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

281

the Union prisoners and reclaim him. In any case, black soldiers lost their shoes to

barefoot Confederates. Many would endure the winter barefoot, suffering frostbite

while working on fortications at Corinth and other sites in Mississippi.

Not all of the captured soldiers lived to endure the winter’s labor. Their rst

assigned task, before leaving Dalton, was to tear up two miles of railroad track.

When one soldier of the 44th refused to do the work, a Confederate shot him. Five

or more men who had just left the hospital were shot, some of them before the pris-

oners set out for Villanow, a day’s march to the southwest; others, when they fell

out along the route. “From the treatment I received,” Colonel Johnson reported, “I

am sure that not a man would have been spared had I not surrendered when I did,

and several times on the march soldiers made a rush upon the guards to massacre

the colored soldiers and their ofcers. . . . [W]e were only saved from massacre by

our guards’ greatest efforts.”

Hood “could not restrain his men, and would not if he could,” as Johnson re-

called just four days after the surrender. The Confederate general did not le his

report until four months later and passed over the incident in one sentence; but

his remark to Johnson echoed some thoughts that General Forrest committed to

paper in his report of the Union surrender at Athens, Alabama, just as Hood was

threatening the Union commander at Dalton, Georgia. Forrest wanted “to prevent

the effusion of blood that I knew would follow a successful assault,” he told Lt.

Gen. Stephen D. Lee; the surrender would “spare my men and the massacre of

the garrison.” Like Hood, Forrest knew that he could not control his men in the

fury of an attack. Generals on both sides were aware of this: orders for Sherman’s

army marching through Georgia repeatedly reminded ofcers to exercise “proper

control of their men” and “keep them well in hand.” The disciplinary problems of

an army on the march were exacerbated by the excitement of battle and compli-

cated still further by racial hatred. Even Unionist Southerners had no use for black

soldiers; recruiters for the U.S. Colored Troops in Tennessee found “bitter feeling

. . . still existing . . . particularly in the Tennessee (White) Regiments.” In Gallatin,

where white Tennessee Unionists formed the garrison, “no negro dares to walk the

streets.” White soldiers there “recently burned the building . . . in which the Col-

ored people had their school—out of pure wantonness.” Even before the ghting

ended, white Southerners on both sides exhibited the kind of behavior that would

later manifest itself in arson, lynching, and other forms of terror as social control.

After the surrender at Dalton, all of the ofcers of the 44th USCI had asked

to go south with their men rather than north to parole and exchange, but Hood

refused. “As no guards were placed between ofcers and men that night,” Johnson

Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 719–20, 807, and pt. 2, pp. 851–55; Deposition, William McColley, 7 Nov

1899, in Pension File SC821866, William McColley, CWPAF; James L. McDonough, Nashville:

The Western Confederacy’s Final Gamble (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004), p. 37.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 720–21, 723 (quotation, p. 721). General Thomas approved

Johnson’s decision to surrender (pp. 723–24). Company and regimental descriptive books of the

44th USCI list at least thirty-nine men who died while prisoners of war. It is hard to tell which

were captured at Dalton on 13 October and which near Nashville on 2 December and impossible to

identify the man who was shot for refusing to tear up the track. Regimental Books, 44th USCI, RG

94, NA.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 543 (“to prevent,” “spare”), 719 (“could not”), 801–03; 44: 458

(“keep them”), 463, 489, 544, 579, 594, 641 (“proper control”). Capt R. D. Mussey to Capt G. B.

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

282

reported, “and we expected to be separated from them on the next day, they were

instructed how to proceed to make their escape.” The men might have needed to

be told where to report when they rejoined the Union army, but the ofcers were

talking to the heirs of a long and persistent tradition of escape who needed little

instruction or encouragement to get away from their captors. The prisoners began

to leave at once. Pvt. David Steele, a pension applicant in 1907, testied: “I made

my escape immediately and went back to Chattanooga and staid there until the

ofcers were paroled and came there and recruited up the regiment.” Pvt. William

McColley also “had a chance to get away and took to the woods,” nding his way

to regimental headquarters. “The men are escaping daily and reporting to Camp,”

an ofcer recorded at the end of the month.

