Dobak William A. Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862-1867 (ENG)

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Along the Mississippi River, 1863–1865

221

hundred thirty men of the 3d USCC

under the regiment’s new com-

mander, Maj. Jeremiah B. Cook,

to march north from Vicksburg and

scour the country between the Ya-

zoo and Mississippi Rivers for Con-

federates and for any supplies that

might be seized or destroyed. On 22

September, Cook’s troopers found a

band of one hundred fty Confeder-

ates and chased it north for fteen

miles across the Sunower River

before burning the plantation where

the Confederates had camped. The

next day, they came across a herd of

three hundred cattle, killing eight of

the herders and taking ve prison-

ers. One hundred of the cattle lost

themselves in canebrakes before the

expedition returned to Vicksburg on

26 September, but the soldiers noted

plentiful corn and cotton along the

route of march.

On the night of 29 September,

Osband boarded a steamer with one

thousand cavalrymen from three

white regiments and the 3d USCC, as well as a section of artillery (two guns).

They landed at Bruinsburg, some thirty miles downstream, the next morning and

marched another ten miles inland to Port Gibson, where they dispersed a band

of Confederate irregulars. In keeping with the increasingly vicious war that both

sides were waging, General Dana instructed the ranking ofcers on this raid to

arrest “any prominent rebels, male or female, whose inuence in the community

at large would make them valuable to us as hostages” for the safety of “such loy-

al citizens who have been kidnapped from their plantations by the rebel thieves

who surround us.” Osband’s troopers complied by seizing thirteen of the town’s

“most prominent and wealthy” residents. On 1 October, the expedition marched

back to the river and turned over the hostages and 125 cattle to Col. Charles A.

Gilchrist, who commanded a force of ve hundred men drawn from the 48th and

50th USCIs that had come downstream from Vicksburg by river. By the fall of

1864, along the lower Mississippi, it had become the role of cavalry to rove the

country seeking out the enemy and contraband property while the infantry re-

ceived and warehoused seized goods at river ports or loaded them aboard steam-

boats. Osband’s force marched southeast from the river and reached Natchez on

3 October. Providing three hundred fty of the cavalry horses with new shoes

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 567–72, and pt. 2, p. 410 (quotation).

Maj. Jeremiah B. Cook took over the 3d

U.S. Colored Cavalry when Colonel Osband

was promoted to brigade command. On 27

November 1864, he led part of the regiment

in a dismounted charge across the railroad

trestle over the Big Black River.

Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867

222

required the efforts of every blacksmith in town, while the expedition’s sick,

exhausted, or disabled horses and men boarded a boat for Vicksburg.

Just twenty-nine hours after reaching Natchez, Osband put twelve hundred

cavalrymen from ve regiments, including the 3d USCC, and two sections of artil-

lery (four guns) aboard transports and steamed downstream to seek out a Confed-

erate force that had been ring on riverboats. The otilla reached Tunica Bend,

nearly halfway between Natchez and Baton Rouge, well before daylight the next

day. The troopers went ashore and headed at once for Woodville, Mississippi, about

twenty miles inland, where Osband expected to nd the enemy. Before nightfall

on 5 October, they had entered the town. Besides seizing the mail and burning

the telegraph ofce, they took several prisoners and a number of wagons loaded

with supplies. That night, a black resident brought news that Confederate cavalry

intended to attack the expedition at daybreak. Osband sent the 3d USCC and the

5th Illinois Cavalry with two guns toward the left of the enemy’s camp on a planta-

tion a few miles south of Woodville while the rest of the command moved to the

right. The man who had brought the news led the 3d USCC to a small bridge on

the plantation which the regiment led across before charging the enemy position.

Capturing three cannon, the men of the 3d drove the retreating Confederates into

the waiting 5th Illinois Cavalry, which took forty-one prisoners. There were no

Union casualties. “The ght occurred near the residence of Judge McGehee, who

had breakfast cooked for the rebels,” Osband reported. “Our men ate the breakfast

without difculty, and giving Judge McGehee half an hour to move out of his resi-

dence, burned it, together with the quarters he had erected for the use of the reb-

els.” Two days later, Osband’s expedition was back in Natchez and on 9 October

boarded transports for Vicksburg.

