In the autumn of 1864, the fight for Richmond had reached a desperate stage. The Fourth United States Colored Infantry, a regiment raised barely a year earlier, was ordered to throw itself against the Confederate fortifications at Chaffin’s Farm, just outside the Confederate capital. The charge was met with a storm of fire. One color bearer fell, then another, the flags of the regiment dropping with them.
Into that chaos stepped Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood, a free-born Black man from Baltimore, who seized the falling colors and carried them forward into the enemy’s fire, rallying his men as the assault faltered. Fleetwood was not a man who had been shaped by the harshness of bondage. He was born on July 21, 1840, in Baltimore to Charles and Anne Marie Fleetwood, both free African Americans. His education set him apart; when he enlisted in the Fourth Regiment of the United States Colored Infantry in August 1863, his literacy and ability were so evident that he was immediately promoted to sergeant major, a rare distinction for a Black soldier in a Union army still wrestling with questions of race and command.
The regiment was part of the larger push to break the Confederate lines around Petersburg and Richmond, the long siege that had ground on through 1864 and 1865. The Fourth USCI saw its share of hard fighting in that campaign. It took part in the Second Battle of Petersburg in July 1864, a brutal engagement that tested the mettle of the newly raised Black regiments. A month later came the infamous Battle of the Crater, where Union troops detonated a massive mine beneath Confederate lines only to see the assault collapse into a devastating slaughter.
The Fourth was present for that disaster as well, and the lessons of that failed charge weighed heavily on the men who survived it. For Fleetwood, the decisive moment came on September 29, 1864, at the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm, on the outskirts of Richmond. The Fourth Regiment was ordered to storm the Confederate fortifications, a frontal assault against entrenched positions. Fleetwood was given responsibility for leading the left flank.
As the men ran forward, the enemy fire was fierce, and the color bearers quickly became targets. A color bearer was shot down. Sergeant Alfred Hilton, himself carrying a flag, picked up the second flag and kept advancing. He was soon wounded too, but before either of the flags could touch the ground, Fleetwood and another soldier rushed forward and caught them.
Fleetwood took up the American flag and continued his advance under the continued heavy fire of the Confederates. The regiment pressed on until it became clear that they could not break through. The order was given to fall back to the reserve line. As the men retreated, Fleetwood brandished the flag defiantly, rallying the soldiers to keep fighting despite the failed charge.
His actions in that desperate moment did not go unnoticed. Six months later, on April 6, 1865, Christian Fleetwood was awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest decoration for valor that the United States could bestow. The citation recorded the bare facts of his courage: he seized the colors after two color bearers had been shot down and bore them nobly through the fight. Fleetwood survived the war and lived for nearly another half century.
He settled in Washington, D. C. , where he died suddenly of heart failure on September 28, 1914, at the age of seventy-four. He was buried with the honors due a man who, in the face of enemy fire, had refused to let the flag fall.
His Medal of Honor, and the record of his actions at Chaffin’s Farm, stand as testimony to the courage of the Black soldiers who fought for the Union in the closing years of the Civil War.