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

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Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Kansas, 1863–1865

231

not employ[e]d as ofcers[’] servents,” Lieutenant Miller wrote home, “so they

hide from us like chickens from a hawk we search their houses at all hours of

the day and night sometimes at midnight sometimes they tell us they wont go

but we general[l]y manage to make them last night I had to cock my revolver

on one before he would move he toddled in a hurry when he heard it snap.” De-

spite the brutal means recruiters sometimes employed, Lieutenant Miller was

optimistic about his regiment’s future. “We are drilling every day the negroes

learn fast and will ght well,” he predicted.

Jackson Brown was one recruit who joined Miller’s regiment. “I got free in

1863,” when a Union force occupied Pine Bluff on the lower Arkansas River, Brown

recalled after the war. He continued to work for his former owner for wages and

used the money to buy a pair of mules, intending to go into the hauling business, but

a federal quartermaster took the animals. “There was a review that day,” a military

spectacle that provided a welcome break in the boredom of small-town life:

Everybody went out to see it, white and black, and when the whole crowd was

together, the cavalry made a half moon about us, and the infantry closed up the

opening, then they . . . left a guard . . . and the rest of them went through town and

gathered up all the horses and mules they could nd in the lots and stables . . . , they

kept us there two hours, till they had all the stock.

The next time Brown saw his mules, they were pulling a government wagon.

With them went his hope of becoming an independent teamster, and he joined a

company of the 2d Arkansas (AD) that was recruiting in Pine Bluff. Union quarter-

masters’ requisitioning of livestock cost some black Southerners their jobs and drove

more than one of them to enlist.

Men of the 2d Arkansas (AD), like those of some other black regiments in the

Mississippi Valley, came under re before they mustered in. Confederate generals

had kept an eye on Helena since a Union force occupied the town in July 1862, and

forebodings of a possible federal move against the state capital at Little Rock had

spread as far as the government in Richmond. By June 1863, Lt. Gen. Theophilus

H. Holmes, commanding the Confederate Department of Arkansas, thought that the

time had come to recapture Helena, both to forestall Union operations against the

interior of the state and to divert federal troops from the siege of Vicksburg. The as-

sault fell on 4 July—by coincidence, the day Vicksburg surrendered.

At daybreak, more than seventy-six hundred Confederates attacked a line of

trenches and gun emplacements around Helena occupied by forty-one hundred

Union troops. Rumors of enemy movements had been reaching General Prentiss for

ten days, and a dispatch from Memphis on 2 July advised him that an attack might

be imminent. He ordered the Helena garrison to stand to arms well before dawn. “On

Miller to Dear Mother, 12 Jun 1863.

Deposition, Jackson Brown, Dec 1874, in Case File 10,146, Jackson Brown, Entry 732,

Settled Case Files for Claims Approved by the Southern Claims Commission, RG 217, Rcds of the

Accounting Ofcrs of the Dept of the Treasury, NA. For a similar case, see Deposition, Luke Turner,

Nov 1871, in Case File 7,010, Luke Turner, Entry 732, RG 217, NA.

OR, ser. 1, 13: 891–92, 914–15; vol. 22, pt. 1, pp. 408–09.

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

232

the morning of the 4th just as our Regt had got formed we heard the pickets com-

mence reing,” Lieutenant Miller wrote, “and we knew the ball had opened.”

Companies of the 2d Arkansas (AD) lled a 600-yard gap in the Union line by

a levee near the riverbank, half a mile south of town. A section of Battery K, 1st

Missouri Light Artillery, stood on either ank. It was a quiet spot, where the great-

est danger came from the Missourians’ guns ring across the regiment’s front at a

Confederate attack on the Union trenches west of town. “By the time our regt got

posted it was day light and the skirmishing on the right began to get pretty heavy

which told us the attack was not going to be made in our regeon so we set down

behind the breast works in plain view of the ghting and concluded we would look

on,” Lieutenant Miller wrote; “but before we had been there 5 minutes the balls be-

gan to whistle around us pretty lively and the breast work our part of the leavy was

behind run in the rong direction to screen us so we had to content ourselves and trust

to providence I was setting in the line with the men and a ball just passed over my

head and wounded two of the men in our Co I got a handkerchief and tied up one of

their wounds while Cap[t. David M. Logan] tied the other.” That done, they sat back

to watch the battle. “We heard the Rebbels cheering and knew they was chargeing

on the batterries” inland from Helena, about one mile northwest of Miller’s position.