At the end of the month, four of Osband’s regiments swept through Issaque-

na and Washington Counties north of Vicksburg, killing only two guerrillas but

seizing fty thousand feet of lumber and twenty thousand bricks and allowing

the lessees of government plantations to deliver six hundred bales of cotton. “We

captured . . . about 100 horses and mules, 300 sheep, and 50 head of beef-cattle,”

Osband reported, “besides arresting the prominent rebels through the country to

be held as hostages.” In a separate letter to General Dana, he complained that

hardtack issued to the 3d USCC “was so wormy that they could not eat it and

were compelled to throw it away. That is one of the reasons our rations are al-

ways short” in the eld.

On the night of 6 November, Osband put nine hundred forty men and horses

from several regiments and two artillery pieces aboard steamboats and headed

upstream. Thirty-six hours later, they arrived at Gaines’ Landing in the southeast

corner of Arkansas. Osband sent men of the 3d USCC splashing inland ve or

six miles to Bayou Macon. They “brought in some information but saw no en-

emy,” Osband reported. The information had to do with enemy troop strength

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 575–76, and pt. 2, p. 529 (quotation).

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 831–33 (quotation, p. 832), 569, 576; Main, Third United States

Colored Cavalry, pp. 183–88, 299–300.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 878–79 (“We captured,” p. 878), and pt. 3, p. 476 (“was so

wormy”).

Along the Mississippi River, 1863–1865

223

and movements and Confederate plans to sell about four hundred bales of cotton

through an intermediary in federally held Memphis. Surreptitious cotton sales

were an important source of revenue for the Confederate government, and cot-

ton brokers in Memphis often played fast and loose. Seeing no opportunity for

maneuver because, as Osband wrote, the land was “full of water and knee deep

in mud; the bayous were bank full, and if crossed must be swam; the whole

country [was] so overowed that it seemed folly to attempt any movement,” he

re-embarked the 3d USCC and returned to Vicksburg three days after the expedi-

tion set out.

As General Hood marched his Confederate army north toward Nashville in

early December, Union cavalry in Mississippi moved to cut supply routes in

his rear. One attack aimed at the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, which connected

Mobile with Columbus, Kentucky, by way of Meridian and Corinth in eastern

Mississippi. The other was intended to cut the Mississippi Central, a line that

ran from Jackson, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, through Holly Springs,

Oxford, and Grenada. Troops were to destroy a bridge over the Big Black River

near Vaughan’s Station, about fty miles northeast of Vicksburg. The 3d USCC

took part in this movement, along with the other four regiments of Osband’s

cavalry brigade.

The expedition—twenty-two hundred cavalry, eight guns, and a pontoon

bridge accompanied by part of the 5th USCA—left Vicksburg at daylight on

23 November. In order to deceive Confederate cavalry, which was scattered

throughout the state, Osband rst feinted toward Jackson, laying his pontoon

bridge across the Big Black River about ten miles due east of Vicksburg. The

next day, the 3d USCC and the 2d Wisconsin Cavalry crossed the river, con-

tinued east another fteen miles, and camped for the night, taking care to build

many campres. These they abandoned in the middle of the night and retraced

their route to the Big Black, where they rejoined the bulk of the command. On

25 November, leaving the 5th USCA to guard the bridge, the cavalry and eld

guns headed northeast, up the Big Black. A two-day march took them nearly to

Benton without a glimpse of the enemy. They reached Vaughan’s Station on 27

November shortly after noon.

About four miles south of the station, the track crossed the river on a trestle

twenty-ve feet high surrounded by a waist-deep swamp. Osband picked his old

regiment, the 3d USCC, to seize it. Major Cook’s troopers rode south and dis-

mounted about a mile from the bridge as close as they could approach on horse-

back. As usual when the troops fought dismounted, every fourth man stayed with

the horses. Cook led the rest toward the bridge on foot.

A stockade manned by a dozen local residents defended the bridge’s south

end. Cook put one company on either side of the railroad embankment, in the

swamp, and told them to approach the bridge as quickly and quietly as possible.

Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 899–900 (quotation, p. 899). On Memphis cotton dealers’ lack of caution, see

vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 420–21.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 1, pp. 763–74; Main, Third United States Colored Cavalry, pp. 199–200;

Robert C. Black III, The Railroads of the Confederacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Press, 1998 [1952]), map.

Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867

224

He and the balance of the regiment moved along the track. The defenders saw the

men on the track at some distance and began ring but abandoned their position

hastily when the troopers in the swamp opened re and Cook led a charge across

the trestle. The retreating Confederates left three dead behind; the 3d USCC’s

casualties amounted to three men wounded. Stufng the trestle with dry under-

brush, the victors poured kerosene over it and set it alight. Soon after they left to

rejoin the main body of the expedition, Confederate cavalry arrived and put out

the blaze.

