Jacob and Emma Safford House (Green St. Across from Town Hall)

Over 400 Ipswich men served in the military during the Civil War in the 1860s. Of those soldiers, 60 of them died in battle or of disease, and another 75 were wounded and 18 held prisoner.

To our knowledge, all of these soldiers were white, and therefore paid a sum of $13 a month for their military service. Black soldiers in Massachusetts were recruited to the 54th and 55th regiments with the promise of that same sum, plus clothing, food, and state aid to their families. But when it came time for those men to go to battle, they found that they were only going to be paid $10 a month, the other $3 were being withheld to pay for the clothing and food. These soldiers famously fulfilled their duties while refusing pay until the rates were made equal, which took 18 months.

On Green Street in Ipswich, across from Town Hall, a sign on a fence marks the site of the (now demolished) home of the Safford family. Descended from slaves of the white Safford family of Ipswich, Jacob Safford married Emma Jane Mitchell, a descendant of Massasoit. In May of 1864, a black soldier named Francis Fletcher of the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, wrote a letter to his friend, Jacob Safford of Ipswich. In this letter Fletcher laments bitterly the inequality of pay and treatment between white and black soldiers. Although the War Department had recently chosen to honor the $13 rate, Fletcher wrote "All the misery and degradation suffered in our regiment by its members' families is not atoned for by the passage of the bill for equal pay."

We don't know why Fletcher wrote this letter to Safford, however, it illustrates the racism and injustice faced by blacks in the North even as the Union Army fought to end slavery.

Sources:

Fletcher, Francis H. (b. 1841) to Jacob C. Safford https://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/glc07345

Harris, Gordon "Emma Jane Mitchell Safford" https://historicipswich.org/2015/08/18/emma-jane-safford/