Other enlisted men escaped but did not report. By the second week in No-

vember, ve of the regiment’s paroled ofcers had to visit stations along the rail-

road between Chattanooga and Atlanta to collect soldiers who had found their

way there. “Quite a number of men are at these different points and some are yet

coming in daily,” Johnson told the department’s adjutant general. Still others did

not return at all and six months later turned up as teamsters and ofcers’ servants in

Sherman’s army, which by that time had marched through Georgia and the Caroli-

nas. Clearly, not all of the former slaves in the 44th USCI saw military service as a

necessary way station on the road to freedom, but enough men escaped from cap-

tivity to reconstitute a skeleton force by late November. One company numbered

only thirty-ve men.

Small numbers of Union ofcers, like those from the 44th USCI, were able to

move freely along the Western and Atlantic Railroad a month after the capture of

Dalton because Sherman acted aggressively after Hood’s raid, forcing the Confed-

erates out of northern Georgia, where the opposing armies had nearly stripped the

country of food and forage, and west into Alabama. Hood’s army reached Gads-

den, Alabama, on 20 October and turned northwest toward the Tennessee River.

This movement marked the beginning of the last Confederate offensive of the war.

Its destination was Tuscumbia, where Hood’s quartermasters were gathering sup-

plies for a march north into Tennessee.

The Confederate army struck the Tennessee River at Decatur, Alabama, some

seventy miles northwest of Gadsden, on 26 October. Decatur stood on the south

bank where the Memphis and Charleston tracks crossed the river, a mile or two

southwest of that line’s junction with the Tennessee and Alabama Railroad, which

Halsted, 23 May 1864 (“bitter,” “no negro,” “recently”) (M410–CT–1864), Entry 360, RG 94, NA.

For other incidents involving white Tennessee Unionists, see Capt R. D. Mussey to 1st Lt G. Mason,

14 Mar 1864 (M–223–CT–1864), Entry 360, RG 94, NA; Capt R. D. Mussey to 1st Lt G. Mason, 18

Apr 1864 (M–26–AG–1864), Entry 363, LR by Adj Gen L. Thomas, RG 94, NA.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 719–23 (“As no guards,” p. 723); Deposition, David Steele, 3 Sep

1907 (“I made”), in Pension File SC189837, David Steele, CWPAF; Depositions, William McColley,

7 Nov 1899 (“had a chance”) and James Taylor, 13 Nov 1899, both in Pension File SC821866,

McColley; NA M594, roll 210, 44th USCI (“The men”).

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, p. 720; Col L. Johnson to Brig Gen W. D. Whipple, 8 Nov 64 (“Quite

a number”), and to Col C. W. Foster, 3 May 65, both in 44th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA; NA

M594, roll 210, 44th USCI.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 799, 806, 811, and pt. 3, pp. 823, 845–46, 853; Bailey, Chessboard

of War, p. 39.

Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865

283

ran north through Athens to Nashville. Union Brig. Gen. Robert S. Granger, com-

manding the District of Northern Alabama, understood that Decatur, the bridge,

and the rail junction were critical to the federal position in that region. He sum-

moned all the reinforcements he could, doubling the garrison’s size in twenty-four

hours to about three thousand troops. Among the reinforcements were some ve

hundred ofcers and men of the 14th USCI.

Earlier that month, the regiment had been in Lincoln County, Tennessee, just

across the state line. Reports of Confederates recruiting there had reached the gen-

eral commanding troops on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, and he asked

for “one of the colored regiments . . . to clear out that county.” Whether or not

patrols of the 14th USCI served to deter enemy recruiters, General Hood’s offen-

sive soon demanded the regiment’s presence elsewhere on the railroad. The 14th

reached Decatur late in the afternoon of 27 October. Eight of its companies took

positions in the sixteen hundred yards of earthworks that guarded the town. The

remaining two went north of the river to protect a pair of cannon that covered the

Confederate trenches and an artillery battery on the south bank. Throughout the

night, the men of those two companies toiled alongside white artillerymen and in-

fantrymen to prepare emplacements for the guns. At daybreak, they put down their

shovels, picked up their ries, and went down to the riverbank while the cannon

opened re on the enemy battery.