Osband’s expedition made its way to Yazoo City, arriving there on 29 No-

vember. While the Union troops marched west, the Confederates who had put

out the re—a small force of Arkansas and Mississippi cavalry and mounted in-

fantry—repaired the bridge across the Big Black and crossed it in pursuit. As the

Union troops rested their horses on 30 November, the Confederates drew near

Yazoo City. Their willingness to engage the Union pickets that day and the next

convinced Osband that he faced a much stronger force than was present. Since

his own stock of ammunition was low—the 3d USCC alone had red ten thou-

sand rounds during its assault on the bridge—he ferried his own troops across the

Yazoo River during the night of 1–2 December on a single boat, taking sixteen

hours to move a dozen horses and men at a time. The entire expedition returned

to Vicksburg by steamer on 4 December.

Despite his raid’s end in retreat and disengagement, Osband described it

as successful. His troops, he wrote, had destroyed bridges and thirty miles of

railroad that earlier in the week had carried three trainloads of infantry north

to join Hood’s Confederate army on its way to attack Nashville. Union gener-

als did not know that the attack on the bridge had failed to destroy it when they

issued congratulatory orders a few days afterward. General Dana in Vicksburg

called the charge across the trestle “one of the most dashing and heroic acts of

the war,” and recommended Major Cook’s promotion to lieutenant colonel. At

his headquarters in New Orleans, Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby approved the

promotion, subject to presidential approval. The most striking aspect of these

jubilant reports is that they did not mention the race of the men who captured the

bridge, other than to name their regiment. In some parts of the Army, at least, it

seemed no longer necessary to exclaim at black soldiers’ good performance. It

had become a matter of course, to be expected more often than not.

Two days after Osband’s expedition returned to Vicksburg, General Halleck

ordered General Dana at Memphis to move against the Mobile and Ohio Rail-

road. General Grant, supervising siege operations in Virginia but responsible be-

sides for Union land operations across the country, had begun pondering the Mo-

bile and Ohio a few weeks after the Confederate withdrawal from Atlanta. Late

in the fall, with Hood’s army advancing north toward Nashville, Grant wanted to

do “as much damage as possible” to the line. Dana sought a delay. He had only

a thousand troopers at Memphis, he told Halleck, and their horses were in poor

OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 779–82, 785; Main, Third United States Colored Cavalry, pp.

200–202.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 782, 785–86; Main, Third United States Colored Cavalry, p. 203.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 777, 779, 782 (quotation, p. 779).

Along the Mississippi River, 1863–1865

225

condition; but he expected Osband’s brigade to arrive from Vicksburg within

a week. He would then mount an expedition to destroy the Mobile and Ohio.

Believing that time was of the essence, Halleck told him to do the best he could

with the force at hand.

Dana set out to increase his mounted strength. To lead the expedition, he way-

laid General Grierson, who was passing through Memphis with his cavalry division.

“I think the detention is made in accordance with some orders from Washington,”

Grierson explained to Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson, who expected him and his divi-

sion at Nashville. Dana also sent one of his ofcers as far upriver as Cairo, Illinois,

to reroute cavalry regiments that were on their way from Missouri to Nashville. By

the time Osband and his brigade, which included the 3d USCC, arrived at Memphis

in mid-December, enough mounted troops had assembled to launch the expedition.

Then the rain began. By 21 December, Dana reported, “the weather for ten

days has been intolerably rainy, and the whole country is overowed, the roads

knee-deep in mud.” That morning, the expedition left its wagons and artillery be-

hind and set out, thirty-ve hundred troopers with rations, mainly hardtack and

coffee, and extra ammunition carried on about one thousand pack animals. Nine

regiments of infantry accompanied Grierson’s command east along the line of the

Memphis and Charleston Railroad to attempt repairs along the track and confuse

enemy attempts to guess the column’s direction. Rain and sleet continued. Hun-

dreds of cavalry horses broke down on the march and had to be abandoned, their

places taken by animals seized at farms along the route. Despite those difculties,

by Christmas Eve, Grierson’s cavalry had covered the eighty miles to Ripley, Mis-

sissippi, and was within striking distance of the Mobile and Ohio tracks.

During the next forty-eight hours, Osband’s brigade alone destroyed nearly

half a mile of bridges and trestles on the line south of Tupelo. In succeeding days,

the expedition moved farther along the railroad, destroying a Confederate supply

depot that included two hundred wagons captured from Sturgis’ expedition the

previous spring and several trainloads of Confederate supplies. Meanwhile, Gri-

erson’s telegrapher tapped the line that ran along the tracks and learned that the

Confederate General Richard Taylor planned to reinforce the railroad’s defenders.

