Hubbard Pryor: Slave, soldier, symbol
As the Civil War dragged on, one Polk County man saw an opportunity. Hubbard Pryor, one of 117 slaves held by Haden Mathew Prior, fled Georgia seeking freedom and entered history as a symbol of the transformative power of the conflict that divided the United States.
Pryor was about 22 when he left Polk County, and although the exact date of his escape is uncertain, it was likely late 1863 or early 1864. Some sources claim that Pryor escaped following the murder of Haden Prior at the hands of Jack Colquitt’s gang. However, Pryor enlisted in the Union Army March 7, 1864, and woodcut images depicting Pryor appeared along with an article in the July 2, 1864, edition of Harper’s Weekly, meaning he escaped before the murder of Haden Prior on April 6, 1865. Pryor had gone to Montgomery, Ala., before enlisting for duty at Unionoccupied Chattanooga, Tenn., according to the Harper’s Weekly article.
It was at Chattanooga that two famous portraits of Hubbard Pryor were taken. In the first, taken by T.B. Bishop, Pryor is seen sitting, still wearing tattered clothing from his days as a slave. In the second, attributed to Nashville photographer A.S. Morse, Pryor stands at attention in his Union uniform, his rifle at his side. The photos were taken as a tool to recruit African Americans for the Union effort, and to demonstrate the power of change at work through destruction and bloodshed. Union Capt. Reuben D. Mussey, working for the Colored Bureau of the Adjutant General’s Office, included the photographs of Pryor in an October 1864 report on the success of recruiting black solders. In a letter available through the National Archives, Mussey wrote of the enlistment efforts, “For raiders in the enemies (sic) country, these Colored Troops will prove superior, they are good riders – have quick eyes at night ... and know all the byways.” The tide of war was turned in no small part by the influx of African American troops into the ranks of the Union army. How many found conviction to fight in seeing the images of Pryor?
Pryor had joined the U.S. 44th Colored Infantry, a unit intended for guard duty and other non-combative roles, but the course of Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood’s Franklin-Nashville campaign would see Pryor in action at Dalton. Following the fall of Atlanta, Hood led his Army of Tennessee northwest to Rome, then back east and northward, maneuvering for an invasion of middle Tennessee. The U.S. 44th Colored Infantry engaged with members of Hood’s army under command of Lt. Gen. Alexander P. Stewart when Stewart was sent to mangle the railroad tracks at Dalton. The 44th’s commander, Col. Lewis Johnson, refused Hood’s written demand for surrender. After a short volley of gunfire
between the surrounded 44th and Stewart’s soldiers, Johnson realized the hopelessness of their position and relinquished to a verbal demand for surrender. Pryor and 600 of his fellow black soldiers would become POWs or re-enslaved by their former masters. Johnson and the other white officers of the 44th were paroled and returned to the battle line within days, according to Ronald Coddington’s “African American Faces of the Civil War.”
For seven long months, Pryor remained a POW of the Confederates, forced to perform hard labor as part of an infrastructure crew working on rebuilding in Alabama, Mississippi and southern Georgia.
On May 1, 1865, a little less than a month after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Va., on April 9, 1865, Confederate troops abandoned Pryor and his fellow captives at Griffin, Ga. Pryor made his way north, walking under cover of darkness to Rome. He then headed for home, home being his family rather than the soil upon which he had been enslaved.
After the war’s end, two of Pryor’s fellow privates from the 44th, Garnett Peek and Joseph Birge, accompanied him to a U.S. military post to apply for aid, according to Coddington. Pryor was turned down.
The remainder of Pryor’s life may be pieced together from census records. Pryor married sometime before the 1870 census, but his first wife died childless. He then married a former slave, Ann Dever, and spent the next 20 years as a tenant farmer. In 1890, Pryor, Ann and four children, aged between five months and six years, left Georgia for Calvert, Robertson County, Texas. Hubbard Pryor passed away in Calvert at age 48.
Ross Rogers is a newsroom assistant and staff writer at Rome News-Tribune. He may be contacted at JRogers@RN-T.com.