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

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Virginia, May–October 1864

371

ence or antagonism toward the city’s black residents to hire and send south

the rst black war correspondent of a metropolitan newspaper. The fact that

four regiments raised at Philadelphia—the 6th, 8th, 22d, and 43d USCIs—were

serving near Richmond and Petersburg hardly seems like a probable reason

for Chester’s assignment. Although his employer’s motive for sending him re-

mains unclear, the reporter soon became a familiar gure in the camps of those

and other black regiments—Lieutenant Verplanck, of the 6th USCI and Gen-

eral Hinks’ staff, called him “our own correspondent”—and he soon caught

the mood of the troops. “Between the negroes and the enemy it is war to the

death,” Chester told his readers. “The colored troops have cheerfully accepted

the conditions of the Confederate Government, that between them no quarter is

to be shown,” he wrote on 22 August.

Those here have not the least idea of living after they fall into the hands of the

enemy, and the rebels act very much as if they entertained similar sentiments

with reference to the blacks. Even deserters fear to come into our lines where

colored troops may be stationed. Not unfrequently have they asked if there

are any black troops near, and if there were the rebs have entreated that they

should not be permitted to harm them.

Ofcial proclamations of the Confederate government, and the tendency of

white people nationwide to hold black lives cheap, gave an especially vicious

edge to the war even though both Confederates and Colored Troops continued

to take prisoners at least as often as they killed surrendering enemies. Accounts

by other witnesses indicate that Chester may have arrived in Virginia just as

the spirit in the trenches was changing. The day before he led his dispatch,

Surgeon Merrill of the 22d USCI told his father: “We have a tacit truce on our

front—neither party disturbing the other.” On 10 September, Chaplain Turner

of the 1st USCI wrote to the Christian Recorder:

Having for some time heard that the colored and rebel pickets were exchang-

ing words, and that the venom to each other had somewhat ameliorated, I was

led to doubt its truthfulness from a previous knowledge of the uncompromis-

ing hostility they had hitherto cherished toward each other. But a short time

since, my regiment was ordered to the trenches, where their proximity to the

rebels was not more than a hundred yards. Here, to my great surprise, I saw the

rebels and the soldiers of my regiment, talking, laughing, exchanging papers,

tin-cups, tobacco, &c. Some of the rebels deserted and came into our lines,

and cursed the rebellion, and then they had a jolly time with our boys. I learn

that they are now acknowledging our soldiers as prisoners of war. This sudden

R. J. M. Blackett, ed., Thomas Morris Chester, Black Civil War Correspondent: His

Dispatches from the Virginia Front (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), pp.

38–39, 102–06, 109–10 (“Between the negroes”); R. N. Verplanck to Dear Mother, 8 Oct 1864,

Verplanck Letters. Sgt. Maj. C. A. Fleetwood, 4th USCI, recorded his encounters with Chester in

Fleetwood Diary, 5, 14, 17, 19, 23, 25, and 29 Oct 1864, and 8, 20, 29 Nov 1864.

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

372

transition, though, should be carefully watched; there is evidently some deep-

laid treachery at the bottom of so singular a move.

Despite Chaplain Turner’s misgivings, black soldiers and their enemies seem to

have come to terms in a way that is not uncommon in trench warfare. In December,

Chaplain Thomas S. Johnson of the 127th USCI wrote: “The enemy are on very friend-

ly terms, talking . . . to our videttes and advanced pickets. . . . Our pickets in front of

the works here are not more than two hundred paces from the rebs. . . . Last night

four came in our lines as deserters.” The friendly terms of which Johnson wrote did

not mean that Confederate deserters escaped black soldiers’ caustic wit. “As one [de-

serter] passed through our inner trench on his way to the rear,” Captain Bacon wrote, “a

somewhat facetious darkey ventured to suggest, rather to the Deserter’s chagrin ‘Well

Johnny! We’re all brothers now, ain’t we?’ which made the whole line roar.”

The lull that followed Grant’s failure to puncture the defenses of Richmond lasted

several weeks, until nearly the end of September. In the meantime, west of Richmond,

a Union army led by Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan beat Confederate forces decisively

in the Shenandoah Valley. Grain from the Valley had supplied Confederate armies dur-

ing three years of warfare, but Sheridan’s troops ended that and added to Lee’s increas-

ing worries. Five hundred miles to the southwest, General Sherman’s army occupied

Atlanta, giving a much-needed llip to President Lincoln’s chances of reelection.

In line with his policy of keeping all Union forces in motion at once and press-

ing the Confederacy simultaneously on several fronts, Grant decided to “make

another stir,” as he told his wife, around Richmond and Petersburg. According

to his plan, Butler’s Army of the James would attack north of the river, toward

Richmond, while to the south the Army of the Potomac would hold the Confeder-

ates around Petersburg in their trenches, unable to send reinforcements against the

main assault lest Union troops walk into the undefended rail center. One city or

the other, Grant told Butler, was apt to fall. Since quick movement was essential to

success, “the troops will go light,” carrying besides their ries only blanket rolls,

three days’ rations, and sixty rounds of ammunition per man. Wagons would fol-

low later with more rations and ammunition.

