “Absent” on the next two company musters and disappears from the Confederate record after December 1862.
However, his name shows up again in the military record on November 25, 1863, when he enlists in Lewisburg, Arkansas, for a three-year stint as a private with Company B of the 3rd Regiment Arkansas Cavalry, fighting on behalf of the Union. Interestingly enough, the first time his name appears in the record for signing with the Union cavalry, there’s a note that reads, “Have no horse.”
I don’t know why Morgan switched sides, but many went where the wages were (no pun intended). Morgan would stay with the Union regiment for the next year and a half, fighting as part of the Camden Expedition, which was the final campaign against the Confederate Army in Arkansas (and it was wildly unsuccessful).
In the June of 1865, there’s a remark on Morgan’s record that reads:
Stop for ordinance retained $8.00 + in confinement awaiting sentence of court martial since May 13, 1865.
I could not find any more information on why he was courtmartialed, but he was mustered out of the regiment on June 30th, 1865. I’m assuming he wasn’t dishonorably discharged because he would collect a pension until his death, and his widow, Alcesta Wages (formerly Brazil), would continue to collect until her death in 1917.
After the war, Morgan made his living as a farmer in the Behestian or Red Hill townships in Ouachita County (according to the 1880 Census, anyway). He and Alcesta would get married in 1870 in Camden, Arkansas, and go on to have nine children (six boys and three girls [two of the latter died before the age of 1]).
I lose track of Morgan after the 1880 Census. Other family-tree researchers have his death listed as April 19th, 1892 in Edmond, West Virginia.
His wife’s grave can be found in the Scotland Presbyterian Cemetery in Scotland, Arkansas, but she’s buried with their son’s wife, not with her husband, so I don’t yet have a reliable record of his death.
All of which is to say that I have proof that my daughter directly owes her life, at least in part, to the slave economy and the fight for white supremacy.
