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

251

sure of reaching even Pine Bluff, forty miles downstream from Little Rock. Al-

though the river rose again in late autumn, steamboats still could not get above

Dardanelle, ninety miles below Fort Smith, by mid-December.

Overland supply of Forts Smith and Gibson posed its own problems. Wagon

trains had to originate in General Curtis’ Department of Kansas, an entirely dif-

ferent command. Fort Leavenworth on the Missouri River was the supply depot.

From there, mules or oxen pulled loaded wagons south some one hundred twenty

miles to Fort Scott, headquarters of the District of South Kansas, then another

one hundred sixty miles to Fort Gibson and yet another fty to Fort Smith. At

a wagon train’s rate of travel, twelve to fteen miles a day with oxen, fteen

to twenty with mules, the entire one-way journey could take as long as four

weeks. A train spent only seven or eight hours of the day traveling, pausing for

about four hours at midday to allow the animals to graze so that they would rest

properly that night. As trains left Kansas, they entered the Indian Territory and

General Thayer’s District of the Frontier, part of the Department of Arkansas.

In Thayer’s command, four black infantry regiments—the 1st and 2d Kansas

Colored, the partially formed 11th USCI, and the 54th (formerly the 2d Arkansas

[AD])—made up about one-quarter of the force.

By mid-September, as two steamboats lay grounded thirty-ve miles up-

stream from Little Rock—not even one-fth of the way to Fort Smith—General

Thayer realized that his troops’ rations for subsistence all came by wagon trains

from Fort Scott. The 1st Kansas Colored had moved a month earlier from Fort

Smith to Fort Gibson, where its companies stood guard over hay cutters busily

laying up forage for the draft animals that hauled the garrison’s supplies. The

rest of Colonel Williams’ all-black brigade remained closer to Fort Smith. The

2d Kansas Colored worked on the town’s defenses, contributing what the regi-

ment’s bimonthly record of events called “heavy fatigue parties.” The 54th USCI

furnished guards for government livestock and wagon trains. The 11th USCI’s

ve companies were on Big Sallisaw Creek, some forty miles northwest of Fort

Smith, guarding hay cutters.

General Thayer sent all his available transportation to Fort Scott for supplies.

The train’s 205 empty wagons arrived there, received their loads, and set out

for Fort Smith on 12 September joined by ninety-one sutlers’ wagons carrying

privately owned goods for sale to troops. The escort consisted of two hundred

sixty men, only one hundred twenty of them mounted, detailed from three white

Kansas cavalry regiments. Worried about his supply line, Thayer sent Colonel

Williams with the 11th and 54th USCIs toward Fort Gibson on 14 September

with discretion to march there directly or to stop and observe the fords on the

OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 2, p. 539 (“nearly”); pt. 3, pp. 213, 474; pt. 4, pp. 617, 780. Report of the

Secretary of War for 1865, 38th Cong., 1st sess., H. Ex. Doc. 1, vol. 3, pt. 1, no. 1 (serial 1,249), p. 209.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 2, pp. 980–84; Henry P. Walker, The Wagonmasters: High Plains

Freighting from the Earliest Days of the Santa Fe Trail to 1880 (Norman: University of Oklahoma

Press, 1966), pp. 121–23, 125.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 3, pp. 138–39. NA M594, roll 206, 11th USCI (Old); roll 211, 54th USCI;

roll 213, 79th USCI; roll 214, 83d USCI (“heavy fatigue”).

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

252

Arkansas River for signs of Confederate movement. He also urged Fort Gibson’s

commanding ofcer to hurry forward additional escorts.

Meanwhile, Confederates in the Indian Territory were not idle. Despite imperfect

communications, General Cooper, commanding the Indian Cavalry Division, had word

that Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, with the main body of Confederates in Arkansas, was

on his way north to invade Missouri. Cooper resolved to be active in his support. He

ordered Brig. Gen. Stand Watie’s Cherokee-Creek brigade and Brig. Gen. Richard M.

