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Carney after the war, wearing his Medal of Honor

Today is the day set aside for us to pay our respects to those who have served. We remember the sacrifices they made and continue to make in order to preserve our way of life.

Our veterans are to be celebrated also because in the moments that counted most, they rose to the occasion.

Such was the case of Sgt. William Carney of the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry who was among the brave men attacking Fort Wagner in South Carolina during the Civil War. Carney saw the color bearer ahead of him struck down by Confederate bullets. Already injured, Carney would not let the flag fall to the ground, and he charged forward directly into enemy fire to retrieve it.

Carney must have known that he would be a dead man in a matter of moments but he was drawn to a cause bigger than himself and he sacrificed his body to achieve it.

The enemy shot him up relentlessly.

William Carney did not stop.

He grabbed the colors from the fallen man before him and lifted the red, white and blue high as he carried the flag all the way back to his regiment. Sgt. William Carney, who was injured and by all rights should have been dead, cried, “Boys, I only did my duty. The flag never touched the ground.”

Years later, in 1900, Carney was awarded the Medal of Honor. The citation read:


At the time, his legend grew so big that a song was written of his exploits:

“One night on Southern battlefields,
down where Fort Wagner lay,
A regiment of black men fought,
The Blue against the Gray.
As the sun sank slowly in the West,
A thunderstorm and gale,
Wept tears to see the brave black troops,
Shot down by leaden hail.
A negro saw the old flag fall,
And threw his gun away,
To grasp the falling colors staff,
And lead them to the fray.
Twas the Blue against the Gray, Boys,
And he said to all around,
“I’ve only done my duty boys,
The old Flag never touch’d the ground.”

The Medal of Honor, a famous monument in Boston, a timely song about heroism and the history books, all bore witness to the heroic exploits of one man. He deserved it.

For most of his life after war, though, William Carney lived as a man like any other. He came home to New Bedford and got a job maintaining and repairing streetlights and then he delivered the mail. He was married and had a daughter.

Carney must have had hundreds of thousands of human encounters like we all do. He must have spent his days traveling to work, popping in to the grocery store, shoveling snow and saying hello to strangers.

The vast majority of people who came face to face with William Carney had no idea who he was. They had no notion that they were sharing a moment with greatness. They couldn’t have realized that the man in their presence had once made the choice to give himself to God rather than let dishonor come to an American flag. A flag which symbolized freedom but also flew atop the centers of power that excluded men who looked like William Carney from enjoying equality and partaking of their God-given rights to live free.

William Carney was an extraordinary man. So many of our veterans are. We walk among them with no notion that we might be sharing a moment with greatness. We’ll never know the exploits of most and with the exception of special occasions like Veterans Day, we rarely know who they are, out of uniform.

That is why today, when they are most visible, it is important that we tell them how thankful we are for them. We honor their sacrifices.


Today, we the citizens do our duty as we say thank you to our veterans. We honor you and we love you.