Enough regiments of U.S. Colored Troops had joined the siege by late Septem-

ber to form three small divisions. In the Army of the Potomac, Ferrero’s division of

the IX Corps included ve infantry regiments from the free states and four raised in

Merrill to Dear Father, 21 Aug 1864; Christian Recorder, 17 September 1864; Bacon to Dear

Kate, 26 Sep 1864 (“As one”). This incident seems to have occurred in the 29th Connecticut, for

both Bacon and 1st Lt. H. H. Brown, another ofcer in the regiment, mention it. H. H. Brown to Dear

Friends at Home, 21 Sep 1864, H. H. Brown Papers, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford. For

another instance of jests at prisoners’ expense, see Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The

Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 102. Bell I. Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank: The

Common Soldier of the Union (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952), pp. 354–56, gives instances of

fraternization between Confederates and white Union troops. On live-and-let-live in the First World

War, see John Keegan, The Face of Battle (New York: Viking Press, 1976), pp. 209–10; a veteran’s

recollections are in Robert Graves, Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography (London: Jonathan

Cape, 1929), pp. 134, 181–82, 245.

McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pp. 774–80.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 2, p. 1059 (“the troops”); Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, p. 380 (“make another”).

Virginia, May–October 1864

373

Maryland and Virginia. By some shufing of regiments in the Army of the James,

General William Birney became leader of a two-brigade division in the X Corps.

The nucleus of his division remained Col. James Shaw’s brigade, consisting of

the 7th, 8th, and 9th USCIs and the 29th Connecticut. In the XVIII Corps, the 4th

and 6th USCIs continued as Colonel Duncan’s brigade, while the 5th USCI found

itself brigaded with the 36th, from North Carolina, and the 38th, raised in Virginia,

all under command of Col. Alonzo G. Draper, formerly of the 36th. Duncan’s and

Draper’s brigades made up a division commanded by Brig. Gen. Charles J. Paine,

a Massachusetts soldier who had served in Butler’s 1862 expedition to Louisiana

and led a brigade at the siege of Port Hudson the year after. For the attack on Rich-

mond, Paine’s division would operate with the X Corps. This addition brought the

strength of the corps to some fourteen thousand men, about one-third of whom

were black.

On 24 September, Shaw’s brigade withdrew from the Union trenches around

Petersburg to spend ve days out of the line, a period of inspections and replac-

ing worn-out clothing and equipment. Ofcers spent time updating their company

accounts. A new regiment, the 45th USCI, joined the brigade from Philadelphia.

Rumors ew that transports in the James River would take a Union force to attack

Wilmington, North Carolina. In midafternoon of 28 September, the brigade as-

sembled and moved off by ts and starts along with the rest of the corps. By night-

fall, it was on the south bank of the James, waiting to cross a pontoon bridge that

engineers were just beginning to lay. Not until four the next morning did the col-

umn halt at Deep Bottom, on the north bank, fteen miles from its previous camp.

“Be ready to march at 4 A.M. were our orders,” wrote 1st Lt. Henry H. Brown of

the 29th Connecticut. “It was then after 4 but knowing that we would bring up the

rear we lay down & slept till 7. We then turned out[,] eat a few hard-tack but had

no time for coffee.”

The Confederate position lay along a road that ran southeast from Richmond

to New Market, between two and three miles north of the Union troops’ resting

place at Deep Bottom. Butler had assured his men that the garrison of Richmond

numbered no more than three thousand, of whom fewer than fteen hundred were

infantry capable of manning the trenches. The enemy’s weakness meant that there

was “no necessity of time spent in reconnoitering or taking special care of the

anks of the moving columns,” the condent general wrote. His estimate of the

total number of the city’s defenders fell short by half; facing his troops alone were

more than two thousand ries. Well before the sun rose at 6:00, the leading bri-

gades of the X Corps began to move toward the Confederate trenches.

In Paine’s division, on the left, some three hundred twenty ofcers and men of

the 4th USCI were awake in time to get coffee before advancing to attack. Followed

by the 6th USCI, roughly equal in strength, they moved through some woods that

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 2, pp. 617–22, and pt. 3, pp. 463–67; Dyer, Compendium, pp. 159,

247–50, 552; Heitman, Historical Register, p. 765.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, pp. 106, 772, 780, 793, and pt. 2, p. 1083; H. H. Brown to Dear

Friends at Home, 5 Oct 1864, Brown Papers; Longacre, Army of Amateurs, p. 211.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, pp. 702, 708, 715, and pt. 2, pp. 1083–84, 1087 (quotation), 1243. “Barely

6,000” is one authority’s tabulation of the total, with “nearly 2,900” of them facing Butler’s attack.