Gano’s Texas cavalry brigade to “sweep around” north of the Arkansas River above

Fort Gibson to raid a large Union hay camp. While doing so, the brigade might “per-

haps run into a train now expected from Fort Scott.” On the afternoon of 16 September,

Watie’s and Gano’s men found the hay camp twelve or fteen miles north of Fort Gib-

son. The guard consisted of Company K of the 1st Kansas Colored and detachments

from three companies of the 2d Kansas Cavalry, 125 men in all. The Confederates,

who numbered some two thousand, approached the hay camp cautiously from two

directions and opened re on the federal troops, most of whom took shelter in a creek

bed nearby. The Union commanding ofcer and a few mounted men managed to es-

cape after a running ght with the enemy cavalry. Gano then demanded the surrender

of the Union soldiers who remained in the creek bed; when they red on his ag of

truce, he reported, “then commenced the work of death in earnest.” Company K of the

1st Kansas Colored lost fteen men killed. Only nine of the company escaped. The

white soldiers and civilian hay cutters were more fortunate; the Confederates captured

eighty-ve of them while losing only three of their own men wounded.

The prisoners said that they expected the Fort Scott supply train to arrive soon,

and Gano and Watie moved north separately the next day to nd it. On the morning

of 18 September, Gano’s men discovered the train at the crossing of Cabin Creek,

some sixty miles north of Fort Gibson, and watched it while a courier summoned

Watie’s command. More than three hundred fty Unionist Cherokees had joined

the train’s escort since it left Kansas. Its commander had received a message from

Fort Scott that warned him of enemy troops operating nearby and had asked the

commanding ofcer at Fort Gibson to forward any reinforcements he could spare.

A reply assured him that six companies were on the way. A quick reconnaissance

revealed a Confederate force three miles south of the ford but was unable to tell its

strength. The escort’s commander ordered the wagons corralled, posted sentries,

and settled down for the night.

Watie’s brigade joined Gano’s about midnight. The two generals decided to risk

an attack by the light of the moon, which was only three days past full, and pressed

their troops forward. As the Confederate skirmishers engaged the federal pickets and

OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 1, p. 769, and pt. 3, pp. 106, 187–88, 238, 248–49.

Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 771–72, 781 (“sweep around,” “perhaps run”), 785, 789 (“then commenced”), and

pt. 3, pp. 930–31; NA M594, roll 213, 79th USCI. General Gano reported 73 Union dead and 85 prisoners;

the Union commander, 40 dead and 66 prisoners. Gano’s totals may have included civilian hay cutters.

The regiment’s Record of Events for September 1864 lists Company K’s dead as 36; ORVF, 8: 256,

gives the same gure. The Kansas Adjutant General’s report lists the dead at 22. Report of the Adjutant

General . . . of Kansas, p. 422. The regimental descriptive book names 1 sergeant, 2 corporals, and 27

privates killed, the gures used in the text. 79th USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 1, pp. 767, 770, 773, 786, 789. The commanding ofcer had difculty

keeping track of his Indian reinforcements, reporting them on 22 September 1864 as numbering 410

and three days later as 360 (pp. 767, 770).

Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Kansas, 1863–1865

253

their six cannon joined in, most of the Union teamsters and wagon masters mounted

mules and made off toward Fort Scott. This left the wagon train with incomplete

teams and made it hard for the defenders to change position. At daybreak, the Con-

federates brought their cannon within one hundred yards of the Union line. “Soon the

confusion became great in his ranks,” General Watie reported, “and a general stam-

pede ensued.” The federal commander admitted that his men “were compelled to fall

back in disorder.” They did not stop soon. Two days later, the ofcer commanding

the Union outpost at the Osage Catholic Mission in Kansas, more than eighty miles

north of Cabin Creek, reported the fugitives’ account of the ght: “The entire train

. . . has been captured and all the escort killed, as they took no prisoners.” Later in the

day, he counted eleven ofcers of the escort who had made their way to safety ac-

companied by small numbers of enlisted men. There had been no general massacre,

it turned out, but the supply train was rmly in the Confederates’ grasp. They shot the

wounded mules and used the remaining seven hundred forty to haul away one hun-

dred thirty wagons that were still sufciently sound to move. The rest they burned.