In a minute we could see colum[n] after colum[n] pouring over the hills. . . . [A]s

soon as they came in sight . . . every batterry that could get range of them let into

them with a venge[a]nce . . . and we could see the rebbels . . . falling in all directions.

. . . [T]he Rebbels would begin to give way and their ofcers would Rally them and

they would try it again but at last they gave it up. . . . [T]hey retreated down the hill

into the gorge and covered themselves behind logs and stumps. . . . [T]hey laid in

there about an hour and amused themselves shooting at us.”

Fighting lasted until late morning. The defenders inicted about sixteen hundred

casualties (more than 20 percent of the attacking force) before General Holmes re-

called his troops. The next day, Lieutenant Miller walked over the battleeld. “Such a

sight I never seen before,” he recorded. “The Rebbels was laying thick some of them

tore all to peices with shell and some shought through with sollid shot they had laid

there 24 hours . . . and began to smell bad.” Since the 2d Arkansas (AD) had not yet

mustered into federal service, regimental records do not cover the Confederate at-

tack on Helena and no record survives of the regiment’s casualties, if there were any.

Perhaps they amounted to no more than the three men “hurt” that Miller mentioned

in his letter home.

The successful defense of the federal base at Helena allowed General Steele

to use the river port as a springboard for his August move into central Arkansas,

which resulted in the capture of Little Rock during the last days of summer. While

Steele’s expedition headed inland, a new black regiment arrived at Helena. The 3d

OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, p. 388, and pt. 2, pp. 335, 352; M. Miller to Dear Mother, 6 Jun [Jul]

1863, Miller Papers.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, p. 394; Miller to Dear Mother, 6 Jun [Jul] 1863.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, pp. 389, 394, 405–06, 410–12; Miller to Dear Mother, 6 Jun [Jul]

1863; NA M594, roll 211, 54th USCI.

Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Kansas, 1863–1865

233

Arkansas (AD), organized at St. Louis, included many soldiers who had been born

in Arkansas. Some of them had been sent north by General Prentiss in his attempt

to clean out the Helena contraband camp late in 1862.

Autumn brought little change to the Helena garrison. Three companies of the

3d Arkansas (AD) scouted the country south of town during October, one company

commander recorded on the muster roll, “without any loss or [incident] worthy of

record.” The regiment’s Company D spent November and December on Island No.

63 in the Mississippi River guarding woodcutters at a wood yard that supplied fuel

for Union steamboats. The other companies furnished fatigue parties to improve

Helena’s defenses and guarded warehouses full of government supplies. The men’s

health suffered, as did that of the garrison’s white troops. At the end of October,

Company H’s commanding ofcer called the situation “very poor. . . . The quar-

ters of the men have been Shelter Tents, the ground was a steap, bareside hill. The

Tents were without oors & during the cold rains the men and the Tents were made

drenching wet.” Sickness inicted 649 deaths—about two-thirds of a regiment’s

authorized strength—before the 3d Arkansas (AD), renumbered the 56th United

States Colored Infantry (USCI), mustered out at Helena in September 1866. One

inspector called the town “the most deadly place on the river.”

