100 Objects: 3. The pension files

A stack of dusty paperwork, teeming with unheard voices. What do Civil War pension files reveal about one of the most successful slave rebellions in American history?

Roman Mars and historian Edda Fields-Black trace a story of fire, flight, and freedom. It begins on a South Carolina rice plantation in 1863, as an 88-year-old man named Minus Hamilton watches Union gunboats appear on the river, carrying Black soldiers unlike any he has ever seen. The raid that follows will liberate more than 700 people in a single night. By piecing together the testimonies of Black soldiers buried in military pension applications, Roman and Edda resurrect not just the raid itself, but the lives and communities it transformed – stories of formerly enslaved people which, until then, had been written out of history.

Presenter: Roman Mars
Producer: Priscilla Alabi, Brenna Daldorph, Isaac Fisher, Ellie Lightfoot
Executive producer: Annie Brown, Courtney Harrell, Kathy Tu
A BBC Studios and 99% Invisible production for BBC World Service