The riemen of the two companies spent most of the morning shooting at

the Confederate gunners across the river. About noon, the rest of the 14th USCI,

still on the south bank, received an order to charge the artillery position on the

Confederate right, which had been under re since dawn. Eight companies of the

regiment, nearly four hundred men, formed line with skirmishers in advance and

crossed six hundred yards of open eld to drive the Confederates out of their posi-

tion. They took a few prisoners and spiked the cannon with rattail les. Almost at

once came an order to retire. “The enemy recovered from his fright,” Colonel Mor-

gan reported, “and while I occupied his works . . . moved for my rear, and rendered

my position very hazardous. A eet foot saved the regiment.” The hasty retreat

led one observer to remark that the Confederates “drove the Fourteenth back,” but

the brigade commander and General Granger complimented Morgan and his men

on the charge. When their reports reached department headquarters in Nashville,

General Thomas wrote that he was “glad to hear of the success of the colored regi-

ment.” Casualties in the 14th USCI amounted to fty-ve ofcers and men dead,

wounded, and missing.

In the end, artillery re saved the Union position at Decatur. The battery north

of the river, guarded by the two companies of the 14th USCI, along with two fed-

eral gunboats, shelled the Confederate position heavily during the late afternoon of

28 October. The next morning, Colonel Morgan and his men moved toward the en-

emy trenches and found them occupied by a rear guard that was still strong enough

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 695–96.

Ibid., pp. 695, 697, 706, 714–16, and pt. 3, pp. 172, 237–38, 704 (artillery), 709 (68th Indiana),

710 (73d Indiana), 713 (29th Michigan).

Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 698, 703, 709 (“drove the Fourteenth”), 714–17 (“The enemy,” p. 715), and pt.

3, p. 488 (“glad to hear”).

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

284

to hold the Union force at bay until nearly dark. Hood and the rest of his army,

some thirty-ve thousand men, marched west to Tuscumbia and Florence, where

they remained for three weeks, checked by foul weather and lack of supplies.

While Hood’s army waited, Forrest ranged through western Tennessee on

the lookout for supplies and recruits with a force about one-tenth the strength of

Hood’s. On 29 October, his cavalry was on the Tennessee River in the northern part

of the state, not far from the Kentucky line. His artillery shelled a steamer carrying

seven hundred tons of freight and drove it to shore, where the crew abandoned it.

The next day, the guns damaged four more boats and two barges. Forrest ordered

his troops south toward the river port of Johnsonville on 1 November. Two days

later, they arrived opposite the western terminus of the Nashville and Northwestern

Railroad.

Having helped to build the railroad, the men of three black infantry regiments

now stood watch over it. The 13th USCI covered the western stretch, with its regi-

mental headquarters and four companies at Waverly, the county seat, about twen-

ty miles east of Johnsonville. The 12th concentrated at the eastern end, although

one of its companies furnished the provost guard at Johnsonville, where Colonel

Thompson, in general command of troops along the railroad, made his headquar-

ters. Companies of the 100th guarded bridges and trestles in the central part of

the line. Thompson’s entire command amounted to some nineteen hundred men

posted at twenty-two sites along seventy-eight miles of track; but their presence

was not sufcient to prevent incursions by Confederate irregulars, whose methods

ranged from train wrecking to arson to armed robbery. That summer, one company

of the 100th USCI had reported “frequent exchange of shots with the Guerrillas” in

Section 57 of the road, fty-seven miles west of Nashville. On the morning of 22

August, the company’s report went on, “all the pickets East and South of the long

trestle were attacked simultaneously, but held their ground . . . until reinforced by

the guard[,] when the guerrilla gang was driven to the forest.” The defenses of the

port of Johnsonville itself included twelve cannon ashore, two of them forming a

section of Battery A, 2d U.S. Colored Artillery (USCA). There was also a regiment

of white infantry, some seven hundred strong, and eight hundred armed civilian

employees of the Quartermaster’s Department. Three Navy gunboats patrolled the

Tennessee River. On 31 October, when Thompson got word of Forrest’s presence

along the river, he summoned nearby companies of the 13th and 100th. This in-

creased the strength of the garrison by ve hundred men.