As autumn turned to winter, another black regiment, the 1st Iowa Colored Infan-

try, arrived in Helena. Organized in Keokuk at the southeastern corner of Iowa, the

regiment had recruited largely in Missouri, but federal law allowed the state of Iowa

OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, pp. 474–75, and pt. 2, pp. 402, 432.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 3, p. 714 (“the most deadly”); NA M594, roll 211, 56th USCI (“without

any loss,” “very poor”); Dyer, Compendium, p. 1733; Rhonda M. Kohl, “‘This Godforsaken Town’:

Helena, Arkansas, submerged by a ood in 1864—a hint of the mosquitoes and sanitary

problems that made it an unhealthy place

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

234

to credit the enlistments against its own draft quota. This accorded with the wishes of

Iowa’s governor expressed in an ofcial query to the War Department and in a letter

to Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck that contained one of the most revealing comments on

black recruitment by any public ofcial during the war: “When this war is over & we

have summed up the entire loss of life it has imposed on the country I shall not have

any regrets if it is found that a part of the dead are niggers and that all are not white

men.” The ofcers and men of the 1st Iowa Colored reached Helena on 20 December

1863 and soon took up a round of duties identical to those of the 3d Arkansas (AD).

Three hundred miles west of the Mississippi River, the threat of raids by Confed-

erate irregulars and outright bandits based in Missouri had largely depopulated the

eastern tier of Kansas counties during 1862, but Union reinforcements restored some

degree of order by the end of the year. At Fort Scott, the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry

mustered its existing ve companies into federal service on 13 January 1863. Lt. Col.

James M. Williams, commanding the incomplete regiment, at once began raising ad-

ditional companies and gathering in absentees who had strayed during the period of

organizational limbo the previous fall. In the meantime, the men continued to labor

on the fort’s defenses. By the end of April, the regiment was nearly full, but morale

and discipline had suffered so much that Williams wrote letters to district and depart-

ment headquarters asking for a change of duty and a change of station. His men had

not received “one cent” of pay since their enlistment, he complained; this, together

with endless fatigue assignments, had fostered “a mutinous and insubordinate spirit.”

To prevent this “from culminating in open anarchy,” Williams announced that he was

withdrawing the regiment from all fatigue details and intended to concentrate instead

on drill. Department headquarters granted his request. Soon after the remaining com-

panies of the regiment mustered in on 2 May 1863 and Williams received a promotion

to colonel, the 1st Kansas Colored began its march to another station, fty miles south

of Fort Scott.

The regiment’s new headquarters at Baxter Springs lay in the southeastern corner

of the state, about ve miles from Missouri and even closer to the Indian Territory, the

land west of Arkansas that was home to tribes that had moved there from the Southeast

a generation earlier. Confederates in the neighborhood were well aware of the presence

of what one of their ofcers called “Colonel Williams’ negro regiment.” Days after

reaching Baxter Springs, two companies of the 1st Kansas Colored helped a cavalry

force from Fort Scott rout a band of Confederates and recover about fty stolen horses

and mules. Within the week, Williams issued a challenge to the enemy:

I came here . . . to put a stop to the Guerrilla or Bushwhacking war which is now

being carried on . . . in Jasper and Newton Counties, Mo. It is my desire . . . to fol-

low . . . all the rules applicable to Civilized warfare. I therefore propose that you

. . . come to some point and attack me, or give me notice where I can nd your

Death and Disease at Helena, Arkansas, 1862–63,” Civil War History 50 (2004): 109–44.

OR, ser. 3, 3: 563, 591; NA M594, roll 212, 60th USCI; Ira Berlin et al., eds., The Black

Military Experience (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 85 (quotation), 188.

OR, ser. 1, 13: 801–05; vol. 22, pt. 1, pp. 825, 837–38. Lt Col J. M. Williams to Capt L. A.

Thrasher, 29 Jan 1863, and to Capt H. G. Loring, 21 Apr 1863, both in 79th USCI, Regimental

Books, RG 94, NA; Military History of Kansas Regiments During the War for the Suppression of

the Rebellion (Leavenworth: W. S. Burke, 1870), pp. 407–09.

Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Kansas, 1863–1865

235

force and I will ght you on your own grounds. But if you persist in the system

of Guerrilla warfare heretofore followed by you and refuse to ght openly like

soldiers ghting for a cause I shall feel bound to treat you as thieves and robbers

who lurk in secret places ghting only defenceless people and wholly unworthy

[of] the fate due to chivalrous soldiers engaged in honourable warfare, and shall

take any means within my power to rid the country of your murderous gang.

On 18 May, just one week after Williams issued his challenge, a party of guerrillas

surprised a foraging party made up of forty-ve men from the regiment and a white

artillery battery near Baxter Springs. The Confederates claimed to have chased the

federals for about eight miles, capturing ve wagons and their six-mule teams. The

foraging party lost 16 killed, all from the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry, and 5 prisoners,

2 from the infantry and 3 from the artillery. Later that day, the guerrilla leader Thomas

R. Livingston exchanged the artillerymen for three of his own men who had fallen

into Union hands. What happened next became the subject of assertion and evasion.

Livingston reported: “The prisoners I have subsequently exchanged for Confederate

soldiers.” The federals alleged that he “refused to exchange the colored prisoners in his

possession, and gave as his excuse that he should hold them subject to the orders of the

rebel War Department.” (Livingston’s relation to the Confederate government is un-

clear. He signed his report, “Major, Commanding Confederate forces.” A Union ofcer

called his followers “bushwhackers.”) Colonel Williams arrived on the scene and “for

the rst time beheld the horrible evidence of the demoniac spirit of these rebel ends in

their treatment of our dead and wounded. Men were found with their brains beaten out

with clubs, and the bloody weapons left by their sides, and their bodies most horribly

mutilated.” When Williams heard a report that the Confederates had murdered one of

the prisoners, he shot one of the Confederate prisoners he held and the next day burned

the town of Sherwood and eleven farms within a few miles of it. According to Livings-

ton, the federals “put 10 of their dead (negroes) that had been left on the battle-ground

the day preceding, . . . together with the body of Mr. John Bishop, a citizen prisoner,

whom they had murdered, into [one of the houses], and burned the premises.” The war

of allegations and atrocities was well under way on the western border.

During the week that followed, Livingston and Williams exchanged letters about

the fate of the remaining prisoners on either side. Regimental letter books usually re-

corded only correspondence sent by the commanding ofcer or adjutant; but Williams

must have thought the exchange with Livingston was so interesting that he ordered it

copied into the record, so that the Confederate’s messages and Williams’ replies al-

ternate. (The accuracy of transcription is open to question, for Livingston’s rst letter

was semiliterate; his grammar and spelling improved markedly in the last two.) On 20

May, Livingston announced that he was willing to exchange his white Union prisoners

for Williams’ captured Confederates, but that “as for the Negrows I cannot Reccognise

OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, pp. 320, 322 (“Colonel Williams’”); Lt Col J. M. Williams “To

Comdg ofcer of Southern forces in Jasper & Newton Counties Mo,” 11 May 1863, 79th USCI,

Regimental Books, RG 94, NA.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, pp. 219 (“bushwhackers”), 322 (“The prisoners,” “Major”); Military

History of Kansas Regiments, pp. 409–10 (“refused to exchange,” “for the rst time”); Ofcial Army

General’s Ofce, 1867), 8: 256 (hereafter cited as ORVF).

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

236

Them as Solgers and In consiquence I will hev to hold Them as contrabands of ware.”

Williams answered the next day, agreeing to an exchange of white prisoners, but add-

ing:

In regard to the colored men, prisoners, belonging to my Regiment, . . . it rests with

you to treat them as prisoners of war or not but be assured that I shall keep a like num-

ber of your men as prisoners untill these colored men are accounted for, and you can

safely trust that I shall visit a retributive justice upon them for any injury done them

at the hands of the confederate forces. . . . [T]hese men are enlisted and sworn into

the service of the United States as soldiers, and I doubt not the Government . . . will

take the necessary steps to punish her enemies amply for any such gross violation of

all rules of civilized and honorable warfare, and you can rest assured that knowing the

justice of the course [cause?], I shall not long wait for orders . . . but will act as I have

a right to upon my own judgment, and myself assume the responsibility.

