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

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Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865

271

regiments had arrived at the stations where they would spend most of the year.

The 12th and 13th USCIs continued to guard the line of the Nashville and

Northwestern. The 14th and 16th went to Chattanooga. The 15th remained at

Nashville and the 17th at Murfreesborough. During the spring and summer,

other regiments would join them: the 40th and 101st from Tennessee and the

100th from Kentucky at posts along the Louisville and Nashville Railroad; the

42d and 44th at Chattanooga; the 1st U.S. Colored Artillery at Knoxville; and

the 2d and 3d Alabama (AD), renumbered the 110th and 111th USCIs in June,

at Pulaski, Tennessee, and Athens, Alabama. Besides searching constantly for

new recruits to ll their own ranks, these regiments guarded major rail lines

that supplied Sherman’s campaign in northern Georgia.

The men of these regiments served sometimes as laborers. The chief

quartermaster of the department, Col. James L. Donaldson, explained his

predicament that fall, after Atlanta had fallen and the crisis had passed. Early

in 1864, his workforce had expanded from six or eight thousand employees

to more than fteen thousand (4,510 of them working on the railroads), yet

he still lacked workmen. The press of business had forced him to ask for the

OR, ser. 1, vol. 32, pt. 3, p. 48; Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion

(New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1959 [1908]), pp. 997, 1721, 1726, 1730–31, 1737–39.

Black recruits in Tennessee. All in this picture have shoes and seem to be better clad than

many who joined the Union Army.

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

272

detail of Colored Troops to supplement civilian laborers. “I did not want to do

this,” he explained later to the recently promoted Col. Reuben D. Mussey, “for

I believe in Colored Troops and think they should take the Field and ght the

same as White ones, but I knew there were Colored Regts. in the Dept. not yet

t for the Field and that, for obvious reasons, they had more work in them than

I could get out of any other troops.”

When enough supplies had been unloaded from boats and trains at Nashville

to ensure a steady ow to Sherman’s campaign, Donaldson excused the men

of the 15th and 17th regiments from stevedore tasks and assigned them to

the more military duty of guarding rail lines and quartermaster depots. The

15th USCI stretched out along the Edgeeld and Kentucky Railroad, guarding

bridges and trestles from the north bank of the Cumberland River opposite

Nashville forty miles northwest to the state line; the 17th concentrated at

Nashville, with companies stationed up and down the river at sawmills and

wood yards, and sometimes provided armed guards for riverboats. Donaldson

praised both regiments and told Mussey that he looked forward to the day when

they could take part in active military operations.

In the southeastern corner of the state, Colonel Morgan of the 14th USCI

arrived at Chattanooga with three thousand blank enlistment forms in February

1864. That part of Tennessee was untapped territory for Union recruiters, who

hoped to raise two more regiments of Colored Troops there. By the middle of

the next month, Morgan’s regiment was on the march, scouring the country

for recruits along a 150-mile route that took them up the Sequatchie River and

over the Cumberland Mountains to Sparta before turning east to Kingston on

the Tennessee River. “The men manifested the most commendable endurance,

cheerfulness, and courage,” Capt. James H. Meteer noted on his company

muster roll at the end of the month, “often marching 20 miles per day over

these m[oun]t[ain]s, carrying knapsacks and several days rations.”

The trip was an eye-opener for Meteer, who had referred to his new

regiment as the “14th ‘Unwashed Americans’” when he joined it in January.

“We fully expected to meet reb Col Hughes of Bushwhacking notoriety, for

he had been severely punishing [the 5th] Ten[nessee] Cavalry for some time

and [his] robbing crew of hangers on had been committing some of the most

endish deeds ever recorded” on Unionist civilians. John M. Hughs was more

than a bushwhacker. Colonel of the Confederate 25th Tennessee Infantry, he

operated in the middle part of the state, apart from his regiment. Authorized

to round up deserters and to enforce conscription, he also led a band of about

one hundred guerrillas. During the winter, Hughs and his men had clashed

several times with the Union 5th Tennessee Cavalry, but they left the 14th

OR, ser. 1, vol. 52, pt. 1, p. 684; Col J. L. Donaldson to Col R. D. Mussey, 9 Oct 1864 (f/w

M–750–CT–1864), Entry 360, RG 94, NA.

Donaldson to Mussey, 9 Oct 1864; NA M594, roll 207, 15th and 17th USCIs.

