Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 27, 2017
Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman (1845–1863) was one of more than one hundred Native Hawaiians and Hawaiian-born combatants who fought in the American Civil War while Hawaii was still an independent kingdom. His father was a merchant from Massachusetts and his mother, Kinoʻoleoliliha, was a Hawaiian noble. He returned to the United States with his father for his education, but ran away from school without his family's knowledge and enlisted in the Union Army as a private. Despite his mixed-race ancestry, he avoided the racial segregation imposed on other Hawaiian recruits of the time and was assigned to a white regiment. He fought in the Battle of Antietam and the Maryland Campaign and befriended Robert G. Carter, a memoirist of the Civil War. On the march to Fredericksburg, he was separated from his regiment and captured by Confederate guerrilla forces. He was marched to Richmond and incarcerated in Libby Prison, where he contracted a lung disease from the harsh conditions. He died on February 27, 1863, after his release on parole in a prisoner exchange. His legacy has sparked renewed interest in the role Hawaiians played in the Civil War. (Full article...)