Born as a free African American in the 1830s, Louden Langley spent most of his life fighting for the government’s equal treatment of everyone.
Langley was well-educated, and he quickly adopted abolitionist views like his parents, Almira and William Langley, who churned butter and herded sheep in Hinesburg, Vermont. In the years before the Civil War, Langley’s parents would often open up their homes to those fleeing slavery via the Underground Railroad.
Then when the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 passed, Langley found himself in a new role to help his fellow African Americans as a writer. After the passage of the act, which allowed escaped slaves to be returned to their owners, Langley and his family often welcomed fugitive slaves into their home to prevent them from being captured and sent back South.
Over the next decade, Langley wrote newspaper columns that advocated rebellion against slave owners in Cuba.
During the era when many believed that African Americans should be “colonized” or sent to areas in Africa or South America, Langley wrote one of his first columns, which was published by Vermont’s The Green Mountain Freeman Newspaper on April 27, 1854. He, like many other free African Americans, publicized his views that colonization would not work and that free slaves deserved to stay in the country and have the same rights as everyone else.
According to Langley’s columns, he believed that war might be necessary in order to free all slaves. “I am no advocate of war, I mean an unjust war; and as bad as I hate war, I hate tyrants and tyranny worse,” Langley said in a letter to the editor published by The Green Mountain Freeman on Feb. 8, 1855. “Yes, I go further, and I say, that every nation has a God-given right to rebel against any laws, unjust laws, that the tyrants may deem fit to make and enforce.”
Civil War Soldier
Langley’s fight for equal rights then prompted him to sign up to serve in the Civil War in late 1863 for the 54th Massachusetts Infantry. He made the bold move to risk his freedom and become a soldier despite the Confederate Congress promising to sell any captured African Americans fighting in the war to slave owners.Langley fought for equality even while he was a soldier. He discovered that white soldiers got paid $13 per month, in addition to a clothing allowance of $3.50. African American soldiers were only given $10 per month, and $3 was taken out of their paycheck for clothing. In January 1864, Langley wrote a letter to the governor of Vermont, which was published in New York’s The Weekly Anglo-African newspaper, that urged the government to pay all soldiers equally. During the summer that same year, the pay for African American soldiers was raised to the same rate as the whites. Many credited Langley’s column for the pay increase.
Langley was eventually transferred to 1st South Carolina Volunteers. Before he left his military career in 1866, he was promoted to sergeant major which was the highest rank allowed for African Americans.
After the war, Langley opted to stay in South Carolina and continue to fight for change. He served in political office as one of the over 1,000 African Americans who held office during the Reconstruction Era just after the war ended.
He represented Beaufort in the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention where he advocated for equal education opportunities. However, by 1879, most of the African Americans who held political offices (including Langley), were kicked out of their positions.
Langley died in South Carolina two years later when he was in his early 40s and was buried in the Beaufort National Cemetery.