Col T. J. Morgan to Capt R. D. Mussey, 3 Feb 1864, Entry 1149, pt. 1, RG 393, NA; NA M594,

roll 207, 14th USCI. The entry in Company K’s Record of Events is anonymous, but the wording is

almost identical to that in a private letter Meteer wrote after the expedition. J. H. Meteer to C. Mills,

18 Apr 1864, Caleb Mills Papers, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis.

Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865

273

USCI alone on its march, sending only two or three shots into the regiment’s

camps throughout the entire expedition.

Captain Meteer thrived on the rigors of mountain campaigning, but his rst

sight of slavery in practice shocked him. “Among the 120 recruits we brought

back,” he wrote,

There are not 20 genuine Africans and as many as 10 of them could have enlisted

in a white regt without . . . being discovered. At Pikeville a wealthy man who glo-

ries in the title of Colonel Bridgeman came and offered his darky [for enlistment]

and claimed his 300 dollars [bounty due to a slaveholder who allowed a slave to

enlist]. Before the termination of his interview . . . a black woman came and de-

clared that the ‘boy’ was her son and Col Bridgeman was his father—that he had

slept with her about two years, and after the birth of the boy she was exchanged

for a more enticing bed-fellow. Want had driven [Bridgeman] to come and offer

the fruit of his illegitimate dalliance with his chattel for sale. . . . [T]here is no

crime . . . too hellish for an upholder of African slavery to do.

Trafc in human beings shocked the young man who had only recently called his black

soldiers Unwashed Americans, but who declared after a few weeks in the eld with

them that he was ready “to ght 30 years for their freedom if necessary.” “We expect

OR, ser. 1, vol. 32, pt. 2, p. 268; J. H. Meteer to Dear Prof, 26 Jan 1864 (“14th ‘Unwashed’”), and to

Dear Sir, 18 Apr 1864 (“We fully”), both in Mills Papers; Sean M. O’Brien, Mountain Partisans: Guerrilla

Warfare in the Southern Appalachians, 1861–1865 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), pp. 64–67.

Part of the country in east-central Tennessee through which Capt. James H. Meteer and

the 14th U.S. Colored Infantry marched in the early spring of 1864, seeking recruits

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

274

soon to meet the enemy,” he added, “and with . . . Ft. Pillow . . . fresh in our memory

woe be unto us if we don’t ght desperately.”

By the end of July, Sherman’s troops had driven Confederate General John

B. Hood’s army into trenches around Atlanta and were probing toward a rail-

road line south of the city that was the garrison’s only source of supplies. De-

ciding to counter this move with a cavalry raid on the federal rear, Hood sent

Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler with four thousand troopers to cut the Western and

Atlantic Railroad between Atlanta and Chattanooga. On 13 August, Wheeler’s

men reached Calhoun, seventy miles to the north, where they tore up track and

captured more than one thousand head of cattle. The next day they rode into

Dalton, twenty miles farther on, but could not overcome the Union garrison, a

mixed crowd of nearly ve hundred infantry, cavalry, convalescents, teamsters,

and civilian scouts.

Word of Wheeler’s movements and the resistance he met at Dalton reached

Chattanooga, thirty rail miles to the north, by midafternoon on 14 August. The

federal commander there had a relief expedition loaded in freight cars by 6:00

p.m., with Colonel Morgan’s 14th USCI making up about half of the 1,200-man

force. By midnight, the train reached Tunnel Hill, about eight miles north of

Dalton by rail. The hill took its name from a 1,400-foot railroad tunnel that ran

through it. If Wheeler’s raiders managed to damage the tunnel severely enough to

stop trafc, repairs could take months, slowing the pace of Sherman’s campaign

if not ending it entirely. The troops from Chattanooga detrained at the north end

of the tunnel and began walking across the hill toward Dalton.

