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The Sergeant Who
Called the Roll
Atlanta, Georgia – August 10, 1905
The summer heat pressed down on Peachtree Street like a wet wool blanket, but every streetcar in the city had stopped. White-gloved conductors stood at attention beside their brass rails. Shopkeepers locked doors and pinned black crepe to their windows. From the state capitol to the red-dirt lanes of Summerhill, Atlanta held its breath for Amos Rucker.
Inside the modest frame house on Fraser Street, the old soldier lay still. A gray wool jacket—faded, patched, and missing two buttons—hung on the bedpost. The same jacket he had worn forty-two years earlier when he picked up a dead man’s rifle at Vicksburg and fired it back at the Yankees.
Elbert County, 1862
Alexander “Sandy” Rucker was twenty-two when he rode off to war. Amos, two years older and enslaved since birth, saddled the second horse without being asked.
“Reckon you’ll need somebody to keep you out of trouble, Marse Sandy,” Amos said, tightening the girth.
Sandy laughed, but his eyes were serious. “Reckon I will.”
They joined Company A, 33rd Georgia Infantry, at a camp outside Dalton. White boys drilled in the dust; Amos cooked, cleaned muskets, and listened. When the regiment marched west, he marched with them—barefoot at first, until Sandy traded a pocket watch for a pair of brogans two sizes too large.
Vicksburg, July 1863
The siege had lasted forty-seven days. Confederate lines were thin, rations thinner. On the morning of July 3, a shell burst near the 33rd’s trench. Private Tom Whitfield dropped, blood blooming across his butternut jacket.
Amos was twenty feet away, carrying water. He saw the rifle—Springfield, still warm—lying beside Whitfield’s body. Union skirmishers were already advancing.
He didn’t think. He ran, knelt, worked the ramrod like he’d watched the white soldiers do a thousand times. The minie ball slid home. He raised the rifle, sighted down the barrel, and pulled the trigger.
The recoil slammed his shoulder. A blue-coated figure fell.
Sandy found him an hour later, reloading with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking.
“You all right?” Sandy asked.
Amos looked at the smoke drifting over the parapet. “I reckon I am now.”
Chickamauga, Kennesaw, Franklin
He fought in every major battle the 33rd did. A bullet grazed his chest outside Atlanta; shrapnel tore his left calf at Franklin. Each time, Sandy dragged him to the rear. Each time, Amos limped back to the line.
“Stubborn as a Georgia mule,” the white soldiers said. They started calling him Sergeant Rucker, half in jest. The name stuck.
Atlanta, 1896
Thirty-one years after Appomattox, the W.H.T. Walker Camp of the United Confederate Veterans met in a hall above a dry-goods store. The room smelled of pipe smoke and camphor. Old men in gray uniforms told the same stories, louder each year.
Amos arrived on crutches, his leg still stiff from Franklin. The camp commander waved him to a chair near the front.
“Sergeant Rucker,” he said, “you call the roll.”
Amos stood. His voice—deep, steady, unchanged by time—filled the room.
“Private Thomas Whitfield…”
“Killed at Vicksburg,” someone answered.
“Corporal James McAllister…”
“Lost at Chickamauga.”
He went down the list, name by name. When he reached Sandy Rucker—died of fever in ’64—the room went quiet. Amos paused, then said softly:
“Present in spirit.”
No one laughed. No one spoke. Grown men wiped their eyes with sleeve cuffs.
South-View Cemetery, August 13, 1905
The procession stretched six blocks. White veterans in gray walked beside Black veterans in Sunday suits. A brass band played “Dixie,” then “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” Children lined the route, waving tiny Confederate flags.
At the grave, the camp commander placed a folded Rebel banner across the coffin. Then he handed Amos’s crutches to his grandson, a boy of ten.
“Keep these,” he said. “So you remember how to stand tall.”
W“He was a soldier. He was a friend. He was faithful to the end.”
Epilogue
In 2006, the Sons of Confederate Veterans replaced Amos’s weathered headstone. The new marble reads:
SERGEANT, CO. A, 33RD GA INF.
1840–1905
“WHEN RUCKER CALLED THE ROLL”
Every Memorial Day, a small group gathers at South-View. A descendant—great-grandson, great-granddaughter—reads the old company roster. When they reach a name, someone answers:
“Present.”
Citations
- Barrow, Charles Kelly, et al. Forgotten Confederates: An Anthology About Black Southerners. J.H. Segars, 1995.
- “Amos Rucker, Black Confederate, Honored in Atlanta.” Albany Herald, 15 Apr. 2011.
- National Park Service. Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, “33rd Georgia Infantry.” nps.gov/civilwar.
- “The Roll Call of Sergeant Rucker.” Confederate Veteran magazine, Vol. 13, 1905, pp. 412–413.
- Jordan, Ervin L., Jr. Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia. University Press of Virginia, 1995, pp. 218–220.
- AccessWDUN. “Black Confederate Veteran Amos Rucker Remembered.” 10 Aug. 2007.
Historical note: Amos Rucker’s story is documented in veteran records, period newspapers, and UCV minutes. His combat role, while exceptional, reflects the complex realities of enslaved men who bore arms for the Confederacy.
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