Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
246
were “employed in town”—perhaps by civilian and military ofcials as domestic ser-
vants, or by the contractors who chopped wood on islands in the river. Companies of
black soldiers stationed at Helena guarded nearby contraband camps and plantations
that provided living quarters and work for freedpeople, as well as islands where wood-
cutters toiled to provide fuel for steamboats that carried troops and supplies to army
garrisons and the plantations’ cotton to market. “But for military protection . . . not a
bale of cotton would have been raised,” the commissioner in charge of plantations as-
sured Adjutant General Thomas, catching in a nutshell the roles of the Army and the
freedpeople and the relation between economics, politics, and military operations in
the occupied South. Confederate ofcials were quick to recognize the importance of
riverboats to federal operations and undertook not only to re at passing steamers with
cannon and small arms but to destroy the island woodlots that provided the boats’ fuel.
Attacks on the plantations and contraband camps along the river would deprive thou-
sands of freedpeople of homes and return many of them to slavery. Moreover, federal
ofcials knew that black fugitives from the Confederate interior furnished valuable
intelligence as they arrived, day by day, at the plantations and camps. They had good
reason, therefore, to keep the freedpeople’s new homes safe.
44
From the winter of 1864 through the end of the war, Helena’s garrison included
two regiments of black soldiers, the 3d Arkansas (AD) and the 1st Iowa Colored, which
were renumbered in March the 56th and 60th USCIs. There were also companies from
the 63d and 64th USCIs. These were “invalid” regiments composed of men unt for
eld service but sufciently healthy to stand guard over contraband camps, plantations,
warehouses full of government supplies, and wood yards. The Union Army included
white invalids, organized as the Veterans Reserve Corps, but these were men who had
been wounded in battle. Only the U.S. Colored Troops deliberately signed up men
who had been rejected by medical examiners. The 63d and 64th USCIs had companies
scattered along the Mississippi from Memphis to Natchez; several companies of the
64th guarded the freedpeople’s settlement at Davis Bend, the site of plantations that be-
longed to Jefferson Davis and his brother Joseph. A few miles upstream from Helena,
guard stations included the woodcutters’ camps on Island Nos. 60 and 63.
45
Rather than sit by the river and wait to be attacked, beginning in February 1864 the
Helena garrison made repeated forays up the Mississippi and its tributaries in search of
Confederates. “I can only keep the guerrillas at bay by constant raids,” Brig. Gen. Na-
poleon B. Buford, the district commander, told General Steele. One such waterborne
expedition in February included one hundred mounted men of the 15th Illinois Cavalry
with forty men of the 3d Arkansas (AD) to guard the steamer while the cavalry ranged
inland. In four days, they captured seven Confederate irregulars and nineteen horses
44
OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 2, pp. 852–53; vol. 26, pt. 1, pp. 739–40; vol. 34, pt. 2, pp. 504–05;
vol. 41, pt. 2, pp. 1010–11. Lt Cdr J. M. Pritchett to Maj Gen F. A. Steele, 7 Mar 1864 (P–9–DA–
1864), Entry 269, Dept of Arkansas, Letters Received (LR), pt. 1, Geographical Divs and Depts,
RG 393, Rcds of U.S. Army Continental Cmds, NA. Census gures in A. R. Gillum to Col J. Eaton,
1 Jul 1864 (G–103–DA–1864), Entry 269, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. S. Sawyer to Brig Gen L. Thomas,
5 Oct 1863 (“But for military”) (S–24–AG–1863), Entry 363, LR by Adjutant Gen Thomas, RG
94, NA; Ira Berlin et al., eds., The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Lower South (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 630–35; Carl H. Moneyhon, The Impact of the Civil War
and Reconstruction in Arkansas (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), pp. 142–51.
45
NA M594, roll 211, 56th USCI; roll 212, 60th, 63d, and 64th USCIs.