Meanwhile, the scattered regiments of Colonel Williams’ brigade had been

hurrying to meet the train. On 14 September, companies of the 11th USCI left

the hayelds they had been guarding north of Fort Smith and marched thirty-ve

miles to Fort Gibson in two days. From there, they set out again on 17 September,

heading north on the road to Fort Scott. They made forty miles to the crossing of

Pryor’s Creek before meeting Williams late in the morning of the second day’s

march. With Williams was a collection of companies from the 54th USCI and

the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry. Some of the men had been stationed near Van

Buren, Arkansas, others near Fort Gibson; those who came from Arkansas had

marched nearly eighty miles in a little more than two days. When the Confeder-

ates appeared early that afternoon, traveling at a great rate—they had covered

twenty miles, a good day’s journey, since they captured the train that morning—

the two sides exchanged shots all afternoon in an inconclusive engagement that

both claimed to have won. Williams’ men stopped the Confederates’ march for

a few hours but were too tired to recapture the train. Gano’s and Watie’s cavalry

slipped around them in the night and continued south with the wagons. On 20

September, Williams’ brigade turned around and headed back to Fort Gibson.

The second ght at Cabin Creek was the last engagement in which black sol-

diers faced Confederates in the Indian Territory, and very nearly the end of their

service there. Although they continued to escort supply trains during the autumn

of 1864 and the early winter of 1865, their presence at Forts Smith and Gibson

was about to end. Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby, in charge of Union armies west

of the Mississippi River since the disastrous Red River Campaign that spring, was

dissatised with General Steele’s recent attempts to supply the garrison at Fort

Smith. Two courses of action occurred to Canby: to relieve Steele as commander

of the Department of Arkansas and to abandon the post. He accomplished the

rst on 25 November, replacing Steele with Maj. Gen. Joseph J. Reynolds, and

OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 1, pp. 768 (“were compelled”), 770, 774–75 (“The entire train,” p. 774),

787 (“Soon the confusion”), 789–90.

Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 765, 787, 791, and pt. 3, p. 609; NA M594, roll 206, 11th USCI; roll 211, 54th

USCI; roll 213, 79th USCI.

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

254

issued orders in mid-December to evacuate Fort Smith. When General Grant,

at his headquarters in Virginia, heard of Canby’s order to abandon the post, he

countermanded it; but by the time the order reached Arkansas, most of the Fort

Smith garrison was already on the road. Since a rise in the river made it possible

for boats to reach the post, the Union command hurried supplies upriver. A few

of the recently departed troops returned to Fort Smith, but the brigade of Colored

Troops continued its march to Little Rock.

Regardless of the level of the river, the troops had to be fed. When the Arkan-

sas River was too low for steam navigation, the overland route from Kansas by way

of Fort Gibson was still the most reliable way to reach Fort Smith. General Thayer,

commanding there, ordered 40 tons of hardtack, 22 tons of our, 9 tons of sugar,

5 tons of green coffee beans, and other supplies for the garrison. The 54th USCI

left Fort Smith on 7 December and marched north to meet the train: “Crossed

Ark[ansas] River by ferrying & wading,” an ofcer in Company C wrote. “Very

little transportation, no tents, ponchos; blankets very poor. A great many men

[were] unt for the march for the want of large shoes. Marched 30 m[iles] rst day.

Weather cold.” Two weeks later, he recorded: “Quite a number of men with frozen

feet. Waded River; quite cold, water deep.” Ofcers in other companies recorded

similar complaints. On 20 December, the regiment met the train at Shawnee Creek,

Kansas, some thirty-ve miles south of Fort Scott, and began the march back.

The wagons rolled into Fort Gibson on 31 December. There, the train and es-

cort rested for ve days before setting out again on the last leg of their journey. Bad

weather and muddy roads often restricted their rate of travel to no more than three

miles a day. “We are out of forage, and the mules are much worn,” the command-

ing ofcer of the 54th USCI reported after ve days on the road, “the Salliseau

[Sallisaw Creek] impassable and the rain falling. I will be unable to make much

progress unless forage be sent for the animals.” The train was scattered along the

road for three miles, he told General Thayer; while he could not move forward, he

would put the men to work repairing the road so the rest of the wagons could catch

up. The regiment and the train it guarded did not reach Fort Smith until 14 January.

The seventy-mile trip had taken ten days.

After four days’ rest, the 54th USCI, along with the 79th and 83d, made ready

to leave Fort Smith and begin the march to Little Rock. Men who were too weak

to walk after the previous month’s exertions boarded the steamer Lotus for the trip

downstream. Since General Thayer was still following orders to abandon the town,

three other boats, buoyed by a sudden rise in the Arkansas River, carried several

hundred Unionist refugees intent on leaving Fort Smith with the federal garrison.