The new town, named for the state’s military governor, had become a thriving

supply depot for the Union army. Brig. Gen. James E. Chalmers, commanding one

of Forrest’s divisions, reported seeing at least eight transports and twelve barg-

es tied up along the waterfront near a large warehouse that had enough supplies

Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 698–99, 702, 715, 808–09, and pt. 3, pp. 888–89, 893, 903–05, 913; Richard

M. McMurry, John Bell Hood and the War for Southern Independence (Lexington: University Press

of Kentucky, 1982), pp. 152–82.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 860–61, 863, 868–71, and pt. 3, pp. 810, 816.

Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 861, 877–78, and pt. 3, p. 553; Ofcial Records of the Union and Confederate

Navies in the War of the Rebellion, 30 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Ofce, 1894–

1922), ser. 1, 26: 621 (hereafter cited as ORN); NA M594, roll 207, 12th and 13th USCIs, and roll

215, 100th USCI (quotation).

Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865

285

stacked outside it to cover an acre of ground. During the night, the Confederates

placed ten cannon to cover both the port across the river and the main channel,

which ran close to their own position on the west bank. The next day, 4 Novem-

ber, they opened re and managed to disable the Union gunboats in half an hour.

Colonel Thompson, fearing a cross-river assault by an enemy whose strength he

imagined as numbering ve thousand, ordered the depot quartermaster to burn the

craft tied up at the wharf. Flames quickly spread to the supplies piled outside the

warehouse and then to the warehouse itself. Troops and civilian workers alike re-

fused to expose themselves to Confederate snipers in order to ght the blaze. “By

night the wharf for nearly one mile up and down the river presented one solid sheet

of ame,” Forrest exulted. The next morning, he and his men began a slow and

tedious march by muddy roads back to Mississippi.

By the time the rst reinforcements arrived the next afternoon, $1.5 million

worth of boats, buildings, and supplies lay in ashes. The attack on Johnsonville

had been a reversal for the Union, but Colonel Mussey was pleased with the black

soldiers’ behavior. Mussey was titular head of the 100th USCI, although his duties

as commissioner of Colored Troops kept him in Nashville. There, favorable reports

reached him about black artillerymen’s coolness under re and about the deadly

aim of 13th USCI sharpshooters. “The affair was slight,” he concluded (Union

casualties amounted to eight killed and wounded), “but it has gained great credit

for the colored troops.”

While black soldiers at the western end of the railroad battled organized bodies

of Confederates, those farther east contended with guerrilla bands of the kind that

operated everywhere in the occupied South. Ten days after Forrest’s men withdrew

from Johnsonville, a company commander in the 12th USCI reported an encounter

with irregulars thirty miles outside Nashville. “We caught three bushwhackers . . .

who were shot in attempting to escape in the brush. Beard’s distillery being a regular

rendezvous for guerrillas we burnt it with several other buildings used for secreting

plunder.” Both incidents were typical of the war at this stage, as conducted outside

the lines of the main contending armies. “There is a new company of guerrillas in

process of organization,” the captain went on. “Many young men who have hitherto

held themselves aloof from the bushwhackers have been emboldened to unite them-

selves with this company, owing no doubt to the proximity of Hood’s Army. There

are numerous squads of Confederate soldiers in the Duck river country recruiting and

conscripting for the rebel army.”

The captain’s report anticipated Hood’s move by nearly a week. The Confeder-

ate Army of Tennessee did not leave Florence, Alabama, until 20 November. Three

days after that, General Thomas told Colonel Thompson to prepare for the evacu-

ation of Johnsonville if the enemy should appear in overwhelming force, even

though reports of Hood’s movements indicated that his path lay more to the east,

OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 862, 871 (“By night”), 875, and pt. 3, p. 608; ORN, ser. 1, 26:

622–23 and map opposite 26: 630.