The exchange of white prisoners took place. On 26 May, Williams learned

that one of the two men Livingston still held had been murdered in the Confeder-

ate camp. Williams demanded that the killer be surrendered to him for execution

within two days; if the man did not appear, Williams would pick a substitute from

among his own remaining prisoners. Livingston replied that the killer was not a

member of his company or subject to his orders and that the man’s “whereabouts

is to me unknown.” There the correspondence, as recorded in Williams’ regimental

letter book, stopped. It was one of the earliest exchanges between Union and Con-

federate ofcers about the rights and proper treatment of black soldiers, and, like

later exchanges on the subject between other commanders, began with statements

of high principle—“I cannot Recognize them,” and “these men are enlisted . . . as

soldiers”—and ended with threats of violence and retaliation.

Old free-state/slave-state hostilities between white people along the Kansas-

Missouri line were similar to those in the Indian Territory just to the south. Since

the 1830s, that land had been home to ve tribes that had moved there, under

federal compulsion, from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

The federal policy known as Indian Removal had given rise to intratribal factional

disputes that sometimes reached murderous intensity. A generation later, the se-

cession movement caused a new schism that divided those Indians who owned

slaves—a custom they had brought with them from their old homelands in the

Southern states—and who therefore wished to cooperate with the Confederacy

from those who did not own slaves and wished to abide by the terms of tribal

treaties with the United States. Confederate tribesmen persecuted many of their

opponents, who ed to Kansas and formed Union regiments. In April 1863, fed-

eral troops occupied Fort Gibson, a prewar military post some twenty miles above

the head of navigation on the Arkansas River and about the same distance west of

Maj T. R. Livingston to Col J. M. Williams, 20 May 1863, and Col J. M. Williams to Maj T.

R. Livingston, 21 May 1863, both in 79th USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA.

Livingston to Williams, 20 May 1863 (“I cannot”); Williams to Livingston, 21 May 1863

(“these men”). Williams to Livingston, 26 May 1863; Livingston to Col J. M. Phillips, 27 May 1863

(“whereabouts”); both in 79th USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA.

Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Kansas, 1863–1865

237

Tahlequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation. On a hill overlooking the old site,

they laid out a fortied position that they named after the district commander, Maj.

Gen. James G. Blunt.

Pro-Union refugees ocked to the Union outpost in northeastern Indian Ter-

ritory, as they did along the Mississippi River. Refugees and troops alike required

rations, and federal wagon trains soon began rolling toward Fort Gibson. The clos-

est supply depot was at Fort Scott, Kansas, one hundred sixty miles to the north.

On 26 June, the 1st Kansas Colored left Baxter Springs and joined a train headed

for Fort Gibson. The regiment was part of a 1,600-man reinforcement that would

increase Union strength in the Indian Territory by 65 percent.

The ox teams plodded south, covering the hundred miles between Baxter

Springs and Fort Gibson at a rate of ten or twelve miles a day. They neared Cabin

Creek, almost halfway to their destination, on 1 July. About noon, the men of

the escort found a Confederate force on the opposite bank commanding the ford.

Recent heavy rains made the creek too deep to cross, so the train circled its wag-

ons and waited while Colonel Williams consulted with the senior ofcers of the

rest of the escort, which included a battalion of the 3d Indian Home Guards and

companies of white soldiers from Colorado, Kansas, and Wisconsin regiments.

They decided to move their artillery pieces—three twelve-pounders and two six-

pounders—to cover the ford and to try to cross on the following day.