The otilla cast off on 17 January 1865 and steered for Little Rock, the Lotus in

line behind the Chippewa and the Annie Jacobs. Col. Thomas M. Bowen of the

13th Kansas Infantry, the ranking Army ofcer, rode in the Annie Jacobs. The

boats steamed downstream, keeping considerable distances between themselves so

OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 4, pp. 272, 606, 624, 706, 754, 795, 848–49, 946, 962; vol. 48, pt. 1, pp.

466–67, 473, 497, 515–16.

NA M594, roll 211, 54th USCI.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 404, 413; Lt Col C. Fair to Brig Gen J. M. Thayer, 9 Jan 1865,

54th USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA; NA M594, roll 211, 54th USCI.

Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Kansas, 1863–1865

255

as not to present a concentrated target for enemies ashore. That afternoon, eighteen

miles above Clarksville, watchers on the Annie Jacobs spied the Chippewa a mile

ahead, aground on the south bank. By the time Bowen was close enough to see

that enemy re had set the Chippewa’s main deck ablaze and ordered his own pilot

to reverse course, the Annie Jacobs too was within range of the Confederates and

their sole cannon.

Running with the current, the boats had not kept up a full head of steam. While

the Annie Jacobs struggled to turn upstream and escape, fteen solid shot struck,

several hitting the machinery and two near the waterline. Bowen ordered the boat

run ashore. He had no time to signal the Lotus, which by this time had oated with-

in range of the Confederates. As a result, its pilot had little choice but to join the

Annie Jacobs on the north bank. Soldiers, able bodied and invalid, black and white,

disembarked from the boats and took up defensive positions while Bowen wrote a

dispatch to General Thayer and a warning to the fourth transport not to come any

farther. Learning of a nearby wagon train with a hundred-man escort, he requested

their aid. The arrival of the train and its escort in the middle of the night must have

alarmed the Confederates, for by daybreak they were nowhere to be found.

Bowen’s message to Thayer reached Fort Smith late on 18 January. The 54th,

79th, and 83d USCIs struck their tents at midnight and were on the road in an

hour and a half. The brigade arrived at the scene of the attack on the afternoon of

20 January. The Lotus could still oat, but the Chippewa was a burned wreck and

the Annie Jacobs was fast aground. Filling the Lotus and the other remaining boat

with sick soldiers and the refugees’ women and children, Bowen left a guard on the

Annie Jacobs and moved downriver, the troops on shore searching for any sign of

Confederates. The boats reached Little Rock on 24 January; the force on land, not

until the last day of the month.

Once assembled at Little Rock, the three thousand men of Colonel Williams’

brigade—nearly all of the U.S. Colored Troops in the state and more than one-

quarter of the entire Union force—settled down to life in garrison. An ofcer in

the veteran 54th USCI recorded that “Picket, Escort, . . . Guard and Fatigue Duty”

occupied most of his company’s time and left “no opportunity for drill.” For the

112th USCI, “handling freight, hauling Wood for Post quartermaster, digging sinks

[latrines], and Policing at General Hospital” constituted the daily round, one of-

cer complained. “These duties, [along] with . . . building quarters and keeping

the Camp in order, has kept the men working continually and [they] have had no

opportunity for drill[:] consequently all the instruction received three months ago

is forgotten.” Thus the garrison of Little Rock passed the time during the last few

months of the war.

Union post commanders throughout the state continued to worry about Con-

federate opposition, whether it was a desperate nal offensive by an organized

military force, tax collection and enforcement of conscription by civilian gov-

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 13–17, 466, 496; NA M594, roll 214, 83d USCI.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 14–16; NA M594, roll 213, 79th USCI.

Colonel Williams’ brigade accounted for 3,065 ofcers and men present for duty, or 26.5

percent of the 11,566 Union troops in the department. OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, p. 796; NA M594,

roll 211, 54th USCI (quotation), and roll 216, 112th USCI (quotation).

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

256

ernment ofcials, or threats to life and property by “bushwhackers and horse

thieves” with secessionist leanings. News of the surrender of the Army of North-

ern Virginia on 9 April reached General Reynolds at Little Rock by telegraph;

two days later, the War Department ordered him to publish the terms that Grant

had offered Lee and to begin negotiating the Confederate surrender in Arkansas.

