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
291
stopped the skirmishers, the 17th and 44th rushed the Confederate trenches and
captured them. They then pushed on as far as the Nashville and Chattanooga Rail-
road tracks, where artillery re stopped them. While these regiments were pressing
forward, Morgan ordered two white battalions to attack the trenches just west of
those that his own troops had just taken. One battalion, made up of veterans from
ve Ohio regiments, succeeded; but the other, “mostly new conscripts, convales-
cents, and bounty jumpers,” according to its brigade commander, ran headlong to
the rear. Morgan found that he had misjudged Confederate strength and withdrew
his regiments to a less-exposed position from which they sniped at the enemy until
dusk. Smith’s attack on the Confederate left began about three hours after Mor-
gan’s and continued through the day, advancing more than a mile and capturing 36
cannon and 5,123 prisoners. During the night, the survivors of Hood’s army retired
to another line a mile or two south of their position that morning. “The enemy had
been deceived,” Morgan reported, “and, in expectation of a real advance upon his
right, had detained his troops there, while his left was being disastrously driven
back.”
87
Soon after daybreak on 16 December, skirmishers of the 13th USCI moved
forward past the previous day’s corpses “all stripped of their clothing and left upon
the open eld,” as one ofcer reported. They found the Confederate trenches emp-
ty. The rest of Colonel Thompson’s brigade followed, moving almost due south for
two miles, ahead of the rest of Steedman’s command. By early afternoon, Steed-
man, at the east end of the Union line, was in touch with the headquarters of IV
Corps, on his right, and preparing to support the main attack on the new Confeder-
ate position. Thompson’s brigade would lead, along with a brigade of white troops
that included the battalion that had “stampeded” the day before. The 18th USCI
had reinforced that brigade since the previous day’s attack.
88
Steedman’s line started forward about 3:00 p.m. On the left, the 12th USCI had
to move in column to get past some dense undergrowth. When it passed the thicket
and opened from column into line, its rapid movement led ofcers of the 13th and
100th to think that Colonel Thompson had ordered a charge and those regiments
began to advance at a run. “Being under a heavy re at the time,” Thompson re-
ported, “I thought it would cause much confusion to rectify this, so I ordered the
whole line to charge.” Felled trees and the angle of the Confederate works split the
12th and half of the 100th from the other half of the 100th. Confederate re tore
into both bodies of men. Colonel Hottenstein, some distance behind with the 13th
USCI, saw that “the troops in our front began to lie down and skulk to the rear,
which, of course, was not calculated to give much courage to men [of the 13th]
who never before had undergone an ordeal by re.” On their left, the battalion of
“conscripts, convalescents, and bounty jumpers” ran away again and its brigade
commander “saw it no more during the campaign.” The rest of the brigade—the
18th USCI and two veteran white battalions—pressed forward but failed to hold a
position close to the Confederate line. The 13th USCI nally pushed through the
disordered 12th and 100th and reached the enemy defenses; but it soon retreated,
87
OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 433, 436, 527 (“mostly new”), 531, 536 (“lay like”), 539; Dyer,
Compendium, p. 1505; McMurry, John Bell Hood, p. 179.
88
OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 527 (“stampeded”), 528 (“all stripped”), 543, 548.
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
292
joining the survivors of the brigade near where the afternoon’s attack had begun.
Thompson’s brigade had lost 80 ofcers and men killed and 388 wounded in less
than half an hour, by far the highest loss in any Union brigade that day.
89
By the time Thompson had withdrawn his men from the east end of the Con-
federate line, General Smith’s brigades were attacking the other end, as they had
the day before. Their assault succeeded, and the Confederate division that had just
defeated Steedman’s regiments and “was thus in the highest state of enthusiasm,”
its commander reported, soon “saw the troops on [its] left ying in disorder” and
had to join the retreat. “Rebs were seen running in every direction a perfect rout,”
Lieutenant Hall of the 44th USCI wrote to his mother. Steedman’s troops and those
of the IV Corps, which had also failed to take its objective that afternoon, collected
themselves and followed the enemy south on the road toward Franklin. “Began
raining in the afternoon & continued all evening,” 2d Lt. Henry Campbell of the
101st USCI entered in his journal. “Troops too tired to follow the rebels far.”