The raiders met the rst serious resistance at Egypt, where the garrison surren-

dered on 28 December minutes before relief arrived. Grierson’s cavalry fought the

reinforcements to a standstill and then turned due west, moving through Houston

before veering southwest toward Winona. There, the expedition struck the line of

the Mississippi Central Railroad. Grierson sent Osband’s brigade south and an-

other north to tear up track and burn bridges. The column reunited a few miles east

of Yazoo City and reached Vicksburg on 5 January. Grierson estimated the damage

to Confederate communications as nearly 4 miles of bridges and trestles burned,

another 10 miles of track torn up—ties burned to heat the rails so that they could

OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 4, pp. 782, 799; vol. 45, pt. 2, p. 142. John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of

Ulysses S. Grant, 30 vols. to date (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press,

1967– ), 12: 289, 385–86 (hereafter cited as Grant Papers).

OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 4, p. 902; vol. 45, pt. 2, pp. 90 (quotation), 106–07.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 4, p. 902 (quotation); vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 844–45. Main, Third United

States Colored Cavalry, pp. 219–20.

Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867

226

be bent—and 20 miles of telegraph line destroyed. He brought in six hundred pris-

oners of war and eight hundred head of captured livestock. About one thousand

freedpeople left their homes to join the victorious column. In Virginia, Grant pro-

nounced the raid “most important in its results and most successfully executed.”

Even before the expedition set out, the Confederate army that had marched

north in the fall had received a crushing defeat at Nashville and was retreating

toward Tupelo, where it found only the results of Grierson’s recent raid. With the

main Confederate force between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi

River in thorough disarray, Union armies in the region could turn their attention

to suppressing guerrilla bands that threatened their own communications and their

occupation of the country. When Osband’s brigade returned to Memphis in mid-

January, it was only to receive orders that took it back downstream to land on the

Arkansas shore.

The intent of this expedition was to drive Confederate irregulars from the west

bank of the Mississippi. Whether or not the enemy stood and fought, Union troops

were to destroy all forage and other supplies they found. Since every waterway in

the region was out of its banks, they could count on building rafts and swimming

their horses for much of the distance. After the cavalry division’s exertions in the

railroad raid during the previous month, General Dana was able to assign Osband

detachments from only three brigades, 2,621 men in all. The 3d USCC’s contin-

gent, 450 strong, was the largest from any one regiment.

The troops went ashore a few miles above Gaines’ Landing in southeastern

Arkansas before daybreak on 28 January and moved inland at rst light. During

the two weeks that followed, they worked their way toward Monroe, Louisiana, de-

stroying a Confederate steamboat, a gristmill, and stores of cotton and corn before

stopping at Bastrop and returning to Gaines’ Landing. Eight men of the 3d USCC

drowned during the raid. Osband called it “the most fatiguing scout of my life.”

To describe the roads, the poverty of the people, or the sufferings of my com-

mand during this terrible march would be impossible . . . and it is not exaggera-

tion to say that at one time one-half of a regiment might be seen dismounted,

struggling with their horses, every one of which was mired and down. No squad

of men, much less an army, can live anywhere we have been. The people have

neither seed, corn, nor bread, or the mills to grind the corn in if they had it, as I

burned them wherever found.

The regimental historian recalled:

The weather was cold, snow and sleet falling repeatedly. . . . Bridges were

swept away, and crossings made extremely difcult. . . . The horses splashed

and oundered through mud and water from knee to belly deep. . . . Not much

OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 845–46, 848, 856–57; Main, Third United States Colored Cavalry,

pp. 220–35; Grant Papers, 13: 397 (quotation).

OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 4, p. 901; vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 421, 544–45. NA M594, roll 204, 3d USCC;

Black, Railroads of the Confederacy, pp. 266–67.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 4, p. 901; vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 68, 544.

Along the Mississippi River, 1863–1865

227

attention was paid to the usual route of travel as regarded roads. After one regi-

ment had passed over the ground it was rendered too boggy for others to follow,

so the command scattered, each regiment seeking a new route, thus leaving a

wide trail, which could be traced years after the war.

More than four hundred freedpeople joined the column. Most managed to survive

the trip to Gaines’ Landing, but not all. Osband estimated that as many as twenty

may have died of exposure along the route.