Both Maj. Gen. James F. Fagan at Camden and Brig. Gen. M. Jeff Thompson in

the northeastern part of the state atly rejected Reynolds’ suggestion at rst, but

Thompson had second thoughts and on 11 May surrendered his 7,454 ofcers

and men to a Union ofcer from the adjoining Department of the Missouri.

With that, the Confederate collapse came quickly. The fact that Thompson’s

command included 157 companies that averaged fewer than 50 men each illus-

trates one problem that had faced Union occupiers in Arkansas. These companies

had operated independently for the most part and indeed without deference to

any outside authority. Federal ofcers saw an instance of this when two Confed-

erate companies rode into Pine Bluff to surrender on 14 May and the leader of

one group killed the leader of the other “in a personal altercation.” Men like these

did not fear federal troops as much as they did their own Unionist neighbors, who

fought them with stealth and ferocity that matched their own. One Confederate

leader told General Reynolds that his men would not agree to lay down their arms

“until they have some assurance from the U.S. authorities that those independent

companies and squads claiming protection under the Federal Government are

immediately disarmed.” The Unionists were responsible for “many murderous

crimes and outrageous depredations,” he complained. It was the middle of June

before the business of paroling the last surrendered Confederates in Arkansas got

under way.

By that time, Union generals had been planning the occupation of the state

for weeks and pondering a move into Texas. But federal troops in Arkansas

made no move in that direction. Instead, the 56th USCI stayed at Helena guard-

ing plantations along the Mississippi River. Colonel Williams’ brigade remained

in Little Rock. The 57th USCI, formerly the 4th Arkansas (AD), garrisoned

Lewisburg and Dardanelle, farther west. Companies of a Louisiana regiment,

the 84th USCI, steamed up the Ouachita River to occupy Camden, for a navi-

gable stream was still the quickest route in many parts of the South. Along the

Arkansas River and elsewhere in the state, white regiments guarded Fort Smith,

Pine Bluff, and a few smaller places. After four years of warfare, the state’s

roads and bridges could not support a large troop movement, the department’s

chief engineer reported. They had received no repairs “since the rebellion,” and

the population was in no better shape. “An army cannot get through Arkansas

now,” the ofcer commanding at Fort Smith asserted. “There are no supplies

in the country; the people who are left are in a starving condition.” Instead of

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 103, 235, 237, and pt. 2, pp. 6 (“bushwhackers”), 7, 40, 68–70,

190, 249.

Ibid., pt. 1, p. 237, and pt. 2, pp. 69, 76, 467 (“in a personal”), 495 (“until they,” “many

murderous”), 893.

Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Kansas, 1863–1865

257

moving through Arkansas, Union troops advanced into Texas overland through

Louisiana and by sea.

Regiments in Arkansas remained at their posts awaiting muster-out and dis-

charge. Most white soldiers saw home before the end of the year, as did the men

of the 60th, 79th, and 83d USCIs, free-state regiments from Iowa and Kansas.

Those from Arkansas, Mississippi, and Missouri who had enlisted later in the

war—men of the 54th, 56th, 57th, 66th, and 113th USCIs and a few companies

of the 2d USCA and 63d USCI—stayed on for twelve months and more to take

part in the difcult business of reviving the state’s economy and in the painful

postwar adjustment of social relations between Arkansans black and white.

Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 756–58, 1024–26, and pt. 2, pp. 97 (“since the rebellion”), 107 (“An army”);

NA M594, roll 211, 57th USCI.

Fort Henry

Fort Donelson

Fort Pillow

P ickwick Landing

S ulphur Branch Trestle

Tunnel Hill

B uzzard Roost

Paducah

Cairo

Columbus

Clarksville

Gallatin

La Vergne

Franklin

Murfreesborough

Columbia

Johnsonville

Reynoldsburg

Kingston

Springs

Shelbyville

Pulaski

Athens

Stevenson

Bridgeport

Pikeville

Kingston

Sparta

Hickman

Moscow

Macon

La Grange

Jackson

Union City

La Fayette

Oxford

Meridian

Canton

Corinth

Bowling Green

Tuscaloosa

Calhoun

Rome

Resaca

Dalton

Villanow

Decatur

Gadsden

Okolona

Grenada

Pascagoula

Pensacola

Knoxville

Chattanooga

Atlanta

Columbus

Selma

Mobile

Holly Springs

Memphis

Huntsville

Florence

Tuscumbia

Columbus

Aberdeen

NASHVILLE

MONTGOMERY

TALLAHASSEE

MISSOURI

TENNESSEE

ALABAMA

GEORGIA

FLORIDA

L OUISIANA

MISSISSIPPI

KENTUCKY

ILLINOIS

ARKANSAS

TENNESSEE AND ALABAMA

1861–1865

755025

Miles

Map 6

While Union troops along the Mississippi River struggled toward Vicksburg

in the spring of 1863, Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumber-