Richard J. Sommers, Richmond Redeemed: The Siege at Petersburg (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,

Union troops attack the Confederate line north of the James River, 29 September 1864, in this drawing by William Waud.

Virginia, May–October 1864

375

lined a creek, formed line in front of the Confederate trenches, and attacked. The de-

fenders met the assault with crushing re. “Charged with the 6th at daylight and got

used up,” Sergeant Major Fleetwood entered in his diary. “Saved colors.” Blocked by

barriers of felled trees and chevaux-de-frise, the Union survivors fell back, leaving

more than three hundred dead and wounded on the eld. “We were all cut to pieces,”

Capt. James H. Wickes of the 4th USCI wrote. “We got up to the second line of aba-

tis, . . . but by that time the line was so cut up that it was impossible to keep the men

any longer in their places. . . . I tried to force my men to make a dash over the work,

but there were [only] ve left out of the twenty-ve that I started up with, and they

gave way.” After the remnant of the regiment fell back through the woods, only 3 of

8 ofcers and 75 of 325 enlisted men answered roll call.

Five days after the battle, Wickes was able to tell a more connected story:

It happened that when the advance was rst made along the whole line Thursday

morning, our regiment led the assault against the works where the enemy most

expected an attack. We advanced about ve hundred yards under a terric re of

1981), p. 17. Another writes that the force opposed to Butler was “barely 2000.” Douglas S. Freeman,

R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934–1935), 3: 500.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, p. 136; Field Return, 28 Sep 1864, Entry 1659, 3d Div, XVIII Corps,

LS, pt. 2, RG 393, NA; Fleetwood Diary, 29 Sep 1864; J. H. Wickes to My dear Father, 2 Oct 1864,

J. H. Wickes Papers, Boston [Mass.] Public Library; Sommers, Richmond Redeemed, pp. 31–35.

Terrain across which Union troops attacked on 29 September 1864. The trees in the

distance mark the Confederate position, as shown also in the William Waud drawing.

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

376

musketry. . . . The whole line seemed to wilt down under the fearful re. . . . A

few of our men red their pieces—this was against orders, as we were to charge

with xed bayonets, without ring a shot. This led others to re too, and then they

stopped to load again[;] this was just what we tried to avoid, for it was death to

us to halt in that place. I shouted to my men to push forward without loading, but

my voice could not be heard. The line was growing to[o] weak and thin to make

an assault. It began to waver and fall back. I did not leave till I found not a man on

my part of the line to back me and then I retreated too.

It may be that the Confederates weakened neighboring parts of their line in

order to withstand this attack, for as it was going on some veteran regiments of the

division, on Paine’s right, were able to seize the enemy trenches in front of them

while suffering fty-seven killed, wounded, and missing.

The next brigade in Paine’s column was Draper’s, three regiments that elded

about 1,375 ofcers and men. Paine allowed an hour to pass before he sent Draper

into action at 8:00 a.m. “When we received the order we were lying . . . in a deep

ravine,” wrote Lieutenant Scroggs of the 5th USCI. Along with the 36th and 38th

USCIs, the 5th moved forward in a column two companies wide and ve deep, to

within ve hundred yards of the Confederate trenches.

At the word “Charge” we moved forward at a double quick in good order: a

thick jungle on our way deranged our ranks slightly . . . but [the men] pressed

forward. . . . The color bearer was killed on one side of me and my orderly Sergt.

wounded on the other, two of my Sergts killed and my company seemingly an-

nihilated, yet on we went through the double line of abatis, and over their works.

. . . The rebels retreated rapidly and we secured but few prisoners. We continued

the pursuit a short distance then halted to reform the battalion. On getting my

Co. (H) together I found I had lost 18 in killed and wounded . . . out of 50 the

number I started with in the morning.

Instead of advancing with both his brigades or using one in close support,

Paine had put them in sequentially, each seemingly without reference to the other.

Shaw’s brigade stayed in reserve most of the morning. “I thought at rst we were

to assault the works we knew must be in front of us,” Lieutenant Brown wrote, “but

we stacked arms & lay down to rest.” Later in the morning, the brigade moved for-

ward to the Confederate position that Paine’s division had just stormed. “Here we

rested, lled our canteens & as soon [as] the road was cleared for us moved around

to the breastworks,” Brown continued. “Here we again rested till the Artillery &

Cavalry might pass.” So Shaw’s brigade spent the morning.

Having taken the heights, the X Corps moved northwest in the direction of Rich-

mond. By midafternoon, advanced regiments in one division of the X Corps were

able to set eyes on the city itself, only three miles distant. There they halted for the

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, pp. 133, 708, 713; J. H. Wickes to My dear Father, 4 Oct 1864, Wickes

Papers.