Two local residents guided them as far as Buzzard Roost, halfway to Dal-

ton, where they stopped about 2:00 a.m. to wait for daylight. An hour later, two

depleted veteran white regiments, three hundred eighty men with two cannon,

caught up with them. The entire force, some sixteen hundred strong, advanced

not long after daybreak. Half a mile farther on, the Confederate advance guard

appeared, moving toward Tunnel Hill. The Union force formed line of battle

with the 14th USCI in the center anked by three white regiments on the right

and two on the left. When the line moved forward, the Confederates, weakened

by the absence of a large detachment sent to guard their captured cattle, fell

back through Dalton and beyond. “This was the rst ght for the Regt, and

had been anticipated with much concern—but the men behaved so gallantly

that we [ofcers] feel truly proud of them,” Chaplain William Elgin recorded

in his journal. Colonel Morgan was also pleased with the men’s behavior. The

skirmishers “pushed forward boldly and steadily,” he reported. “The conduct

of the entire regiment was good.” The relieving force suffered twenty-three

casualties. The Confederates left ninety dead and wounded on the eld, 60 per-

Meteer to Dear Sir, 18 Apr 1864.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 38, pt. 1, pp. 324, 619–20; pt. 3, p. 957; pt. 5, pp. 260, 271, 930, 967.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 38, pt. 2, pp. 495, 508–09. White troops in the relief force numbered 627; total

strength of the 14th USCI was 651. OR, ser. 1, vol. 38, pt. 1, p. 619, and pt. 5, p. 635. Stephen Davis,

Atlanta Will Fall: Sherman, Joe Johnston, and the Yankee Heavy Battalions (Wilmington, Del.:

Scholarly Resources, 2001), p. 168.

Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865

275

cent of their casualties in the entire raid. The Western and Atlantic Railroad, its

damaged stretches soon repaired, was safe for the time being.

Meanwhile, Sherman’s armies continued to menace Atlanta. They seized the

city’s remaining rail outlet and cut the last telegraph wire on 31 August, causing

Hood’s force to withdraw to the south the next day. Still, Hood sought to disrupt the

federal supply line and force Sherman out of northern Georgia. On 11 September, he

sent a telegram to Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor, recently appointed to command Confed-

erate troops in Alabama and Mississippi: “Hasten [Maj. Gen. Nathan B.] Forrest and

get him operating upon Sherman’s communications. It is all-important.” Two days

later, Taylor replied that Forrest had his orders and would move north soon.

The 14th USCI had been patrolling the railroads that ran into Chattanooga from

the west and north as part of a 3,500-man force sent to protect the railroads from

Wheeler’s cavalry. On 1 September, the men clambered into boxcars for the 130-mile

ride to Murfreesborough, which they reached at midnight. They did not see Chatta-

nooga again for twelve days, by which time they had traveled though the country

around Pulaski, Tennessee, and Athens, Alabama, “a scout of . . . over 500 miles

travelling by rail and foot,” Chaplain Elgin wrote. “And in all this time my Regt.

did not re a shot. . . . The expedition results in forcing Wheeler to leave our com-

munications and retreat south of the Ten[nessee River]. In all other respects dull and

fruitless.” Uneventful as it may have been, the expedition had achieved its purpose.

Union generals were fully aware of the importance of railroads and were as

keen to protect their own supply lines as they were to destroy those of the enemy.

Earthworks and blockhouses with garrisons of various sizes dotted rail lines, espe-

cially at points where Confederate raiders might burn one of the trestles that spanned

waterways and valleys. Staff ofcers in the Department of the Cumberland included

a major whose title was inspector of fortications and two lieutenants who served as

assistant inspectors of blockhouses and railroad defenses. In mid-September 1864,

the garrisons on the Tennessee and Alabama Railroad at Athens, Alabama, and Sul-

phur Branch Trestle, ten miles to the north, consisted of about twelve hundred of-

cers and men. Eight hundred of them belonged to companies drawn from three USCI

regiments: the 106th, 110th, and 111th.

Forrest’s Confederates numbered about forty-ve hundred. Four hundred of

them marched on foot, expecting to get mounts as soon as they were able to rout

a large enough body of federal cavalry. The column drew near Athens late in the

afternoon of 23 September. As the troopers exchanged shots with Union pickets, the

garrison commander, Col. Wallace Campbell, arrived by rail with a party of one hun-

OR, ser. 1, vol. 38, pt. 1, pp. 619–20; pt. 2, pp. 506 (quotation), 508–09; pt. 3, pp. 957, 961.

W. Elgin Jnl, 18 Aug 1864 (“This was”), W. L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann

Arbor; Edward G. Longacre, A Soldier to the Last: Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler in Blue and Gray

(Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2007), p. 170; Richard M. McMurry, Atlanta 1864: Last

Chance for the Confederacy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), p. 165.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 2, pp. 778, 831 (“Hasten Forrest”); Anne J. Bailey, The Chessboard

of War: Sherman and Hood in the Autumn Campaigns of 1864 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska

Press, 2000), pp. 19–20; Thomas E. Connelly, Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865

(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), pp. 456, 464–65.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 38, pt. 2, p. 497; NA M594, roll 207, 14th USCI; Elgin Jnl, 1 and 12 Sep 1864

(quotation).