The expedition to northeastern Louisiana was the 3d USCC’s last major ef-

fort of the war. Late in April 1865, detachments of Osband’s brigade at Memphis

boarded four steamers that took them nearly as far as Fort Pillow before putting

them ashore to engage in the kind of operation that had become known as a “guer-

rilla hunt.” They managed to capture one man named in their orders, whom they

tried by court-martial and hanged. At the end of the month, the general command-

ing at Memphis, thinking that Confederate President Jefferson Davis might ee

the country through his home state of Mississippi, sent the 3d USCC to Vicksburg

by boat. The regiment continued on to Fort Adams, below Natchez, and scouted

the country there. Meanwhile, far to the east, Union cavalry captured Davis near

Macon, Georgia, on 10 May. Not long afterward, the 3d USCC returned to Mem-

phis.

100

As Confederate troops surrendered in the spring of 1865, rst east of the Mis-

sissippi River then west of it, regiments of U.S. Colored Troops garrisoned Union

strongholds along the river from Columbus, Kentucky, to Natchez, Mississippi.

They constituted a majority at each post, nearly four-fths of the troops at Mem-

phis and more than 83 percent of those at Vicksburg. These regiments—one of

cavalry, thirteen of infantry, four of heavy artillery, and ve light batteries—would

muster out in twos and threes between September 1865 and September 1866. Until

then, they would continue to perform duties they had practiced continually during

the war’s closing months: guarding government property, securing contraband cot-

ton, pursuing outlaws, and protecting the rights of former slaves, many of whom

were their own close relatives. For many of them, the transition from war to peace

must have been barely noticeable, for after the Confederate surrender they faced

the same challenges in their daily lives, on duty and off, that they had before.

101

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 69–71, 665, 806 (quotation); Main, Third United States Colored

Cavalry, p. 246.

100

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 184, 254–55; vol. 49, pt. 2, pp. 406, 441–42, 557 (quotation), 640.

101

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 2, pp. 257 (Natchez), 267 (Helena); NA Microlm Pub M617, Returns

from U.S. Mil Posts, rolls 232 (Columbus), 769 (Memphis), 917 (Fort Pickering), 1330 (Vicksburg).

No returns survive for Helena and Natchez from the spring of 1865.

Fort Pillow

Fort Smith

Fort Gibson

Fort Adams

Fort Scott

Fort Leavenworth

Columbus

Cairo

La Grange

Batesville

Van Buren

Clarksville

Dardenelle

Lewisburg

Talequah

Honey Springs

Helena

Duvall’s Blu

Monroe

Yazoo City

Shreveport

Alexandria

Camden

Pine Blu

Jenkin’s Ferry

Napoleon

Hot Springs

Arkadelphia

Poison Spring

Washington

Paola

Baxter Springs

Holly Springs

Memphis

Vicksburg

Natchez

St. Louis

Alton

JACKSON

JEFFERSON CITY

TOPEKA

LITTLE ROCK

MISSOURI

ILLINOIS

TEXAS

TENNESSEE

LOUISIANA

MISSISSIPPI

ARKANSAS

KANSAS

INDIAN

TERRITORY

WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER

1863–1865

755025

Miles

Map 5

While Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s army moved against Vicksburg during the

spring of 1863, Union garrisons elsewhere along the Mississippi River struggled

to hold their own. More than two hundred twenty miles north of Vicksburg by the

river’s tortuous course lay Helena, Arkansas. Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas had

stopped there early in April to promote the organization of black regiments. The sev-

en thousand white troops he addressed, some of whom would become ofcers in the

new regiments, responded “most enthusiastically,” he told Secretary of War Edwin

M. Stanton. Men from the nearby contraband camp, Thomas explained to the senior

ofcer there, would ll the ranks. They would be “induced” to join (see Map 5).

Maj. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss, commanding at Helena, had no trouble rais-

ing the 1st Arkansas Infantry (African Descent [AD]). The regiment’s new colonel

quickly picked thirty-six ofcers from among the white troops in garrison—thirty-

four of them, like himself, from Indiana. There was no dearth of enlisted men.

The contraband camp had been full for months, and Prentiss had been shipping

freedpeople up the river to St. Louis until Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis, command-

ing there, threatened to turn the next boatload around and send it back. Curtis had

been a three-term Republican congressman from Iowa before the war and knew

that white Midwesterners were averse to an inux of former slaves. A month after

Thomas’ visit, the 1st Arkansas (AD) was complete and traveled downstream to

join the Union garrison at Goodrich’s Landing, Louisiana.

