Oregon Magazine

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From Plantation to Pulpit
Reverend Daniel Drew of Portland
By Randy Fletcher

In the motion picture Glory, black Union soldiers march into a southern town and amazed slave children gather to watch them. Sergeant Major John Rawlins, portrayed by Morgan Freeman, says to the children “Ain't no dream. We runaway slaves, but we come back fightin' men. Go tell your folks how kingdom come in the year of jubilee!” The character played by Freeman is incredibly similar to the life of a Portland man.

Daniel Drew was born a slave but died a free man. He fought for his liberty because freedom is never given and must be earned. He took up the musket and donned the blue suit and persevered against those who would keep him enslaved.

Little is known of Drew’s early life. He was born in Virginia about 1843. His grandparents were Africans, taken prisoner in their native land and shipped in chains to the Americas. We don’t know the name of the white man who owned Drew; census records do not list slaves by name. They are listed by sex and age on a special census schedule just like head of cattle or bushels of wheat. We do know that the outbreak of the Civil War found young Daniel laboring in Arkansas. He was 20 years old the day the Union Army arrived at his master’s farm.

For the first time in his life, Drew was free to travel without a pass. He made his way to St. Louis where the U.S. Army was enlisting free black men to fight the southern rebellion. Drew signed on as a private in the 3rd Arkansas Infantry (African Descent). The Third was sent to Helena, Arkansas where they were used for garrison and guard duty. After six months the regiment was reorganized and designated as the 56th United States Colored Infantry. Their commanding officer was Colonel Carl Bentzoni, a tough Prussian who trained the men for combat duty. Their chance to fight came in the summer of 1864. Three hundred and sixty men from the 56th and 60th Colored Infantry and a two gun battery from the 2nd Colored Artillery were ordered to proceed to Wallace’s Ferry. Their orders were to seek out and engage enemy cavalry that had been raiding farms in Union held territory.

Baptized in battle

On a hot and dusty Tuesday dawn the Federal forces were attacked by one thousand Arkansas and Missouri cavalrymen under Confederate Colonel Archibald Dobbins. Taken by surprise the Union cannon crews were shot down before they could fire the big guns and the white officers were

killed or wounded. The black infantrymen formed a battle line and fought desperately for the next four hours. Free black men standing shoulder to shoulder in a fight for their lives, the barrels of their muskets getting so hot it would burn flesh when touched.

At about 10:00 AM the black foot soldiers were joined by one hundred fifty mounted men of the 15th Illinois Cavalry who had raced in with drawn sabers and sliced their way through a portion of Dobbin’s horsemen. The combined force, black infantry and white cavalry, began a fighting retreat back to their fort in Helena. Under constant assault from all sides, the black troops rallied for a counter charge into the Rebel line. Their gallant thrust broke the gray cavalry and drove off the attackers. The Federal forces made it back to their post without further attack. Union casualties were four officers and twenty-one enlisted men killed or mortally wounded.

Private Drew and his comrades had proved their bravery on the field of battle and for the rest of 1864 through the end of the war they would fight Rebel troops in engagements throughout Arkansas and parts of Mississippi. With the fall of the Confederacy, Drew and the men of the 56th peacefully performed duty at Helena until their enlistment was complete. The end of their service would bring a tragedy many times deadlier than battle.

Sickness aboard ship

The men of the 56th having completed their enlistment were loaded on two steam ships which were to transport them from Helena to St. Louis where they would be paid and discharged from the army. As the ships made their way up the Mississippi, several of the men took ill and died. The ships arrived at St. Louis at night and the troops were kept on board until morning when doctors came on board. The diagnosis was cholera and Drew and the men of the 56th were ordered to a quarantine station.

Cholera is an intestinal disease marked by exhaustive diarrhea and sudden drops in blood pressure. In its most severe forms, cholera is one of the fastest killers known to man. Death often occurs within a few hours. The men of the 56th, proud, free, and victorious were defeated by disease. A full strength Union infantry regiment numbered one thousand soldiers. Over a three week period in 1866, the 56th regiment lost six hundred forty-nine men to a microscopic killer. Those men are buried together in the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis. Daniel Drew was among the less than three hundred survivors.

Civilian life

After the epidemic had passed, the surviving soldiers were processed for discharge. Most of the men had nowhere to go and owned no possessions beyond their military uniforms. Once paid, the first order of business for the men was to buy civilian clothes. Although emancipated and flush with army greenbacks, the black troopers were not welcomed in St. Louis shops. Instead the haberdashers sent runners to the barracks with samples of material and they took measurements and orders from the ex-soldiers. Tailors in town would make the clothing and the runners would deliver the packages to the barracks. Black wool suits were the most popular item purchased.

Daniel Drew, a free man in a new suit walked off his army post and began his new life. Drew headed back to his old army post in Helena, Arkansas. During the war Quakers, under protection of the army, had founded a school for black people near the fort. Colonel Bentzoni and men of the 56th donated funds from their pay to purchase thirty acres for the school which was named the Southland Institute. Daniel Drew became one of the school’s first fifteen students.

In 1871 Drew was ordained a minister by the Society of Friends and he became a well known evangelist in the Helena area. He took a wife and started a family. To supplement his preaching income, Drew and his wife Laura Ann owned a farm in Cleburne, Arkansas.

After the turn of the Twentieth Century, Daniel and Laura Ann moved to Portland accompanied by son William and his family. They joined the Sunnyside Quaker’s Meeting but in 1907 Drew became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Membership in the G.A.R.

In Oregon, Rev. Drew became active in the Grand Army of the Republic, the fraternal organization of Union Civil War veterans. At a time when most of America was segregated, the G.A.R. was integrated and welcomed black Union veterans into the organization. Drew joined Portland’s Benjamin Butler Post 57.

One of the projects of the G.A.R. was to raise money for a soldier’s memorial at Portland’s Lone Fir Cemetery. Drew was one of the chief fundraisers for the monument. The November 17, 1902 edition of The Oregonian carried a notice for a lecture by Rev. Daniel Drew, an ex-slave, who would be speaking on “The Condition of the Colored Race Before, During, and Since the Civil War.” The lecture was held at the Sunnyside Congregational Church and was a fundraiser for the Lone Fir Monument Association. The newspaper declared that the lecture program would include patriotic music and Southern melodies by the Congregational Church choir. The fundraising was successful and the soldier’s monument was erected at Lone Fir at a cost of $3,500.

For the remainder of his life Drew remained active in the G.A.R. In 1919 Rev. Drew was elected chaplain for the Department of Oregon at the G.A.R. encampment held at The Dalles; a remarkable achievement for one of just a handful of black Civil War veterans that lived in Oregon.

Daniel and Laura Drew lived out their life in their home at 1759 Courtenay Street in North Portland. The 1920 census recorded that he worked as a laborer in the local gardens. Reverend Daniel W. Drew passed away on March 10, 1923 and was laid to rest in Portland’s historic Columbian

Cemetery. A simple marble soldier’s headstone marks the final resting place of a man who led a most remarkable life. A life best summarized by Drew’s own words which closed his chaplain’s report to the G.A.R.

“Let us be at our best at all times, supporting and encouraging in every possible way those things that are just and right that we may have the approval of the great Judge when we shall be called before Him.”