90
Night fell as Steedman’s two brigades of U.S. Colored Troops, along with the
IV Corps, pursued the Confederates. They bivouacked about eight miles south of
Nashville and continued the pursuit the next day, reaching Franklin in the early af-
ternoon. There they found that the retreating Confederates had burned the bridges
across the Harpeth River. Since their rapid advance had left the pontoon train far
behind, they had to wait while a regiment of the IV Corps built a new bridge. Rain
began to fall again on 18 December, making it impossible for troops to advance
through the elds on either side of the highway. Steedman’s two brigades, about
three miles beyond Franklin and headed south, received orders that morning to turn
around and march to the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad at Murfreesborough,
thirty miles east of Franklin. They arrived on 20 December. From there, trains took
them southeast to Stevenson, Alabama, then west toward Decatur, where some of
the men had begun the campaign two months earlier. The object of their movement
was to secure the Tennessee River crossing before the remains of Hood’s army
could reach it. The rest of General Thomas’ army followed the retreating Confed-
erates by a more direct but slower route along muddy roads through Columbia and
Pulaski, having to wait twice for the pontoon train to bridge swollen rivers.
91
Late in the afternoon of 26 December, Steedman’s troop trains stopped where
the tracks of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad crossed Limestone Creek,
about eight miles east of Decatur. The bridge was out, so the men got off the train
and followed the creek downstream to the Tennessee River. There they met a eet
of ten gunboats and transports with food and forage, which General Thomas had
sent to help intercept the Confederate retreat. The boats ferried Steedman’s force
across the river. Once ashore, the troops had “to wade a deep bayou, deploy as
skirmishers, and protect [the] landing,” an ofcer of the 12th USCI recorded. “In
wading bayou some men got out of their depth, none lost—slight skirmish.” A few
shots were enough to oust a weak Confederate cavalry regiment that guarded De-
89
Ibid., pp. 527 (“conscripts”), 528 (“saw it”), 543 (“Being under”), 544, 546, 548 (“the troops”),
698.
90
Ibid., pp. 290–91, 505, 698 (“was thus,” “saw the troops ”); M. S. Hall to Dear Mother, 17 Jan
1865 (“Rebs”), Hall Papers; H. Campbell Jnl, 18 Dec 1864, Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Ind.
91
OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 135, 159–64, 291, 505, 549, and pt. 2, pp. 260, 325–26.
Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865
293
catur. By 7:00 that evening, Union troops controlled the town. Two days later, they
learned that Hood’s army had found another crossing some forty miles downstream
and was already south of the Tennessee River on its way to Corinth, Mississippi.
92
When that news arrived, Steedman’s men were marching west toward the
site of Hood’s crossing. Detachments of white Union cavalry that accompanied
them routed the eeing Confederates near a town called Courtland, some twenty
miles west of Decatur, allowing the infantry to reach there without further trou-
ble. On 30 December, a company commander in the 12th USCI noted that “want
of . . . blankets & tents, cold & wet weather, the passage of numerous streams &
the usual hardships of a winter campaign have seriously lessened our numbers &
impaired the efciency of those present. The men . . . are decient in energy on
the march.” Fortunately for the troops, this phase of the campaign was nearing
an end. On New Year’s Day, General Thomas ordered Steedman to break up his
division and return to Chattanooga with Morgan’s brigade, sending Thompson’s
brigade to Nashville.
93
Regimental ofcers saw the lull in active operations as an opportunity to bring
their commands up to strength and devote some attention to discipline and drill.
Lt. Col. Henry Stone, ordered back to the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad,
92
Ibid., pt. 1, p. 506, and pt. 2, pp. 384, 400–403, 698; ORN, 26: 671–82; NA M594, roll 207,
12th USCI (quotation).
93
OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 2, pp. 401, 480, 493; NA M594, roll 207, 12th USCI (quotation).