The next morning at 8:00, the guns opened re on places beyond the creek

where the enemy had been seen the day before. When one of the Indian compa-

nies tried to cross, small-arms re erupted from the undergrowth that lined the

shore where the Confederates had moved during the night. Colonel Williams saw

the Union advance retreat “somewhat confusedly” and ordered artillery re on

the enemy’s new position as well as rie re from three companies of the 1st

Kansas Colored that had been about to wade the creek. Not long after 9:00, the

infantry companies were able to cross in chest-deep water, losing three or four

men wounded. The Confederates withdrew from the underbrush and formed line

of battle some four hundred yards from the creek, but a charge by one company

of Union cavalry broke them, as much to Williams’ surprise as anyone’s, and the

entire six companies of federal mounted troops chased them from the eld. The

wagon train then crossed the creek and arrived at Fort Blunt, some fty miles to

the south, three days later.

General Blunt himself arrived on 11 July and resolved to move against the

brigade that Colonel Williams had defeated before the Confederates could rein-

force it. Characteristically, each side overestimated the strength of the other; Blunt

thought that his opponent, Brig. Gen. Douglas H. Cooper, commanded six thou-

sand men, which another Confederate general reported as “much more than the

number which [Cooper] has had together at any time.” Cooper reckoned Blunt’s

OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, p. 349, and pt. 2, pp. 190, 256, 266, 276. Robert W. Frazer, Forts of

the West: Military Forts and Presidios, and Posts Commonly Called Forts, West of the Mississippi

River to 1898 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), p. 121.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, p. 379, and pt. 2, pp. 283, 300, 337, 342, 416, 478.

Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 380, 382, and pt. 2, p. 478.

Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 380–81 (quotation, p. 380).

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

238

strength at forty-ve hundred, an overestimate of 50 percent. Nevertheless, Blunt

moved across the Arkansas River on 16 July with, as he reported, “less than 3,000

men, mostly Indians and negroes.” The next morning, Union cavalry encountered

the enemy pickets and drove them to where the Confederate main force was wait-

ing near Honey Springs, some twenty miles south of Fort Gibson.

Blunt halted his men behind a ridge about half a mile from the enemy position

and allowed them time to eat while he reconnoitered. Afterward, he formed the

force in two columns, the 1st Kansas Colored and a white regiment, the 2d Colo-

rado Infantry, in one brigade under Colonel Williams’ command, and the 6th Kan-

sas Cavalry and 3d Indian Home Guards in another brigade. In order to conceal

their strength from the Confederates more effectively, the two brigades advanced

in column—twenty-ve or thirty men wide and about twenty ranks deep—rather

than on a broad front. When they had covered about half the distance and were a

quarter-mile from the enemy, they moved from column into line of battle. Blunt

noticed that their front was at least as long as that of the Confederates.

Williams’ two regiments advanced until they were about forty paces from the

woods where the enemy waited. So close were the two sides that his command to

re may have been mistaken by the Confederates as coming from one of their own

ofcers. The two volleys came at once. Williams fell, wounded in the face, chest,

and hands. The second-in-command, Lt. Col. John Bowles, was at the right of the

brigade line and did not learn of Williams’ wounding for some time. Meanwhile,

the 1st Kansas Colored stood its ground and, when Bowles nally took command,

stopped a Confederate charge with three volleys and chased the survivors through

a corneld. Union cavalry continued the pursuit past blazing supply warehouses

two miles to the south set alight by the retreating enemy. The federal troops slept

on the battleeld that night. The Confederates withdrew south toward the Canadian

River.

The 1st Kansas Colored’s attack at Honey Springs marked the rst time in the

war that black soldiers in regimental strength had carried out a successful offensive

operation against Confederate troops. The regiment sustained thirty-two casualties,

half again as many as the 2d Colorado. General Blunt voiced the same sort of ap-

proval, mingled with surprise and relief, that other Union commanders expressed

throughout the war. The difference was that Blunt, unlike General Banks at Port

Hudson a few weeks earlier, had been present and had seen what he described. The

1st Kansas Colored, he reported, had “particularly distinguished itself; they fought

like veterans, and preserved their line unbroken throughout the engagement.”