An inspector estimated the total value of property destroyed at several places along the river

during Forrest’s raid as $2.2 million. OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 862, 868 (“The affair”). Seven

months later, the chief quartermaster of the Department of the Cumberland reported the loss at

Johnsonville as $1.5 million (vol. 52, pt. 1, p. 683).

Capt G. M. Everett to Lt Col W. R. Sellon, 15 Nov 1864, 12th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA.

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

286

where Union generals thought he would threaten the Nashville and Chattanooga

Railroad. On 25 November, with the northward direction of Hood’s army more

clear, Thompson received orders to send Battery A, 2d USCA, to reinforce the gar-

rison of Nashville. Mounted men of the 12th and 13th USCIs patrolled the north

bank of the Duck River. They saw no organized groups of Confederates, although

Thompson reported guerrillas “very thick” south of the river. Incessant rains earlier

in the month had increased the ow of the river and prevented the guerrillas from

crossing.

As Hood drew closer to Nashville, General Thomas received word that four

Confederate cavalry regiments had somehow crossed the Duck River. On 29 No-

vember, he ordered the evacuation of Johnsonville. The rst telegrams arrived soon

after sunrise and were indenite, with phrases like “as the case may be” and “un-

less it should become actually necessary to move hastily, of which there is no pros-

pect now.” By noon, with Hood’s army approaching Franklin, twenty miles south

of Nashville, the language became more denite: Thomas ordered forty freight

cars to Johnsonville to carry off government property; Colonel Thompson was

to dismantle any cannon that could not move, throw the gun carriages into the

river, and “move promptly” to Clarksville, some sixty miles to the northeast. In

midafternoon, the telegraph line went dead between Johnsonville and 12th USCI

headquarters at Kingston Springs, twenty miles west of Nashville.

Mounted companies of the 12th USCI had been on a scout for three days. While

waiting for their return, Lt. Col. William R. Sellon received orders to withdraw the

12th and 100th to Nashville along the line of the railroad as soon as the last train

from Johnsonville passed. As Sellon prepared to evacuate Kingston Springs on

30 November, the mounted patrol returned with the news that no Confederates

had crossed Duck River since the four cavalry regiments had moved north earlier

that week. After dark, a telegram from Maj. Gen. John M. Schoeld reached Gen-

eral Thomas, announcing that Hood’s army had attacked the Union earthworks at

Franklin that day “with very heavy loss, probably 5,000 or 6,000 men. Our loss is

probably not more than one-tenth that number.” Schoeld’s estimate was close to

the total number of Confederate casualties (more than six thousand two hundred

fty), but the defenders had suffered more than twenty-three hundred and Hood’s

force still outnumbered his own by three to one. The victorious Union troops aban-

doned their hastily dug position and withdrew north toward Nashville ahead of the

battered Confederates.

Sellon’s command was not the only one moving to reinforce Nashville. At

Chattanooga, General Steedman readied ve thousand men—convalescents and

conscripts belonging to Sherman’s army but who had arrived too late to join it

on the March to the Sea, and six infantry regiments, including the 14th, 16th, and

44th USCIs—on 25 November. Five days later, word came from General Thomas:

OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 669, 995, 1049–50, 1100, 1128; Lt Col W. R. Sellon to 1st Lt T. L.

Sexton, 23 Oct 1864; Col J. A. Hottenstein to Col C. R. Thompson, 26 Nov 1864; Lt Col W. R. Sellon

to Col C. R. Thompson, 28 Nov 1864; all in 13th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 1138, 1161 (“as the case”), 1162 (“move promptly”), 1163.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 1171 (“with very”), 1194–95; Thomas L. Livermore, Numbers

and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861–65 (Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1909), pp. 131–32.

Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865

287

“Embark your troops immediately on the cars and come to Nashville as soon as

possible.”