Part of the Nashville battleeld, taken as victorious Union troops pursued retreating
Confederates south of the city
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
294
asked that all the companies of the 100th USCI be stationed together for the rst
time. The regiments at Chattanooga, he pointed out, “have had the good fortune to
be placed in such positions as have given them the facilities” for instruction, and
he asked the same advantages for his own regiment and the others in Thompson’s
brigade. Colonel Thompson agreed with Stone; but General Thomas, who retained
his command because of his victory over Hood, decided that drill was less impor-
tant than guarding the Nashville and Northwestern, which was still a major supply
artery for his army.
94
Guard duty did not mean inactivity. Even in the last months of the war, Con-
federate guerrillas operated widely throughout the Department of the Cumberland.
Field operations began as soon as the troops reached their new stations. The com-
manding ofcer of Company C, 18th USCI, noted “frequent night scouts” near
Bridgeport, Alabama, in late January “to look for guerrillas, who commit depreda-
tions on the citizens.” For the 42d USCI, an “invalid” regiment that General Steed-
man left in Chattanooga during the Nashville Campaign, antiguerrilla duty had
never stopped. One company of the regiment covered an estimated seventy-two
miles in four days during a “short but severe campaign” in early January against
Confederate irregulars who had red on a party of federal soldiers guarding a cat-
tle herd. “My men is very mutch exposed & very badly quartered, besides quite
a number of them sick,” one company commander complained as winter ended.
“They have had no less than ve ghts since the rst day of this month.” On 18
March, “the rebel Colonel” Lemuel G. Mead, who had recruited a force known
as Mead’s Confederate Partisan Rangers in Union-occupied Tennessee, attacked
an outpost of the 101st USCI at Boyd’s Station, Alabama, on the Memphis and
Charleston Railroad, killing ve men of Company E. A few weeks later, as the
Confederacy collapsed, Union troops accepted the surrender of Mead’s men, al-
though one federal ofcer characterized them as “ragamufns, bushwhackers, . . .
horse-thieves, and murderers.”
95
With the close of hostilities, regiments of U.S. Colored Troops in the Depart-
ment of the Cumberland began issuing furloughs to enlisted men for home visits.
Black soldiers in central Tennessee and northern Alabama found themselves closer
to home at the end of the war than did those in most other parts of the conquered
South. For men in the northern and Kentucky regiments of U.S. Colored Troops
who served in Virginia during the war and took ship for Texas soon afterward,
distance prohibited furloughs, as it did for those serving in Florida and around
Mobile. During the war, Memphis and other Mississippi River towns had attracted
black refugees from plantations in the surrounding counties, including the families
of many soldiers in garrison, so that furloughs for troops in garrison there were
not as necessary. Only in the Department of the Cumberland and along the lower
94
Lt Col H. Stone to Brig Gen W. D. Whipple, 16 Jan 1865, f/w 12th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94,
NA.
95
OR, ser. 1, vol. 49, pt. 1, pp. 86 (“the rebel”), 559 (“ragamufns”), 1023; Capt J. H. Hull to
1st Lt A. Caskey, 24 Mar 1865 (“My men”), 101st USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA. NA M594, roll
207, 18th USCI (“frequent night”); roll 209, 42d USCI (“short but”); roll 215, 101st USCI. Mead’s
Confederate Partisan Rangers had a short ofcial existence, from March 1865 to the Confederate
surrender. Stewart Sifakis, Compendium of the Confederate Armies, 11 vols. (New York: Facts on
File, 1992–1995), 3: 77.
Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865
295
Mississippi did large numbers of U.S. Colored Troops nish the war reasonably
near the places where they had enlisted, but still at some distance from their fami-
lies. During their service, most of the Tennesseans had covered the country from
Dalton, Georgia, in the east to Decatur, Alabama, in the west and as far north as
the Kentucky state line. They had left their families behind and felt a strong desire
to see them again.