land faced a major Confederate force in central Tennessee. Rosecrans’ troops had

fought their opponents to a standstill near Murfreesborough at the beginning of

January and in late June began to push them southeast toward Chattanooga. The

federal base of supplies for this advance would be Nashville, on the Cumberland

River in the north-central part of the state. The Cumberland was an uncertain and

seasonal route for freight, open only from early February to late May, with 40

percent of shipments arriving in March. Neither was the Louisville and Nashville

Railroad entirely reliable. Confederate cavalry ranging through Kentucky’s Blue-

grass Region had attacked the line several times in 1862 and 1863 while the main

armies contended in Tennessee, far to the south.

The way out of this dilemma was to open a second railroad to connect Nashville

with the Tennessee River, seventy-eight miles to the west. There were no obstacles

to navigation on the lower Tennessee, which owed north through the state from

Pickwick Landing near the Alabama line, crossed into Kentucky, and emptied into

the Ohio River above Paducah. A partly completed rail line already stretched twenty

miles west of Nashville. Begun in 1859 by laying track west from the city and east

from Hickman, Kentucky, on the Mississippi River, the Nashville and Northwestern

Railroad was only half nished when Tennessee seceded. When the eastern half of

the line reached the Tennessee River port of Reynoldsburg, steamboats could unload

cargo there for shipment through Nashville to the Union’s eld armies (see Map 6).

Completion of the railroad as far as the Tennessee River would depend largely

on the men of two new black regiments raised by the military governor, Andrew

Johnson. In April 1863, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton issued instructions

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. 1, vol. 16,

pt. 1, pp. 871–82, 884–87, 892–900, 906–52, 959–89, 1016–18, 1021–1162; vol. 20, pt. 1, p. 980; vol.

23, pt. 1, pp. 50–59, 165–75, 215–21, 381–84, 632–818, 828–43; vol. 52, pt. 1, p. 681 (hereafter cited

as OR). Report of the Secretary of War for 1865, 38th Cong., 1st sess., H. Ex. Doc. 1, vol. 3, pt. 1,

no. 1 (serial 1,249), pp. 218, 595; Maury Klein, History of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad (New

York: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 30–36.

J. Haden Alldredge, “A History of Navigation on the Tennessee River System,” 75th Cong., 1st

sess., H. Doc. 254 (serial 10,119), pp. 4–7.

Middle Tennessee, Alabama

and Georgia, 1863–1865

Chapter 9

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

260

that made Johnson responsible for “all abandoned slaves or colored persons who

have been held in bondage, and whose masters have been, or are now, engaged in

rebellion.” The governor was to put the able-bodied males to work on public proj-

ects. This letter, which Stanton sent just as Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas was

beginning to organize Colored Troops along the Mississippi River, did not mention

recruiting black soldiers at all. The reason for this omission is not clear.

Two months earlier, Johnson had visited Washington for policy discussions

with both Lincoln and Stanton and probably made clear to them his views

about black people and their place in American society. Johnson came from the

mountains of eastern Tennessee and had an aversion to black people that was

common among white Tennesseans, even those enrolled in Union regiments.

Like many whites, North and South, he was more willing to put a shovel than

a rie into a black man’s hand. Thus, when Stanton’s instructions failed to

mention black enlistment, the governor took advantage of the loophole. After

receiving letters from Lincoln and Stanton, he began raising one black infantry

regiment and later a second, but did not implement the policy of black recruit-

ing with anything like the zeal displayed by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks in

Louisiana or the adjutant general in the Mississippi Valley. Besides, Johnson

clearly understood the importance of the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad.

Perhaps because of his insistence on putting his only two black regiments to

OR, ser. 3, 3: 123 (quotation).

Besides being the capital of Tennessee, Nashville was a rail center essential to Union

advances farther south.