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Private Christopher Wren Bunker,
37th Battalion Virginia Cavalry, CSA.
Served from 1863 at age 18 till the end of the
War Between The States at age 20.
He fought with the Army of Northern Virginia
until he was wounded and captured.
Bunker served out the rest of the war at
Camp Chase POW camp in Columbus, Ohio. |
The following blog post is dedicated to the memories of those Confederate veterans of Asian descent and their descendants living today -- and to the ongoing campaign to stop anti-Asian hatred in the United States today that this blogger fully supports.
The Southern-Confederate historical heritage that many Southern-born people of all races and religious creeds continue to honor today is defined by one important thing: the memories of those who served in defense of Dixie during the War Between the States (American Civil War 1861 - 1865) and the blood of those who died in defense of Southern independence.
While there were only a few hundred Asians (either foreign-born or native-born)
living in the South at the time of the War Between the States, records
exist showing that more than just a few of these men served as Confederate soldiers.
The following are the brief stories of some of these men.
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Charles Chon's grave marker at the McGavock
Confederate Cemetery in Franklin, Tennessee. |
Charles Chon, a Chinese National, was a private in Company K, 24th Texas
Dismounted Cavalry Regiment. He was killed in action at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, on November 30, 1864, and is buried on the battlefield at the
McGavock Confederate Cemetery. William
Henry Kwan served as a private in Company B, 15th Virginia Battalion of Light
Artillery. Kwan is a Cantonese (Chinese) name though Kwan himself was believed to be of biracial parentage. John Fouenty, was a cigar-maker in
Savannah, Georgia, when the war broke out. He volunteered and served in the Confederate army
for a year, then was released because he was under age. Later when the Confederacy began conscription, Fouenty left the South in 1864 and went to New York City through the Union blockade rather than be forced to serve in what was by then a losing war. Fouenty
survived the war and later returned to his native China.Charley Pang, a private in Company G,
1st Louisiana Infantry "the Orleans Light Guards" was captured during the second day of the Battle of Chickmauga, Georgia on September 20, 1863. According to Federal
Rolls of Prisoners of
war, Charley was forwarded to a military
prison in Louisville, Kentucky, and then later transferred to Camp Douglas prisoner of war camp in, Chicago, Illinois. Research done by the late Chinese-American
researcher Miss Shaie-Mei Deng Temple (1950 - 2002) of the Asian/Pacific American Society of New Orleans reveals at least
eighteen Asian-Confederates (with names like Chou,
Coo, Ding, Fai, Foo, Gong, Hai, Ho, Joung, Lin, Lee, Lou, Pang, Poo,
Ting, and Wong) served in various Louisiana units -- including a multi-ethnic unit raised in New Orleans called the Avegno Zouaves, which was Company F of the 13th Louisiana Infantry Regiment, CSA. Wearing the colorful garb of the French Zouaves for which they are named, the Avegno Zouaves was composed of both native and foreign born volunteers including: French Creoles, Spaniards, Mexicans, Italians, Germans, Irishmen, biracial African-Americans (mulattoes), and Chinese. These men likely originally wore the same sort of French-style uniforms as the famous "Tiger Rifles 1st Special Battalion, Louisiana Volunteer Infantry (2nd Louisiana Battalion) -- later known as "Wheat's Tigers" for their original commanding officer, Major Chatham Roberdeau Wheat.Another Chinese-born Confederate veteran was Dzau Tsz-zeh (aka. Charles K. Marshall). Born in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, China in 1847 and orphaned at age 10, Tsz-zeh took the opportunity to study in America when offered by the Reverend James William Lambuth, a Southern missionary in Shanghai. After two years of lessons in English and Chinese, he accompanied the minister and his wife to Mississippi in 1859.
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Dzau Tsz-zeh (aka Charles Marshall)
who at age 15 served at the Battle of
Fort Donelson in 1862.
