Army Life in a Black Regiment - Hardcoverby Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Author) Thomas Wentworth Higginson was an American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, and soldier. He was active in the American Abolitionism movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism. During the Civil War, he served as colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized African American regiment, from 1862 1864. Following the war,