Andrew and Silas Chandler

 

 Desert Rose Films

VERBATIM

Silas was considered a servant by the other men and blacks in the unit, he was very much an equal, displaying just as much hatred for the Yankees as anyone in the whole unit!
- Andrew Martin Chandler, 1912 

One of the most famous accounts of a close master/body servant relationship was of Andrew Martin Chandler and his servant Silas. Chandler, 15 years old at the time, joined the confederate service and was put in Company F of the 44th Mississippi Infantry. His 17 year old formal slave accompanied him as he always had done.

Silas Chandler just received his free papers just before the war began but chose to stay with his friend and followed him off to war. After the Battle of Shiloh, Chandler was thrown in a Union prison in Ohio. Silas ran various errands back and forth from the Chandler homestead back in Palo Alto, Mississippi to the prison, seeing to Chandler's essentials. The boy was soon released and the two were very excited to rejoin their outfit.

During the fighting at Chickamauga, Andrew Chandler suffered a great wound to the leg which the surgeons were ready to amputate off. But Silas pulled out a gold coin that the boys were saving to buy some whiskey. Bribing the doctors to let Chandler go, he then carried the injured boy on his back to the nearest train. They rode all the way to Atlanta in a box car. Once there, the hospital doctors saved the boy's leg and life.

Soon after, they returned to home to Palo Alto, where they continued their friendship until their deaths. Chandler gave Silas land to build a church for the black community and saw that his friend got his confederate veteran pension in 1878.

His grave was adorned with a Confederate Cross of Honor that was placed there in 1994. Shortly after that, the great-grandsons of Silas and Andrew met. Traveling from Washington DC, Bobbie Chandler introduced himself to Andrew Chandler Battaile who still lives in Mississippi. They both maintain a long distance friendship that was rooted over a hundred years ago.

Silas Chandler has recently become a celebrated black confederate having his story recognized by the media. The picture of him and Andrew Chandler is the best well know photograph of a master and his body servant and is one of the only photos of it's kind to hang in a museum.