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 508, 520, 523, 535; NA M594, roll 216, 110th and 111th USCIs.

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

276

dred men that had gone out earlier in the day to drive off Confederates who had been

tearing up the track south of town. Campbell’s little force barely changed the odds in

the ght; by nightfall, the Union garrison had withdrawn inside its earthworks. When

the Confederates occupied the town, where the quartermaster and commissary de-

pots were, Campbell led thirty white cavalry and twenty black infantry on a raid that

set re to the warehouses. They also captured two prisoners, one of whom told them

that Forrest’s strength was ten or twelve thousand men with nine cannon.

Although the reported Confederate troop strength was a gross exaggeration,

the prisoners were more accurate about the artillery. By dawn the next day, For-

rest’s two batteries had their guns trained on the Union fort. They began ring soon

after 7:00, and about one-third of the Confederates began to advance. Forrest then

halted the attack and demanded the surrender of the fort. When Campbell refused,

Forrest requested a personal meeting and the federal commander rode out to meet

him. “He accompanied me along my lines,” Forrest reported, “and after witnessing

the strength and enthusiasm of my troops he surrendered the fort with its entire

garrison.”

The tone of Forrest’s ofcial account of his meeting with Campbell was almost

offhand, but he related a different version of the day’s events to his earliest biographers

a few years after the war. According to his reminiscence, he took Campbell on a tour of

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 521, 542.

Ibid., pp. 521–23, 543–44 (quotation, p. 543).

A typical federal blockhouse on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad

Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865

277

the Confederate position and pointed out the four hundred troopers without horses as

the vanguard of a nonexistent infantry force. He arranged the horses of other cavalry-

men who were then in the ring line, ghting on foot, to suggest the presence of an-

other four thousand horsemen beside those he had already committed to battle. While

Campbell was viewing the horses, Forrest’s two batteries changed ground, convincing

the federal commander that he confronted a force nearly as large and with even more

artillery as the one his prisoner had spoken of the night before. After viewing Forrest’s

display, Campbell concluded that he faced an enemy force of at least eight thousand

men and told his ofcers, according to their account, “The jig is up; pull down the ag.”

While the estimate was double Forrest’s actual strength, it was similar to gures offered

that week by other federal commanders, who reported anywhere from six thousand to

eight thousand Confederate raiders in northern Alabama. At 11:00, Campbell surren-

dered the fort and its garrison of 571, including twenty-nine ofcers and 418 enlisted

men of the 106th, 110th, and 111th USCIs. “It is reported that the captured Colored

Troops were marched South to be given back to their owners,” Colonel Mussey wrote

a week later, when the news reached Nashville. “I do not think they were butchered by

Forrest.”

Mussey was partly right. There was no massacre of the surrendered troops. After

the surrender, the Confederates separated captive ofcers from enlisted men. The of-

cers headed west toward Memphis, parole, and eventual exchange. The men marched

south. Rather than languish in one of the South’s notorious prison camps, they traveled

to Mobile, where most of them labored on the city’s fortications. Some worked as

blacksmiths, like Pvt. Dick Brown of the 110th USCI, or hospital nurses, like Pvt. Si-

mon Rhodes of the 111th. Others, sick or injured, spent time in Confederate hospitals,

as did Sgt. Anthony Redus and Cpl. William Redus, both of the 110th.

Most of the captured enlisted men remained with the Confederates until the spring

of 1865, but some escaped. Pvt. John Young of the 111th, who had been hit in the head

by a shell fragment, noticed that there was no guard on the wounded prisoners and sim-

ply walked away while en route to Mobile. He rejoined the remains of his regiment by

mid-October. The men who lled the ranks of the 106th, 110th, and 111th came mostly

from the country between Decatur, Alabama, and Pulaski, Tennessee. Their knowledge

of local geography must have helped a number of them to escape.

