Born into slavery in Richmond, Virginia on October 8th, 1837, Powhatan Beaty came of age in a different world from the one that greeted him at birth. In 1849, his family settled in Ohio, a free state, and Beaty entered adulthood as a free man. That freedom would soon draw him into the deadliest conflict in American history. Beaty enlisted as a private in the Union Army on June 7th, 1863.
Two days later he was promoted to sergeant, and by June 17th he and his company had become the first members of the 127th Ohio Regiment. The regiment went on to see action at Sandy Swamp on December 8th of that year, a first taste of combat that placed them within the larger machinery of the Union war effort. The regiment was then transferred to the main Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, the long and grinding effort to break the Confederate capital’s defenses. They participated in the capture of City Point on May 4th, 1864, and served in the trenches that ringed Petersburg.
By the summer, they were part of one of the war’s most infamous operations, the assault during the Battle of the Crater on July 30th, 1864. That attack, arising from a plan to detonate a mine beneath Confederate lines, collapsed into a deadly failure, and the men of the 127th Ohio were among the troops caught in its disastrous aftermath. By the time his regiment prepared for its next major fight, Beaty had been promoted to first sergeant. That battle was Newmarket Heights, fought on September 29th, 1864.
The attack met heavy Confederate fire from the start. The Union advance stalled under the weight of the fusillade and fell back, and in the retreat, Company G’s color bearer was killed. The battle flag was left lying on the field. Beaty, under enemy fire, went back some 600 yards to retrieve it.
The cost of the engagement was staggering. Of the company’s eight officers and 83 enlisted men who went into battle, only 16 enlisted men survived the attack unwounded. With no officers remaining, Beaty took command of the company and led it through a second charge. By the end of the day, more than half of the black division had been killed, captured, or wounded.
For his actions in that fight, Beaty was awarded the Medal of Honor. His regiment continued in the campaign. It fought at the Battle of Seven Pines on October 27th and 28th, 1864, where Beaty again distinguished himself, earning an acknowledgement in the general orders to the Army of the Potomac. By December 1864, the unit had been assigned to the newly formed 25th Corps, an organization composed largely of United States Colored Troops.
They took part in the assault on Fort Fisher, North Carolina, then turned north as part of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s campaign of the Carolinas. The war was nearing its end, and the regiment was present at Bennett Place on April 26th, 1865, when Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his army to Sherman. It was one of the largest surrenders of the war, effectively ending the Confederate resistance in the Carolinas.
By the time Beaty left the army, he had participated in 13 battles and numerous skirmishes. The 127th Ohio was mustered out of service on September 20th, 1865. Beaty returned to civilian life and died on December 6th, 1916 at the age of 79. He is buried in Cincinnati.
His journey from slavery in Richmond to the Medal of Honor and the final surrender grounds of the Confederacy spans the entire arc of the American Civil War. It is a story of a man who entered the war as a private, rose through the ranks, carried his company’s colors through enemy fire, and led his men when every officer around him had fallen.