Wild, Edward Augustus

Edward A. Wild was an adventurous and committed Massachusetts Unitarian who became a controversial Civil War general and a prime mover in the recruitment of African American soldiers to Union service. The son of a Brookline doctor and a direct descendant of Roger Williams on his mother's side, he became an ardent abolitionist early in life. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard in 1844, he studied medicine in Philadelphia, and visited Europe. In Italy, in 1849, Wild was briefly arrested by Garibaldi as a spy. His adventures continued in 1855 when, during his honeymoon in Constantinople, the Crimean War was being fought. He volunteered as a military doctor in the Turkish army and ended nine months of service as a decorated colonel. He then resumed his honeymoon. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he helped raise a company of the First Massachusetts and fought at Bull Run and Fair Oaks before losing his left arm at South Mountain. Tall, handsome and driven by conviction, Wild turned his attention to raising United States Colored Troops in his home state then took command of the first ever USCT brigade. "Wild's African Brigade" gained notoriety with its famous raids into eastern North Carolina in the fall of 1863, freeing slaves and resettling them on Roanoke Island. His troops later served at Petersburg and occupied Richmond. After the war, Wild worked with the Freedmen's Bureau in Georgia and then as a mining engineer in Nevada. He died in South America in 1891 and is buried in Medellin, Colombia. (By John Osborne)
Life Span
to
    Full name
    Edward Augustus Wild
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Siblings
    8
    No. of Spouses
    1
    Friends
    John A. A. Andrew 
    Family
     Charles Wild (father), Mary Joanna Rhodes Wild (mother), Frances Ellen Sullivan (wife)
    Education
    Harvard
    Other
    Other Education
    Jefferson Medical School (PA)
    Occupation
    Military
    Businessman
    Doctor, Dentist or Nurse
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Church or Religious Denomination
    Unitarian or Universalist
    Other Affiliations
    Abolitionists (Anti-Slavery Society)
    Other
    Other Affiliation
    Freedmen's Bureau
    Military
    Union Army
    Foreign military
    How to Cite This Page: "Wild, Edward Augustus," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/32543.