Organizing the 1st Arkansas (AD) nearly exhausted the supply of able-bodied

men in the Helena contraband camp. The 2d Arkansas (AD) took shape much more

slowly. Late in May, General Prentiss sent twenty-ve men of the regiment, backed

by detachments from two white regiments, downstream as far as the mouth of the Ar-

The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Ofcial Records of the Union and Confederate

Armies, 70 vols. in 128 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Ofce, 1880–1901), ser. 3, 3: 117

(hereafter cited as OR); Brig Gen L. Thomas to Brig Gen B. M. Prentiss, 2 Apr 1863, Entry 159BB,

Generals’ Books and Papers (L. Thomas), Record Group (RG) 94, Rcds of the Adjutant General’s

Ofce, National Archives (NA).

OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 2, p. 147; List of Ofcrs, 7 Apr 63, 46th United States Colored Infantry

(USCI), Entry 57C, Regimental Papers, RG 94, NA; NA Microlm Pub M594, Compiled Rcds

Showing Svc of Mil Units in Volunteer Union Organizations, roll 210, 46th USCI; Frederick H.

Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1959 [1909]), p.

999; Leslie A. Schwalm, Emancipation Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), pp. 82–97.

Arkansas, Indian Territory

and Kansas, 1863–1865

Chapter 8

Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867

230

kansas River in search of recruits. They scouted the west bank of the Mississippi on

the way down and the east bank on their return, sometimes venturing as far as seven

miles inland. At one point, a party of Confederates on shore red on the vessel and

the Union troops aboard red back. Prentiss reported that the men of the detachment

“fought with a hearty will and did good service. . . . The regiment is rapidly lling

up, and in a few days it is hoped it will be full.”

The general was so wrong about the progress of recruiting for the 2d Arkansas

(AD) that it calls into question the rest of his remarks about the men of the regi-

ment. Sixteen days after Prentiss’ report, 2d Lt. Minos Miller wrote in a private letter

that the regiment was “about 300 strong.” A month after that, in mid-July, Lt. Col.

George W. De Costa, the commanding ofcer, complained that four hundred recruits

at Vicksburg who had been promised to him had been withheld instead and that he

would have to go to Memphis in search of others. Late in October, Col. Charles S.

Sheley admitted that he still had only four hundred men organized in four-and-a-half

companies (enough to entitle the regiment to a full colonel in command). A recruit-

ing party of six ofcers had rounded up enough men during Maj. Gen. Frederick

Steele’s advance on Little Rock in August and September to complete the regiment,

but Steele refused to send them to Helena. “They are destitute of clothing and suffer

much from inclement weather,” Sheley told Adjutant General Thomas at the end of

October. Sheley tried to send uniforms from Helena for the recruits at Little Rock,

but he reported that General Prentiss’ successor there “prevents me, stating he would

not furnish them clothing until they are placed under his command.” The last ve

companies of the 2d Arkansas (AD) mustered in separately later that fall at Duvall’s

Bluff, Little Rock, and Pine Bluff, where the men were camped.

Prentiss’ report of the regiment’s progress in recruiting that spring had been

too optimistic by half a year. He had not gone on the expedition that his report de-

scribed and may merely have been passing on what Colonel De Costa told him. It

is possible, too, that he wanted to appear energetic in his pursuit of the new policy

of black enlistment, which General Thomas had announced to the troops at Helena

only seven weeks earlier. Prentiss had been an Illinois lawyer and local politician

in civilian life. In the spring of 1863, his immediate superior was Maj. Gen. John

A. McClernand, a ve-term Illinois congressman noted for bombast and mendac-

ity but a strong supporter of the Union and of measures for prosecuting the war.

Whatever the cause of Prentiss’ optimistic forecast for the 2d Arkansas (AD), the

report’s inaccuracy placed it in the same category as Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks’

description of the Louisiana Native Guard’s assault on the Confederate trenches

at Port Hudson: ne promotional literature for the new federal policy of enlisting

black soldiers but wishful rather than factual.

Besides General Steele’s alleged lack of cooperation, there was another

reason for the regiment’s slow growth. Potential recruits were reluctant to en-

list. “We have an order from Prentis[s] to press all able bodied negroes that is

OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, p. 340.

M. Miller to Dear Mother, 12 Jun 1863, M. Miller Papers, University of Arkansas (UA),

Fayetteville; Lt Col G. W. De Costa to Brig Gen L. F. Ross, 19 Jul 1863, and Col C. S. Sheley to

Brig Gen L. Thomas, 28 Oct 1863, both in 54th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA; NA M594, roll 211,

54th USCI.