On June 27, 1864, Austin Gilmore of Tennessee fell mortally wounded in ferocious fighting near this wide field while carrying a stretcher bearing a wounded soldier. Gilmore held no military rank and no rifle. An American of African descent, he escaped from slavery to join the 111th Illinois Infantry and, as an "undercook," a wide-ranging job description, rescued injured soldiers before dying of battlefield wounds on July 1, 1864. Like Gilmore, untold numbers of African Americans participated in the Civil War. Almost 200,000 saw combat as part of the United States Colored Troops, while others drove supply wagons, dug trenches and built earthworks, rescued the wounded, and buried the dead, with many working in freedom for the Union Army while others remained enslaved workers in the Confederacy. General Sherman's Special Field Order No. 16 specifically excluded African Americans from being recruited as soldiers rather than laborers. Emma Stephenson, another African American freedom fighter at Kennesaw, was a skilled nurse for the 17th Army Corps, and at her death grateful soldiers requested her burial with honor in the Marietta National Cemetery.