Professor introduces Civil War diary of great-grandfather

It was much more than your average diary.

Willamette University professor William Gould, IV, spoke about the recently published diary of his great-grandfather at the Boston Museum of Afro-American History last night. Gould, the chairman of the National Labor Relations Board for four years during the Clinton administration, recounted several tales of his great-grandfather’s bravery and daring, as told in his book “Diary of a Contraband: The Civil War Passage of a Black Sailor.”

Born a slave in North Carolina, William B. Gould worked in masonry and carpentry in servitude until his escape in 1862. Along with seven other slaves, Gould rowed 27 nautical miles in a small boat past Wilmington Harbor, the busiest harbor in the Confederate States. The U.S.S. Cambridge soon rescued them, coincidentally on the same day that President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

Gould went on to write for the “Anglo African” newspaper and kept a journal while enlisted in the Navy for the remainder of the Civil War. The Union Army did not allow African-American soldiers until 1863, so it was impossible for Gould to join the Army at the time. According to Professor Gould, the role of blacks in the Union Navy has been very underestimated; approximately 18,000 blacks served in the Navy over the course of the Civil War, 8,000 of whom were escaped slaves from the Confederacy.

Serving aboard the Cambridge, he kept a correspondence with several people, including his soon-to-be-wife, Cornelia Williams Read, who was waiting for him in Boston. The ship played a major role in maintaining the naval blockade of the South and Wilmington Harbor, and thanks in part to his work, the Cambridge soon became a ship to be feared; in one five-day period, the Cambridge captured or sank five different Confederate ships. Writing in his journal about one of these skirmishes, Gould remarked, “we told them good morning in the shape of a shot.”

Gould was later transferred to the Niagara, a warship that chased British- and French-built ships meant for use in the Confederacy. These ships were chased all over the world. One ship that the Niagara lost was the Florida, which was earlier sunk without their knowledge. It was no matter to the crew, according to Gould, though, as he wrote that they were happy upon hearing the news, “as if we had done it ourselves.”

The biggest accomplishment for the Niagara was the seizure of the Georgia, a Confederate ship sailing for Britain for repairs and retooling.

“Its next voyage will be for Uncle Samuel,” Professor Gould remarked.

At the end of the war, Gould was discharged at the Charlestown Naval Yards. He immediately went to Cornelia and got married. He settled in Dedham, and had eight children; his six sons served the American Army during World War I.

The family largely forgot the diary until the death of Professor Gould’s uncle in 1958. Many of his possessions were bequeathed to William B Gould, III, and the diary was found in the attic of the Dedham house where Professor Gould’s uncle had lived. It was accidentally discovered as many possessions were being thrown away, possibly explaining a four-month gap between diary entries.

Professor Gould returned to the diary after the death of his father in 1983, eventually doing research into many different areas of his great-grandfather’s life. The published journal is dedicated in memory of his father, who according to Gould is, “the greatest man I have ever known.”