96
Company commanders would specify the number of men who could request fur-
loughs, the term of the furloughs (usually ten or twenty days), and the purpose: “their
families are residing with their former masters, and these men desire to visit them to
provide for them untill their term of service expires,” was the formula in Company B
of the 110th USCI. Commanding ofcers had authority to extend a furlough because
of sickness, whether of the enlisted man or of one of his relatives.
97
Black soldiers who received furloughs to visit their families often found them
living with their former masters or in the contraband camps established by Union
occupiers at several sites: Nashville, Clarksville, and Gallatin, Tennessee, and
Huntsville, Alabama. Living conditions in the camps had attracted the attention of
War Department investigators as early as the spring of 1864. While touring the re-
gion, inspecting camps and collecting testimony, they learned that residents’ wel-
fare depended almost entirely on the energy and dedication of a camp’s command-
er. The general at Nashville was “culpably negligent,” they reported, while the
chaplain in charge at Huntsville “was wholly devoted to the care of its inmates.”
98
The camp at Clarksville had provided 136 soldiers for the Union Army; the one
at Gallatin, “several hundred.” The investigators’ report made clear the government’s
responsibility toward them. “If we take colored soldiers into our armies, . . . we must
take them under the obligation to take care of the families that would be otherwise
left in want. When the enlisting colored soldiers are assured that the care of their
families shall be the care of the government, that assurance must be made good. If we
exact good faith from them, we must keep good faith with them.” Further, the inves-
tigators recommended establishment of a federal ofce “nominally military, under
the general authority and supervision of the War Department, . . . for this distinct
service.” The U.S. Senate published its report on 27 February 1865.
99
Four days later, Congress passed a law it had been tailoring for more than four-
teen months to “establish a bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees.” The
term refugees applied usually to white Unionists displaced by the ghting; freed-
men generally referred to black Southerners of any age and both sexes, including
those who had been free before the war. Even these latter saw changes in their legal
status as the coming of emancipation and the war’s end swept away many antebel-
lum statutes. An agency of the War Department called the Bureau of Refugees,
96
On the situation in the Department of the Cumberland, see Ira Berlin et al., eds., The
Destruction of Slavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 265, and The Wartime
Genesis of Free Labor: The Upper South (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 376–
85. Documentation is missing for most Louisiana-raised U.S. Colored Troops regiments that were
still stationed there at the end of the war.
97
Abstracts 81 and 110 (“their families”) in Letterbook, 110th USCI, Regimental Books, RG
94, NA.
98
“Condition and Treatment of Colored Refugees,” 38th Cong., 2d sess., S. Ex. Doc. 28 (serial
1,209), pp. 9 (“culpably”), 12 (“was wholly”).
99
Ibid., pp. 9, 11 (“several”), 20 (“If we take”), 22 (“nominally”).
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
296
Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands
would assume “control of all subjects
relating to refugees and freedmen
from rebel states, or from any district
of country within the territory em-
braced in the operations of the army.”
Its rst concern was the welfare of
“destitute and suffering refugees and
freedmen and their wives and chil-
dren.” As the year wore on, the Bu-
reau’s agents would supervise labor
contracts between former slaves and
white planters, who were no longer
slaveholders but still owned most of
the best farmland.
100
In July 1865, the 14th USCI had
six men on furlough and nine appli-
cations pending when the regimental
commander asked permission for
three of his soldiers to attend “the
Convention of Colored People of this
State” at Nashville the next month.
Garrison and district headquarters
approved the soldiers’ request. Many
black Southerners were aware of im-
pending political changes that would
affect their future and sought to in-
uence the results by exercising their
new rights to petition and to assem-
ble peaceably.
101
The convention met on 7 August
at a chapel of the African Method-
ist Episcopal Church. Twenty of the
116 delegates were soldiers in Ten-
nessee regiments of the U.S. Colored
Troops. Sgt. Henry J. Maxwell of
Battery A, 2d USCA, addressed them
on the rst day. “We want the rights
guaranteed by the Innite Architect,”
he told them. “We have gained one—
100
U.S. Statutes at Large, 13: 507–08; Ira Berlin et al., eds., The Wartime Genesis of Free
Labor: The Lower South (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 373–74. H. R. 51,
introduced on 14 December 1863, originally called for a “Bureau of Emancipation.” Congressional
Globe, 38th Cong., 1st sess., 134: 19.