Local connections could help in other ways, too. William Rann had left

home when Union occupiers withdrew from northern Alabama late in 1862 and

had worked as an ofcer’s servant before joining the 110th USCI. As the prison-

ers moved through Tuscumbia, some forty miles west of Athens, “my old master

Ibid., pp. 505–06, 523–24 (“The jig is up,” p. 524); Capt R. D. Mussey to 1st Lt C. P. Brown, 3

Oct 1864 (“It is reported”), 110th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA; Thomas Jordan and J[ohn] P. Pryor,

The Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. N. B. Forrest, and of Forrest’s Cavalry (New York: Da Capo Press,

1996 [1868]), pp. 562–63. In the preface (p. xiv), the biographers quote a letter in which Forrest said

that he provided them with “all the facts and papers in my possession or available to me. . . . For the

greater part of the statements of the narrative I am responsible.”

Deposition, William Redus, 19 Mar 1891, in Pension File SC569893, Dick Brown; Deposition,

Simon Rhodes, 12 May 1888, in Pension File SC404448, Henry Everly; Deposition, Anthony Redus,

3 Sep 1883, in Pension File SC253310, Anthony Redus; Deposition, William Redus, 12 Mar 1903, in

Pension File WC905951, William Redus; all in Civil War Pension Application Files (CWPAF), RG

15, Rcds of the Dept of Veterans Affairs, NA.

Proof of Incurrence of Disability, 20 Nov 1900, in Pension File SC615667, John Young,

CWPAF; Deposition, Jesse Phillips, 12 May 1888, in Pension File SC404448, Everly.

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

278

found me and took me away from the soldiers and took me home and kept me

there. Whenever soldiers would come there they would run me out into the moun-

tains. They kept me at home till the surrender.” Rann’s remarks do not mention

any punishment for his having run away two years earlier or what chores he

had to do while he stayed with his former owner until the end of the war. In

the spring of 1865, Rann reported to the ofcer commanding the Union gar-

rison at Florence, across the Tennessee River from Tuscumbia. From there he

returned to his regiment, which by that time was stationed on the railroad west

of Nashville.

The surrendered ofcers of the 110th USCI headed rst for Meridian, Mis-

sissippi, en route to the Union lines at Memphis. Their parole (a pledge not to

ght against the Confederacy) served to release them pending formal exchange

for Confederate ofcers held prisoner in northern camps. Before returning to

Union lines, every one of them signed a statement that roundly condemned

Campbell’s surrender of “the best fortication on the line of the Nashville and

Decatur Railroad.” “We also feel it our duty to make mention of the bearing

and disposition of the soldiers in the fort, both white and black,” the statement

continued.

It was everything that any ofcer could wish of any set of men. So far from

there being any disposition on the part of the men to surrender or to avoid a

ght, it was just the reverse. . . . The soldiers were anxious to try conclusions

with General Forrest, believing that in such a [fort] they could not be taken by

ten times their number. When told that the fort had been surrendered and that

they were prisoners, they could scarcely believe themselves, but with tears de-

manded that the ght should go on, preferring to die in the fort they had made

to being transferred to the tender mercies of General Forrest and his men.

The district commander announced ofcially that Campbell’s decision to sur-

render “is disapproved by every one, and disgraceful in the extreme.” In a

letter to General Sherman, he called Campbell “a damned coward.” All the

ofcers who had been at Athens demanded a court of inquiry; but Campbell’s

next assignment after the prisoner exchange took him to another department,

and by the time hostilities ended he had submitted his resignation and left the

service.

Forrest’s men moved north along the railroad on 25 September, the day after they

seized Athens, capturing four more federal strongpoints. At Sulphur Branch Trestle,

227 ofcers and men of the 111th USCI and some ve hundred white cavalry of-

fered the sole resistance. They surrendered only after a two-hour bombardment and

the death of their senior ofcer. Two days of ghting on the Tennessee and Alabama

Deposition, William H. Rann, 21 Mar 1913, in Pension File XC2460295, William H. Rann,

CWPAF.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 523–26 (“the best,” p. 524), 528 (“is disapproved”), and pt. 2, p.

521 (“a damned coward”).

Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865

279

Railroad had cost the 106th USCI two of its four companies captured; the 110th lost

all ve companies that were present; and the 111th, seven out of ten.

Forrest attributed the ease of his sweep along the rail line to the poor quality of

ofcers in black regiments. He told his biographers after the war that the only reason

the garrison at Sulphur Branch Trestle had held out for two hours was that the of-

cers were too terried to wave a white ag; black soldiers by themselves, he believed,

were not capable of sustained resistance. Forrest alleged that the commander of one

surrendered blockhouse accompanied his force and helped to arrange the surrender

of others. More than a year afterward, the commanding ofcer of the 110th USCI

admitted his own regiment’s deciencies, blaming them on the scattered stations of

the companies—half of which were absent, marching to the sea as a pioneer battalion

in Sherman’s army—and lack of opportunities for drill and instruction.