Blunt’s victory at Honey Springs allowed his Army of the Frontier to move

southeast down the Arkansas River. On 1 September, it occupied Fort Smith, an

antebellum military post that had given its name to the westernmost town in Arkan-

sas. Nine days later, General Steele’s force, operating from Helena, entered Little

Rock. Union armies had gained control of the major towns along the Arkansas

River, but Confederates, uniformed and guerrilla, still moved freely through large

OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, pp. 447 (“less than”), 458, and pt. 2, p. 1078 (“much more”).

Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 447–48.

Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 448, 450; NA M594, roll 213, 79th USCI.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, pp. 448 (quotation), 449.

Artists’ representations of static scenes tended to stay closer to the truth than their

depictions of battles. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper image and photograph show

the Union outpost at Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 1865.

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

240

parts of the rest of the state. At Fort Smith, a new regiment numbered the 11th

USCI began to organize and Union troops settled in for a hard winter. Soon the

water level in the river fell, blocking transportation and putting the garrison on half

rations until the spring rise came.

The numeral assigned to the new regiment at Fort Smith represented a nation-

wide attempt to standardize nomenclature in the black regiments. Early in March,

Adjutant General Thomas ordered new federal numbers for the Arkansas, Louisi-

ana, Mississippi, and Tennessee regiments that he had raised as state organizations.

The 1st Arkansas (AD) became the 46th USCI, the 2d Arkansas the 54th USCI, the

3d the 56th USCI, and the 4th the 57th USCI. In New Orleans, General Banks ad-

opted consecutive federal numbers for his Corps d’Afrique regiments a few weeks

later. The two black Kansas regiments were outside both generals’ purview and

retained their state designations until December, when the 1st Kansas Colored be-

came the 79th USCI (New) and the 2d the 83d USCI (New).

Those numbers were vacant because the regiments that had originally held

them had been the source of many inspectors’ complaints in the Department of the

Gulf, where they were part of the Corps d’Afrique. Exasperated authorities broke

up both regiments in July 1864, along with three others, and sent the enlisted men

to ll the ranks of other regiments while ordering the ofcers to appear before

examination boards that would determine their competence. Thirty-ve of the of-

cers of the original 79th and 83d resigned or received discharges. Thirteen passed

their examinations and transferred to other regiments.

On 17 March 1864, orders came to Fort Smith requiring a division of troops

to join General Steele’s command at Little Rock. Steele was to march south and

join General Banks’ Red River Campaign toward Shreveport and eastern Texas.

Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, commanding the Military Division of the Missis-

sippi and in charge of Union operations west of the Appalachians, wanted Steele

to move rapidly, but the Frontier Division from Fort Smith showed no sign of ar-

riving, and it was 23 March before Steele set out with his forty-eight hundred men.

One hundred recruits of the 4th Arkansas (AD) received axes, picks, and shovels

and helped build roads for the thirty-four wagons that carried parts of the expedi-

tion’s pontoon bridge.

The 4,000-man Frontier Division nally got under way the same week that

Steele’s column left Little Rock. It moved southeast by way of Hot Springs. “The

weather was rainy, cold, and disagreeable, the roads soft and spongy,” a former of-

cer of the 2d Kansas Colored recalled anonymously in a newspaper account soon

after the war. “We had to travel many hours each day, to make the distance that was

necessary. Many places in the road had to be ‘corduroyed’ to render them passable.

The country became mountainous and stony, which, with the mud-holes, used up

the mules pretty fast. . . . Often all we had for food was corn meal, ground in hand

mills, and the cattle, hogs &c., we killed after camping.” Delayed by high water,

Ibid., pp. 10–11, 16–17; vol. 34, pt. 2, pp. 24, 51–52, 705, 739.

OR, ser. 3, 4: 164–65, 214–15.

“Broken up” is the term used in Dyer, Compendium, pp. 1735–36, and ORVF, 8: 255, 261, 269,

271–72, 275, to describe the end of the old 79th, 83d, 88th, 89th, and 90th USCIs.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 34, pt. 1, pp. 657, 660–62, 672, and pt. 2, pp. 638, 647.