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At his baptism in 1860, he took the name of a Vicksburg planter and Methodist preacher, Charles K. Marshall, as his American name. When the Lambuth's returned to their missionary work in China, Mr. David C. Kelley, a former missionary who had a school in Lebanon, Tennessee, assumed responsibility for Tsz-zeh's education and care. When the war came a year later, Kelley formed a cavalry company that became a part of the 3rd Regiment, Tennessee Cavalry, CSA. Charlie, as Tsz-zeh was called then, went as his personal servant. While personal attendants (body servants) were not called upon to fight as part of their duties, many usually did along with their units, and Tsz-zeh (then age 15) was among those Confederates who took part in the bloody defense of Fort Donelson in February 1862. It was during the fighting that his left hand was partially crushed beneath a caisson wheel. He was among those few defenders who escaped the fall of the fort. At the end of the war he would return home to his native China and become a famous Christian minister.
Perhaps the most famous Chinese-American Confederate soldiers were cousins Christopher and Stephen Bunker, the two sons of the famed P.T. Barnum Circus entertainers and world-renowned conjoined twins, Chang and Eng Bunker.
Born in the Mae Klong Valley, Samut Songkhram Province, Siam (present
day Thailand) in 1811 to a Chinese fisherman, Ti-aye, and a Chinese/Malaysian mother,
Nok. The brothers, Chang and Eng Bunker (the last name they took when they settled in America),
were born conjoined thoraopagus twins, the most common form of
conjoined twins, they shared part of the chest wall, and their livers
were fused. The term "Siamese Twins" is credited to the two brothers.
The Bunker Twins would eventually immigrate to the United States and become traveling circus performers, working with the world famous P.T. Barnam. Chang and Eng took the last name Bunker when they became naturalized U.S. citizens on October 12, 1839 to "Americanize" themselves. The two would marry a pair of twin sisters: Adelaide and Sarah Yates, and settle in Mount Airy, North Carolina becoming tobacco planters and slaveowners when they retired from the circus. The two couples would ultimately father and raise 21 children respectively.
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Chang and Eng Bunker and their two sons,
Christopher Wren (right) and Stephen Decatur (left).
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When the war broke out, the Bunkers were devoted to their adopted home state of North Carolina and the South, providing food, clothing and nursing to Confederate soldiers. The Bunker's two eldest sons joined the Confederate cavalry when they turned 18 years old.
Chang's son, Christopher Wren Bunker, enlisted in the 37th Battalion, Virginia Cavalry on April 1, 1863. He was among the 2,800 cavalrymen under Brigadier General John McCausland who raided Pennsylvania under Lieutenant General Jubal Early's 1864 campaign that led to the destruction of much of Chambersburg, on July 30th of that same year in retaliation for destruction in the Shenandoah Valley and the burning of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) by Union forces the month before.
On August 7th, Union cavalry caught up with McCausland's cavalry force as they were camped near Moorefield, West Virginia and surprised them in a pre-dawn attack overrunning the Confederates inflicting a serious defeat. In this fight, Christopher Bunker was wounded -- one of about 4000 Confederate casualties in the battle -- and taken prisoner.
Bunker was ultimately sent to Camp Chase prisoner of war camp (four miles west of Columbus, Ohio) where he would be housed with about 200 other starving prisoners in a wooden barracks and eating rats for the remainder or the war until he was exchanged in March of 1865 after swearing the oath of allegiance to the United States. He returned home on April 17, 1865 -- eight days after General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House.
Stephen Bunker, the son of Eng, joined the same cavalry unit as his cousin on July 2, 1864. He escaped the debacle at Moorefield, though he would later be wounded in fighting near Winchester, Virginia on September 3, 1864. He would return to action and be wounded again a second time in 1865 just before the war ended and also captured by the Union Army. Like his cousin, Christopher, he too would survive the war and return home.
Both Christopher and Stephen are buried in family plots in Mount Airy near their parents.
These men, and others like them whose names are largely forgotten by history, fought to defend Southern independence and their adopted country from invasion. They deserve to be remembered and their proud descendants likewise deserve to be respected as fellow Southerners and Americans as well.
No matter where our ancestors came from, some of whom wore the hallowed gray and butternut. They fought the same battles and shed the same Southern blood in defense of Dixie. Those men served as brothers, and we as their proud descendants should respect each other no less today.
Thank you and God bless y'all!
