By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, April 24, 2001 – In the 1860s, if you wanted to send someone "to the ends of the Earth" you sent them to China.
Those were the days of sailing ships augmented by steam power and China was as remote from the Eastern United States as it was possible to be. Still, Chinese Americans found their way to the East Coast, and researchers claim that as many as 50 Chinese fought as soldiers during the American Civil War.
The number does not include the Chinese who served in the U.S. Navy during the war. The soldiers fought on both sides, researchers claim.
The first Chinese on record arrived in what became the United States in 1815. A Chinese ship's cook settled in Monterey, Calif., then a Spanish province.
The mariners of the Eastern seaboard traded with China. American ships vied with European traders to bring back the riches of the Orient. That was how a Chinese child ended up in Massachusetts.
In 1845, Sargent S. Day, captain of the square-rigged merchant ship Cohota, left Shanghai, China, bound for Massachusetts. Two days from port, he discovered two little half-starved Chinese boys on board. The older boy died, but Day "adopted" the younger boy and named him Edward Day Cohota.
Edward sailed the world with Captain and Mrs. Day until the captain retired to Gloucester, Mass. in 1857. He attended school and the other Day children treated him as a brother.
With the outbreak of the American Civil War, Cohota joined the 23rd Massachusetts Infantry. He fought in the Battle of Drury's Bluff near Richmond, Va., on May 16, 1864, and came out of the battle with "seven bullet holes thru" clothes. None touched his flesh."
At the Battle of Cold Harbor, Va., June 3, 1864, a Confederate Minie ball parted Cohota's hair permanently, but he was not otherwise hurt. He stayed with the Army of the Potomac through the end of the war.
After the war, Cohota rejoined the Army and was stationed at Fort Randall, Dakota Territory. He married and had six children. He served in the Army for 30 years. All that time, he thought he was a U.S. citizen and believed his Civil War service qualified him for the right. But he didn't take out his second set of naturalization papers until after the Senate passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. He was not a citizen and could not become one.
Cohota died at the Battle Mountain Sanitarium for Veterans in Hot Springs, S.D., in 1935.
Another Chinese soldier of the Union participated in the most famous battle of the Civil War -- the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, Pa.
Read more at U.S.Department od defense
Chinese That Fought in U.S. Civil War
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