Most of Steedman’s force arrived there on 1 December, but the next to last

of the troop trains derailed seven miles north of Murfreesborough. Crews worked

through the night to remove the wreck, and the train that had been last in line

stayed in Murfreesborough until the next day. On board were 307 ofcers and men

belonging to Colonel Johnson’s reorganized 44th USCI and two companies of the

14th, as well as twenty-ve white soldiers of the 115th Ohio. Their train left Mur-

freesborough at 8:00 the next morning and crawled northwest, averaging about

seven miles per hour. It reached Mill Creek Bridge and its nearby blockhouse, ve

miles outside Nashville, late in the morning. Forrest’s cavalry was there already.

“You will have to be careful how you use the railroad now or the enemy will

get your trains,” General Thomas had warned Steedman, but there was little that

Colonel Johnson, the highest ranking ofcer on the train, could do. Hood’s army

had left Franklin the day before and moved straight north toward Nashville. By

2 December, it was taking positions about four miles south of the city. Forrest’s

troopers guarded the Confederate anks, with one of the divisions and its artillery

battery menacing federal communications on the Nashville and Chattanooga Rail-

road. One of the same three-inch guns that had sunk Union transports at Johnson-

ville four weeks earlier red a shot that disabled the locomotive pulling Johnson’s

troops toward Nashville.

The men scrambled out of the boxcars and headed for the blockhouse, which

they found already occupied by a lieutenant’s command from the 115th Ohio as-

signed to guard the bridge. Under re from Forrest’s artillery and dismounted

troopers, Johnson’s men took what cover they could behind stumps and tree trunks

that had been felled to clear ground near the blockhouse. By nightfall, they had

red nearly all of the forty rounds each man carried in his cartridge box and had re-

ceived another two thousand—about six cartridges per man—from the blockhouse

garrison. “The rebels had enough men to just eat us up,” Pvt. John Milton recalled.

Twelve black soldiers lay dead; forty-six were wounded; and nearly as many were

missing. With more than one-third of his command out of action, Johnson left the

surgeon and chaplain of the 44th USCI in charge of the wounded and led the rest

of his men quietly through the Confederate position “without much trouble,” he

reported. They reached Nashville “about daylight” the next day.

Confederates captured the regiment’s wounded, along with the surgeon and

chaplain who had stayed to care for them. Sgt. Jacob Strawder and Pvt. Granville

Scales both fell into Confederate hands. Scales’ arm was shot “all to pieces,” he

told the Bureau of Pensions after the war. A Confederate surgeon “cut it off fer

him near the Shoulder & cared for him as kindly as if he were white & of his own

command.” Left behind by the Confederates a few days later, Scales was soon back

OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 502–03, 880–82, 1050, 1072, 1190 (quotation).

Ibid., pp. 503, 535, 540–51, 754.

Ibid., pp. 675, 754. Forrest’s report identies the Confederate cannon as belonging to the

battery commanded by Capt J. W. Morton (p. 754). The battery’s armament consisted of four “3-inch

ries” (vol. 39, pt. 2, p. 610).

OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pp. 540–41 (“without,” “about,” p. 541), 631–32; Afdavit, John Milton, 18

Nov 1905 (“The rebels”), in Pension File C2513010, Alex Prier, CWPAF.

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

288

within Union lines and in a hospital at Nashville along with other wounded prison-

ers from the 44th. Pvt. Martin Buck and Pvt. Wiley Hunt both died there weeks

later, Buck of typhoid fever and Hunt of pneumonia. The Confederates, many of

whom lacked shoes, took Strawder’s and marched him barefoot with the other

unwounded captives to Franklin. There, Pvt. Henry Walker and other men with

frostbitten feet joined the wounded in a Confederate hospital. They returned to the

Union Army at Nashville by the end of the month. Those well enough to march

continued south. “They . . . put 33 of us in jail without food left us there two days

& marched us to Meridian Miss,” Pvt. Owen Gideon recalled, “& on the way . . . it

snowed and I stole a blanket from a rebel captain & slept.” The survivors remained

prisoners until the following spring.

