Background
Nash was born in Opelousas (the seat of Street Landry Parish) in south Louisiana.
Nash was born in Opelousas (the seat of Street Landry Parish) in south Louisiana.
He attended the common schools and was a bricklayer by trade.
He was Louisiana"s first African American Congressman and would remain the state"s only black United States. Representative for more than a century — until 1991, when William J. Jefferson"s tenure in the 2nd Louisiana District began. During the American Civil War, he enlisted in 1863 as a private in the Eighty-second Regiment, United States Volunteers, and was promoted to the rank of sergeant major. (This regiment is listed in the United States Colored Troops in the Mobile Campaign Union order of battle) Nash was severely wounded near the end of the war, at the Battle of Fort Blakely in Alabama, April 1865.
He lost part of his legal
After the war Charles Nash was a businessman and was appointed night inspector of United States. customs. Nash was elected as a Republican to the Forty-fourth Congress (March 4, 1875 – March 3, 1877).
He was unsuccessful as a candidate for reelection in 1876, as Redeemers regained control of Louisiana politics. He served briefly as postmaster at Washington in Saint Landry Parish, Louisiana, during the Chester A. Arthur administration, only from February 15 to May 1, 1882.
Charles Edmund Nash died in New Orleans at the age of sixty-nine.
He was interred there in Saint Louis Cemetery Number.