101
Lt Col H. C. Corbin to Brig Gen A. J. Alexander, 19 Jul 1865 (“the Convention”), 14th USCI,
Entry 57C, RG 94, NA. See also “Petition of the Colored Citizens of Nashville,” 9 Jan 1865, in Berlin
et al., Black Military Experience, pp. 811–16.
Sgt. Henry J. Maxwell,
2d U.S. Colored Artillery
Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865
297
the uniform is its badge. We want two more boxes, beside the cartridge box—the
ballot box and the jury box.” The convention adjourned four days later, resolving
to work closely with agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau and to attempt a census of
“our people” in the state. The soldiers returned to their regiments. For the next
two years, helping to enforce the edicts of the Freedmen’s Bureau and assisting its
agents would take up most of the time of U.S. Colored Troops in Tennessee and
other parts of the occupied South.
102
102
Colored Tennessean (Nashville), 12 August 1865.
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Dismal Swamp
Canal
Cape Fear
Cape Lookout
Cape Hatteras
Cape Charles
Point Lookout
Fort Fisher
Fort Monroe
Florence
Goldsborough
Beaufort
Tarboro
Gaston
Kinston
Faison’s
Station
Bentonville
Cox’s Bridge
Washington
Plymouth
Elizabeth City
Camden
Court House
Clinton
Henderson
Greensboro
Chapel Hill
Appomattox
Court House
Portsmouth
Hampton
Yorktown
Glouscester Point
Charles City Court House
New Kent Court House
King and Queen
Court House
City Point
Spotsylvania Court House
Staunton
New Market
Manassas Junction
Port Tobacco
Harpers Ferry
Romney
Salisbury
Fayetteville
Petersburg
Lynchburg
Charlottesville
Fredericksburg
Alexandria
Frederick
Baltimore
Norfolk
Wilmington
New Berne
Danville
RALEIGH
RICHMOND
ANNAPOLIS
WASHINGTON
DOVER
VIRGINIA
WEST
VIRGINIA
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
NORTH
CAROLINA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
NORTH CAROLINA AND VIRGINIA
1861–1864
0
755025
Miles
Map 7
When the Confederate Congress, meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, voted on 20
May 1861 to move the seat of government east to Richmond, Virginia, it altered drastical-
ly the shape of the impending conict. Suddenly, the capitals of the contending govern-
ments lay only a few days’ march apart. Both sides massed their principal armies in this
comparatively small space, where they struggled back and forth across the same terrain
for four years. The concentrated drama and violence of this contest, conducted close to
major communications centers and millions of newspaper readers, often overshadowed
events in other parts of the country. Nevertheless, Union armies in the Mississippi Valley
and in scattered coastal enclaves continued to follow the broad outlines of the scheme
set forth by Lt. Gen. Wineld Scott during the rst spring of the war (see Map 7).
1
Learning of the secessionists’ plan to move their capital and unsatised with the
slow progress that Scott’s “Anaconda” promised, Northern editors at once began urg-
ing the federal government to capture Richmond before the Confederate Congress con-
vened there in July. A headline in Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune exhorted: “To
Richmond! To Richmond! Onward!” Military authorities at Washington took a much
more cautious view, but they wanted to get some use out of the regiments that had
responded to the president’s summons, for the militia’s three-month term of service
would expire in mid-July. To this end, they organized a three-pronged sweep intended
to drive Confederate troops from the Virginia counties along the Potomac River, where
they threatened the federal capital and its link to the West, the Baltimore and Ohio Rail-
road. The Northern press misinterpreted this operation as the long-awaited offensive.
“The Army is in motion, . . . advancing upon Richmond . . . that centre of rebellion,” the
New York Times reported. The movement ended in disaster on 21 July at Manassas, just
thirty-ve miles—a day’s brisk retreat, as it turned out—from Washington. The Union
Army returned to the capital; the militia regiments went home; and volunteers, enlisted
for three years’ service, began arriving to take their place.