When the ranking ofcers of the 14th and 44th USCIs reported the names of

the day’s casualties, they listed 26 enlisted men wounded, 48 missing, and 12 taken

prisoner. In all, nearly half of the eighty-six soldiers in the casualty list survived

the war to le their own pension claims and at least one other testied on behalf

of a comrade’s application without ling his own. By the time the two regiments

mustered out of service in the spring of 1866, only seven of the men named in the

two casualty lists still appeared on the rolls as “missing in action.” Confederates

Asst Surgeon C. W. Oleson to 1st Lt F. McNeil, 9 Dec 1864, 14th USCI, and Col L. Johnson

to Adj Gen, 2 Jan 1865, 44th USCI, both in Entry 57C, RG 94, NA. Deposition, Granville Scales, 18

Dec 1878 (quotation), in Pension File WC969411, Granville Scales; Pension File MO317804, Martin

Buck; Pension File SC805183, Joseph Cloudis; Pension File MC254302, Wiley Hunt; Pension File

SC486807, Jacob Strawder; Pension File WC512598, Henry Walker; Deposition, Owen Gideon,

23 Feb 1897 (“They . . . put”), in Pension File WC599132, Owen Gideon; all in CWPAF. For other

soldiers of the 44th USCI who received medical attention in Confederate hospitals, see Pension Files

SC189837, David Steele, CWPAF, and C2513010, Prier.

Union troops aboard a train in northern Georgia in 1864

Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865

289

did not kill all, or even most, of the prisoners on the Nashville and Chattanooga

Railroad that day.

Still, rumors and reports of murdered prisoners continued to reach the regi-

ments as soldiers escaped and made their way back to Union garrisons. “I have

learned of the death of some more of my boys,” 2d Lt. Morris S. Hall of the 44th

USCI told his sister late in the winter. “I think some twelve have already died. . . .

Oh how terribly some of those men have suffered and without cause. One the last

I heard from him escaped, was recaptured, and then shot down in cold blood. . . . I

can not but feel sad when I think of it. Will not a just God avenge their wrongs[?]”

Hall decided to withdraw the resignation he had submitted after being passed over

for promotion. “I have become attached to my men and the feeling that I was in the

path of duty has always actuated me,” he explained.

By the time Colonel Thompson’s brigade of U.S. Colored Troops reached

Nashville, Steedman’s regiments were already there. Thompson’s force, which

had been guarding the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad, did not arrive until

7 December. While Johnson’s trainload of men came under attack by Forrest’s

cavalry southeast of Nashville on 2 December, Thompson’s two thousand troops

found their approach to the city blocked by part of Hood’s army and had to make a

thirty-mile detour by way of Clarksville. “They did some heavy marching but left

no stragglers,” Colonel Mussey noted when they reached Nashville. Thompson

reported to Steedman, and his three regiments joined the rest of the general’s com-

mand on the southeast outskirts of the city.

For the next few days, they dug. Their trenches became part of the federal

army’s two lines of defense outside Nashville. The inner line lay on the south and

west, just outside the city itself. The outer, about a mile beyond, extended across

the peninsula formed by a bend in the Cumberland River on which Nashville

stood. Both lines ran along the hills that ringed the city and faced the Confederate

works, which lay a mile and more beyond the Union outer line. In the section held

by Steedman’s command, the defenses consisted of “a breast-work of rails and

earth with a light palisade in front,” as one regimental commander described them.

The troops worked unceasingly to improve the position. “This has been a clear,

warm day,” Chaplain Elgin of the 14th USCI recorded on Sunday, 4 December,

“but its sacred hours have all been spent in building defenses, thus preventing any

services.”

Besides digging, Steedman’s troops carried out small offensive operations

against the nearest Confederates. On 5 December, Colonel Morgan’s brigade—the

14th, 16th, 17th, and 44th USCIs and three companies of the 18th USCI—and two

understrength white regiments moved against the enemy opposite their position,

Asst Surgeon C. W. Oleson to 1st Lt F. McNeil, 9 Dec 1864, 14th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94,

NA; Johnson to Adj Gen USA, 2 Jan 1865; 14th and 44th USCIs, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA.

