When Francis Jackson went to war, he was 50 years old with whip scars on his back and gnarled, arthritic hands from his long days as a laborer and, likely, a slave. He joined earlier than almost every other black man in Gettysburg—he enlisted on July 18, 1863, in the 3rd USCT, just two weeks to the day after the beaten Confederate army limped away from Gettysburg in a pouring rain. While many of the USCT units would be sidelined into digging ditches, herding cattle, and guarding prisoners, the 3rd saw action at the Siege of Forts Wagner and Gregg on Morris Island, South Carolina (they and other regiments were brought in for siege operations after the famous failed assault of the 54th USCT on July 18, 1864). They also took part in operations against Charleston, South Carolina, until they were ordered to Florida to serve in support of Union forces there as heavy artillery.

Francis Jackson was ultimately discharged for disability on June 6, 1865. His discharge paper follows.

His advanced age for service was highly unusual. The maladies that led to his discharge were certainly there as he enlisted. Why did he enlist, and how did he get this far?

It’s difficult to say for sure, but historical records may give us some hints. Francis’s Find-a-Grave entry has a curious note, saying that he had “whip scars on his back even though he apparently never had lived in slavery.” The writer is probably both correct and incorrect in this assertion. How could Francis be both enslaved and free? The answer lies in a peculiar moment in history.

According to Census records, Francis was born in 1813 in Pennsylvania—he told the army his birth was in Mercer County in western PA. His brother, John, four years younger somehow was born in Virginia. How is unclear. In 1780, Pennsylvania enacted the first law among the states to abolish slavery, but the law provided gradual emancipation. That is, those then in slavery would remain in slavery, but all born to them would have to be registered. Those children would then serve a period of “indenture” until they were 28 years old after which they would be entirely free. Children born under this arrangement were considered, by law, “free,’ despite the indenture period. The law had to be amended in 1788 to close various loopholes. For example, the habit of some Pennsylvania masters was to take their pregnant enslaved women south before they gave birth so that the child was born enslaved and not “free,” thus extending by a generation the length of time in which progeny could be enslaved. The 1788 law dispensed with such loopholes, though it is likely that various people sought to work around it.

Francis and his brother John were from western Pennsylvania, and the first time they turn up in traceable records is the 1850 Census. Here’s the entry, broken across two pages.

This may be hard to read, but at ages 36 and 32, Francis and John Jackson were living with the family of Nathaniel Plummer Fetterman, a prominent Pittsburgh attorney. Fetterman was so renowned in the area that when he died, the legal bar in town suspended all proceedings for a day to honor him.

Law would be the family business for at least oldest son Charles, who became an attorney and then a prominent judge. Charles Fetterman was a Republican in the era when Lincoln rose to power.

Had the Fettermans owned Francis and John Jackson or their parents? This seems likely. A relatively young enslaved person in 1780 was, nevertheless, enslaved for life just so long as they were registered. Their children would be born “free” but not effectively free until age 28. If Francis was born under this system while in the house of the Fettermans or someone who sold his parents to the Fettermans, he would not have reached fully free status until 1841, just nine years before he first appeared in the Census. It’s hard to imagine that an indentured black servant was treated much differently from his enslaved parents, and the scars Francis bore seem to bear that out.

The law had its intended effects, however gradual. By 1840, only 64 people remained enslaved, and by 1850, there were no more formally enslaved people in Pennsylvania.

Between 1850 and 1860, Francis parted ways with both the Fettermans and his brother. He married a woman named Susan, as suggested by the 1860 Census, where he is shown as a laborer in western Pennsylvania.

Tragedy must have befallen the family, though—Susan must have died. Francis did not remain in Beaver County, PA. He came east to Gettysburg and settled in quietly among its residents. The events of the battle must have stirred him to action. Black life was upended in the town when Confederates first arrived on June 26 demanding money, food, and other supplies; cavalry patrols rounded up black men, women, and children alike and sent them south into slavery. Francis clearly avoided the trap, as did most other Gettysburg black residents. Dozens of them escaped to Philadelphia, and it seems likely that Francis did, as well, because it was there that he enlisted just two weeks later.

After his discharge, Francis returned to Gettysburg and lived quietly for 28 years. He does not seem to have appeared in any local papers nor turned up in any census records, and when he passed away, no one wrote an obituary. His death was noted by the Department of Military Affairs, which recorded his burial in the Lincoln Cemetery.

Beyond that, he left us all to wonder about his life, what he had seen and done, how he got the scars on his back, and what motivated him as a 50-year-old man to fight for his country.