2
The defense of Washington was uppermost in the mind of Maj. Gen. George
B. McClellan when he arrived later that summer to take charge of the volunteer
regiments that were gathering there. He formed them into brigades and divisions
1
Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865, 58th Cong., 2d
sess., S. Doc. 234, 7 vols., serials 4,610–4,616, 1: 254–55.
2
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Ofcial Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies, 70 vols. in 128 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Ofce, 1880–1901), ser. 1, 2: 709,
North Carolina and Virginia
1861–1864
Chapter 10
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
300
and called his new command the Army of the Potomac. Country roads outside the
city were so bad that the troops received supplies, whenever possible, by boat.
“Not less than twenty of my teams are on the road struggling to work their way
through the mud,” Brig. Gen. Joseph Hooker reported from southern Maryland in
early November. “If this should be continued, I shall not have a serviceable team
in my train, nor will the depot quartermaster in Washington if he permits his teams
to be put on the road.” Hooker thought of withdrawing his troops from southern
Maryland—a tobacco-growing region full of slaveholders and Confederate sym-
pathizers—to a point closer to the federal supply railhead in Washington. Since
each side tried to use artillery re to interdict the other’s shipping, control of the
shoreline was clearly necessary to secure the defenses of the capital.
3
While the garrison of Washington reorganized and gathered strength, ships of
the U.S. Navy patrolled Chesapeake Bay and the rivers emptying into it. Slaves
from the Tidewater counties of Virginia, sometimes entire families of them, took to
boats and made their way to these vessels, which put them ashore at Washington or
Fort Monroe. There, those who were able to work found employment with Army
quartermasters. Confederate authorities, of course, took a different view of the
matter. At Yorktown, one Virginia general complained in mid-August that “from
$5,000 to $8,000 worth of negroes [were] decoyed off” each week.
4
Some of the more enterprising and politically connected Union generals
sought independent commands that summer, rather than spend the rest of the
year camped near Washington, helping to train McClellan’s army. Maj. Gen.
Benjamin F. Butler, who took charge of the maritime expedition that captured
New Orleans the following spring, was one; another was Brig. Gen. Ambrose
E. Burnside, a Rhode Islander who had graduated from West Point in 1847, one
year after McClellan. Burnside proposed raising a marine division of ten New
England regiments with shallow-draft boats to secure the Potomac estuary and
Chesapeake Bay. The War Department approved the plan, but by January 1862,
when Burnside was able to gather the troops, McClellan had been appointed to
the command of all Union armies and used his new authority to order Burnside’s
force to North Carolina. The object of the expedition was to land on the coast,
to penetrate inland as far as Goldsborough, and there to cut an important rail
line that ran from the deepwater port of Wilmington, in the southeastern corner
of the state, north to Richmond, carrying supplies to the Confederate army that
threatened Washington. The line was especially useful because it was of uniform
gauge, a rarity in the South, and was thus able to move material rapidly along its
entire 170-mile length.
5
More than 160,000 people lived in the seventeen counties that lined the ser-
rated coastline behind the Outer Banks. The region was home to 68,519 slaves
(42.7 percent of the population) and 8,049 free blacks (5 percent). Of the black
711, 718–21 (hereafter cited as OR); New York Tribune, 30 May 1861; New York Times, 18 July 1861.
3
OR, ser. 1, 5: 372–77, 407–11, 421–24, 643 (quotation).
4
OR, ser. 1, 4: 614, 634 (quotation). Ofcial Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in
the War of the Rebellion, 30 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Ofce, 1894–1922), ser.
1, 4: 508, 583, 598, 681–82, 748; 6: 80–81, 107, 113, 363 (hereafter cited as ORN).
5
OR, ser. 1, 5: 36; Robert M. Browning Jr., From Cape Charles to Cape Fear: The North
Atlantic Blockading Squadron During the Civil War (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press,