Early in October, with Union reinforcements arriving in northern Alabama by

rail from as far away as Atlanta, Forrest turned south again. “The severe engagements

. . . had exhausted nearly all my artillery ammunition,” he explained. While For-

rest’s cavalry withdrew from Tennessee, the main Confederate army began a move

to cut Sherman’s supply line north of Atlanta, where General Hood had decided to

direct his entire force against the Western and Atlantic Railroad. Confederate troops

worked their way around the city and during the rst week of October took part in a

dozen small clashes at stations and water tanks along the line.

At Dalton, where two months earlier the 14th USCI had gone into battle for the

rst time, the 44th USCI guarded the railroad. Organized at Chattanooga that spring,

the regiment had come to Dalton on 14 September and had begun to fortify the place.

On 2 October, when the earthworks were nearly nished, a Confederate force led by

General Wheeler rode up and demanded the garrison’s surrender. The commanding

ofcer, Col. Lewis Johnson of the 44th USCI, refused. The raiders, who numbered

four or ve thousand by Johnson’s calculation, withdrew during the night.

A week later, Johnson reported “rebel cavalry in small squads” near his position,

and civilian rumors of a “strong force of rebels” to the southwest. On 12 October,

word reached him of ghting at Resaca, some fteen miles south of Dalton; and he

asked Maj. Gen. James B. Steedman, commanding at Chattanooga, to send seven-

ty-ve thousand rounds of rie ammunition. The next morning, Johnson’s cavalry

scouts came racing into town, unable even to tell whether their pursuers were cavalry

or infantry. Only at noon, when the Confederates arrived and began to exchange shots

with the garrison, did Johnson realize that he faced a large part of Hood’s army.

Hood sent a demand for surrender that included the warning: “If the place is

carried by assault, no prisoners will be taken.” The captain commanding the gar-

rison’s company of white cavalry told Johnson that a reconnaissance indicated that

the Confederates “had men enough to eat us up.” Johnson sent the cavalry captain

Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 533–35, 544. NA M594, roll 215, 106th USCI; roll 216, 110th and 111th USCIs.

Lt Col D. F. Tiedemann to Maj A. R. Nininger, 22 Nov 1865, Regimental Books, 110th USCI,

RG 94, NA; NA M594, roll 216, 110th USCI; Jordan and Pryor, Campaigns of . . . Forrest, pp. 566,

569–70.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 546 (quotation), 576, 806–07, 809; Bailey, Chessboard of War,

pp. 26–27.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 3, pp. 31, 57, 784; NA M594, roll 209, 44th USCI.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, p. 718, and pt. 3, pp. 190 (quotations), 233–34.

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

280

and two of his own ofcers with a ag of truce to get a more accurate idea of the

enemy’s strength; they reported that two infantry corps of the three that made up

Hood’s army were in the immediate vicinity and that the third was not far off.

While Johnson’s ofcers were talking to Hood’s, the Confederates continued

to advance their artillery until Johnson was able to see twenty pieces on a height

overlooking his fort, about ve hundred yards to the southeast. Toward 3:00, Hood

asked to speak with the federal commander. When he appeared, Hood told him to

“decide at once; that I already had occupied too much of his time,” Johnson re-

ported, “and when I protested against the barbarous measures which he threatened

. . . he said that he could not restrain his men, and would not if he could; that I could

choose between surrender and death.” Although Johnson overestimated the size

of Hood’s force by 25 percent, it was still several times larger than Wheeler’s had

been ten days earlier, and better armed. After consulting with his ofcers, Johnson

decided to surrender.

By 4:00 that afternoon, the Union soldiers had stacked arms and black infantry

stood separate from their white ofcers and the enlisted cavalrymen, who were to

be paroled and exchanged. Black soldiers lined up for inspection by slaveholders

in the Confederate ranks who wanted to identify escaped property. Hood’s force at

Dalton included thirty-seven Tennessee infantry regiments, so there was some pos-

sibility that a Confederate soldier might recognize one of his former slaves among

Ibid., pt. 1, p. 718 (quotations), and pt. 3, p. 257.

Ibid., pt. 1, p. 719 (quotation), and pt. 2, pp. 850–51.

The country around Dalton, Georgia, drawn by Alfred R. Waud in October 1864