Biographical Profile of Corp. Henry Lively, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

On May 30, 1865, as large numbers of Union volunteers prepared to muster out of the army in the dawn of the postwar period, Corp. Henry Lively and his comrades in the 108th U.S. Colored Infantry geared up for a new assignment. They marched out of the barracks at Rock Island, Illinois, where they had spent the previous nine months guarding Confederate prisoners, for duty in Mississippi as part of the garrison at Vicksburg.

The regiment arrived in the once-formidable Confederate stronghold ten days later. The conditions were awful. “The weather was very hot and the water was very bad,” recalled one soldier. Many became sick, including Lively, who fell ill with malaria.⁷¹² The chronic fever and chills symptomatic of the disease took many men out of action, but not Henry. He remained in the ranks despite his infirmity, although he reported for duty only half the time.⁷¹³

Born enslaved about seventy-five miles south of Louisville, Kentucky, in Hart County, Henry lived on the farm of his enslaver, Billy Mansfield, who also owned at least two of Henry’s brothers.⁷¹⁴ At some point, Mansfield sold young Henry to Ben Lively. Henry took his new enslaver’s last name as his own.

During the late 1850s, then teen-aged Henry united in an unofficial slave marriage with a woman named Mandy. After her sudden and unexpected death a short time later, he began a relationship with a Martha Smith. She was about four years his senior and had two children fathered by a white man named Harvey Adams.⁷¹⁵

Martha noted of her marriage, “We didn’t have any kind of ceremony performed but we just took up with each other like the slaves did. We did so with the permission of our masters and mistresses.” They had their first child, a son, about 1860. He grew up in the same household with his two half-white siblings.⁷¹⁶

In the summer of 1864, having been freed by his enslaver, Henry bid farewell to his family and joined the army. He was assigned to Company F of the 108th. He earned his corporal’s stripes and assisted company sergeants and officers in maintaining order and discipline at various posts in Kentucky, at Rock Island, and in Mississippi, where the regiment remained until it disbanded in March 1866.⁷¹⁷ Lively’s lieutenant described him as the “best man in the company.”⁷¹⁸

Lively mustered out with his comrades and returned to Martha and the children in Kentucky. He died six years later of the malaria contracted at Vicksburg. He was about thirty-eight. Martha, pregnant with another son, survived him. She collected a government pension for Henry’s war service until her death in 1908.⁷¹⁹