M. S. Hall to Dear Sister Emma, 16 Mar 1865, M. S. Hall Papers, Bentley Library, University

of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, p. 503, and pt. 2, p. 164; Col R. D. Mussey to Capt C. P. Brown, 12

Dec 64 (quotation), Entry 1141, pt. 1, RG 393, NA; NA M594, roll 215, 100th USCI.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 535 (“a breast-work”), 548, and pt. 2, pp. 32–33; Elgin Jnl, 4 Dec

1864 (“This has been”); Jacob D. Cox, The March to the Sea: Franklin and Nashville (New York:

Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1882), p. 109, map.

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

290

taking some prisoners and running off the rest. Two days later, after the Confeder-

ates returned, Morgan’s troops drove them off again, this time at the cost of some

half-dozen wounded. “In this, as in the other affair,” Elgin recorded, “the Colored

Troops did as well as any Troops could do. The movement was witnessed by a

great many soldiers and citizens all of whom speak in the highest praise of the

conduct of the Col[ored] Troops. For our part we feel proud of the command.”

General Grant, from his headquarters in Virginia, had been urging Thomas to

attack the Confederates since 2 December, the day Hood’s army arrived outside

Nashville. Thomas delayed, claiming that he required fty-ve hundred additional

horses to mount all of his twelve thousand ve hundred cavalrymen in order for

them to act effectively in pursuit after Hood’s prospective defeat. On 6 December,

Grant issued a direct order: “Attack Hood at once, and wait no longer for a remount

of your cavalry.” While Thomas continued to demur and Grant and Stanton dis-

cussed relieving him of command, a storm on 9 December covered the hills around

Nashville with a sheet of ice that immobilized both armies.

Disgusted at Thomas’ inaction, Grant dispatched Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, a

former corps commander in Sherman’s army, to relieve him. On 13 December, as

the Adjutant General’s Ofce in Washington issued Logan’s orders, Thomas noted

“indications of a favorable change in the weather” at Nashville. “As soon as there

is I shall . . . assume the offensive,” he wrote to Halleck.

Thomas called a conference of his senior generals on the afternoon of 14 De-

cember. On the right of the federal line, Maj. Gen. Andrew J. Smith would lead two

divisions, veterans of the Red River Campaign and the Tupelo expedition earlier

that year, to deliver “a vigorous assault” on the Confederate position. Elsewhere

along the line, the IV and XXIII Corps would play supporting and subsidiary roles.

Steedman’s force, which included eight U.S. Colored Infantry regiments, num-

bered more than nine thousand ofcers and men present for duty—12 percent of

the available infantry. Stationed on the extreme left of the Union line, on the south-

eastern edge of Nashville, it had orders to hold its position and to “act according

to the exigencies which may arise during these operations.” Its real role on the rst

day was to create a diversion and cause the Confederates to reinforce their right

and weaken their left, where Smith’s troops would deliver the main attack. That

evening, orders took the 16th USCI to the rear to guard the army’s pontoon train,

which stood ready to bridge rivers during the anticipated pursuit of a defeated Con-

federate army. A brigade of white troops took the place of the 16th.

The next morning, fog “lay like a winding sheet over the two armies,” Colonel

Morgan reported. About 7:00, as it lifted, the 14th USCI moved forward deployed

as skirmishers, followed by the 17th and 44th in line of battle. When rie re

Colonel Morgan’s report gave the number of prisoners as eight; Chaplain Elgin gave the

number as seventeen. OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, p. 535; Elgin Jnl, 5 Dec 1864. Regimental records

show ve wounded on 7 December; Elgin said there were ve in the 14th USCI alone. NA M594,

roll 207, 14th and 18th USCIs; Elgin Jnl, 7 Dec 1864 (“In this”).

OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 37, 127, 153–54, 359, 747, and pt. 2, pp. 17, 29, 70 (quotation), 84,

96, 118–19, 132–33, 143. The gures are from the report of Thomas’ cavalry commander, Maj. Gen.

J. H. Wilson (pt. 1, p. 551).

Ibid., pt. 2, pp. 169 (quotation), 171, 230, 265; Brooks D. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph

over Adversity, 1822–1865 (Boston: Houghton Mifin, 2000), pp. 393–98.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 37 (quotation), 54–55, 94, 526–27, 535.