Henry Clay Thomas was born in Concordia Parish, Louisiana in 1844. He was raised just across the Mississippi River in Natchez, Adams County, Mississippi. His father is believed to have been William Thomas of Natchez.

Henry grew up in Mississippi as a farm laborer. When the Civil War began in 1861 Henry was seventeen years old. By some means, Henry made his way from Mississippi to Washington, D.C. and enlisted in the Union Army on the 4th of April 1864. He was nineteen years old.

Henry was immediately sent to Camp Casey, just outside Washington, D.C., where he joined the 23rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment as a Private. The regiment had been organized at Camp Casey just over five months earlier.

Whatever army training Henry received was extremely brief, less than a month, because his regiment was ordered to combat about the first of May and reported to Brigadier General Edward Ferrero at Manassas, Virginia, in preparation for General Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign in Virginia.

Because the 23rd U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) was newly formed and had no combat experience, their first assignment was escort duty for the thousands of supply wagons of the Union Army of the Potomac. The extensive wagon trains transported weapons, ammunition, food, clothing, medical supplies, engineer equipment, and everything else an Army would need to conduct military operations in the field.

Wagon trains were prime targets for Confederate attacks and had to be protected at all costs. The loss of the wagons and their critical cargo could mean the loss of battles, territory, and precious lives. There were 4,000 to 6,000 Union wagons.

The Virginia Overland Campaign was the last major fight of the Civil War. It began at the Battle of the Wilderness on May 5, 1864, and ended at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. A lot happened between those two dates and places, and Henry Clay Thomas was a participant in, and witness to, much of it.

After the Battle of the Wilderness, the 23rd USCT was next engaged at Spotsylvania from May 15 to May 17, 1864. From there the regiment was involved for nearly a month in numerous skirmishes and movements trying to maneuver around the right flank of General Robert R. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.

Although the Union Army was thwarted again and again, they never took a step backward. There were terrible battle casualties on both sides but General Grant’s Army of the Potomac had the advantage by being able to replace its losses more easily and in greater numbers than the Confederate Army.

After fighting its way south for over a month, the Army of the Potomac reached the outskirts of Petersburg, Virginia about June 12, 1864, and began an assault on that city on June 15th. The 23rd USCT was part of the battle, which in the end became a siege of Petersburg. The capture of Petersburg was considered essential to cutting the supply lines into Richmond, the Confederate capitol.

Union forces tried repeatedly to break through the Confederate Army’s defense of Petersburg, but were unsuccessful throughout the summer and fall of 1864. One of the more famous fighting engagements outside Petersburg was the Battle of the Crater. During July 1864, Union troops who had been coal miners in Pennsylvania dug a 500-foot tunnel under a Confederate stronghold and placed nearly a ton of explosives there. The plan was to break through the enemy’s defense and seize the city of Petersburg.

The Union troops were rehearsed and in place for the assault and the explosives were set off on the night of July 31, 1864. Because of last minute changes in the assault force, the planned attack was executed poorly and the operation failed badly. Henry Clay Thomas and the 23rd USCT were part of the attacking force.

The Confederate Army knew well how important it was to hold Petersburg and they hung onto it throughout the winter of 1864, and right up to April 1, 1865. It was on this date that General Robert E. Lee began to move a large portion of the Army of Northern Virginia toward Appomattox with a destination of Leesburg, Virginia. On April 2nd, Petersburg was attacked and fell to Union forces. At the same time, the Confederate troops heading for Leesburg became engaged in a fight called the Appomattox Campaign.

After and exchange of messages between Generals Grant and Lee, a meeting was arranged between the two, followed by the Confederate surrender on April 9, 1865.

On May 15, 1865, Henry Clay Thomas and the 23rd USCT embarked on the steamship Richmond and later sailed from waters just off the coast of Virginia to Brazos-Santiago, Texas. The 23rd USCT served on Texas border duty for six months until the regiment was officially mustered out of Federal service on November 30, 1865. How Henry moved from Texas to Tennessee is unknown, but he is next found in the 1870 United States Census living in Brownsville, Tennessee.

Henry applied for a Civil War pension in 1899 and was denied compensation because it was determined that his disability did not result from his Civil War service. Henry was persistent and applied several times.

Finally, in 1907 he was granted a Federal pension of $12.00 per month. There is pathetic information in his pension application. On one line there is the question, which asks “Were you ever a slave?” There was not answer to that question. The next line asked the question “Who was your owner?” The answer was “I think it was my father, William Thomas.” How sad it must have been for Henry to know that he was considered a slave to his own father.

Henry Clay Thomas died in Arlington, Tennessee on March 17, 1919 at the age of 74 years, and was buried there in the Hayes Cemetery.