Scroggs Diary, 29 Sep 1864; Field Return, 28 Sep 1864, Entry 1659, pt. 2, RG 393, NA.

Brown to Dear Friends at Home, 5 Oct 1864.

Virginia, May–October 1864

377

rest of the day, too few to push on without support. Meanwhile, the other division of

the corps reached a point just south of the New Market Road, about four miles north-

west of the Confederate trenches captured that morning. From its new position, the

division was to attack Fort Gilmer, a Confederate bastion in the line of Richmond’s

outer defenses. It approached the fort from the north while Shaw’s brigade, led by

its divisional commander, General William Birney, moved against it from the east.

Birney held the untested 45th USCI and 29th Connecticut in reserve, in a

position from which they could watch part of the attack. “The Balles did whistle

aroun our heads dreadfulley,” Sgt. Joseph O. Cross of the 29th Connecticut told

his wife. “Wee all expected that it was our last time. . . . [W]ee had orders to drop

under abank in which w[e] did very freeley and glad to get off so wee Just set

their & look at the woonded men as they passed By.” The other three regiments

of the brigade, the 7th, 8th, and 9th USCIs, each sent four companies forward

to the attack at about 2:00 p.m. Under artillery and rie re, they crossed open

ground that Captain Brown of the 29th Connecticut gauged at half a mile in

width. The survivors plunged into a ditch at the base of the wall. Seeing what was

happening to the rst four companies of the 8th USCI, the major commanding

the regiment refused to commit his remaining companies without a direct order;

Birney told him to stay where he was. Captain Brown, from his position in the

reserve, was able to see what happened to the attacking party of the 9th: “They

climb upon each others shoulders & some few off them thus enter the fort but the

rebs have been reinforced & they must not ever hope for success. . . . [W]e heard

[the Confederates] picking them off with their ries till dark when all who were

not able to escape were taken.” The afternoon’s work cost the brigade 35 killed,

243 wounded, and 152 missing.

Reports from Birney’s subordinates agree that their attack began at about

2:00 p.m., while reports from the division that approached from the north in-

dicate two assaults on that side between about 1:35 and 3:00. Within three

weeks, Birney and Colonel Shaw began quarreling about which of them bore

responsibility for the failed assault. They maintained the dispute for the rest

of their lives. The lack of coordination in the afternoon attacks on Fort Gilmer

was similar to General Paine’s sequential assaults on the Confederate trench-

es earlier in the day. Such ineptitude was not limited to the leaders of black

troops: one of the XVIII Corps generals, along with his division, got lost as

well that morning in some woods between the James River bridgehead and

the division’s objective. A greater proportion of men with no military back-

ground—and without much aptitude for conducting operations—seems to have

risen to higher rank in General Butler’s Army of the James than in most other

Union eld armies. Even if more troops had been available to Butler’s generals

on 29 September, there was little chance that they would have moved quickly

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, p. 708; Sommers, Richmond Redeemed, pp. 93–94.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, pp. 134, 772–75, 780–81, and pt. 3, p. 253–54; Kelly Nolin, ed.,

“The Civil War Letters of J. O. Cross,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 60 (1995): 211–35

(quotation, p. 220); Brown to Dear Friends at Home, 5 Oct 1864; Sommers, Richmond Redeemed,

pp. 83–93.

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

378

enough or attacked with sufcient vigor to break through the Confederate lines

and occupy Richmond.

Sergeant Major Fleetwood’s terse diary entry, “Charged . . . at daylight and got

used up. Saved colors,” contained a catch phrase that could mean “took heavy ca-

sualties” as well as “became depleted” or “exhausted.” A set of colors consisted of

one national ag and one distinctive regimental ag. When Sgt. Alfred B. Hilton,

carrying the national color of the 4th USCI, saw the regimental standard-bearer

shot, he picked up that ag, too, “and struggled forward with both . . . , until dis-

abled by a severe wound at the enemy’s inner line,” an ofcer wrote. Fleetwood

then took the national color, and Pvt. Charles Veal the regimental color, and they

carried them through the rest of the ght. On 6 April 1865, Fleetwood, Hilton,

and Veal were awarded Medals of Honor. Hilton’s was one of the few posthumous

awards in the nineteenth century; his wound necessitated amputation of his right

leg, and he died three weeks afterward.

Theirs were among twelve Medals of Honor earned by the men of Paine’s

division on 29 September. Sgt. Maj. Milton M. Holland, Sgt. Powhatan Beaty,

Sgt. James H. Bronson, and Sgt. Robert Pinn each received a medal for taking

command of a company of the 5th USCI when eight of the regiment’s ofcers

were wounded. In the middle of the battle, “we got mixed,” Pinn wrote in a letter

supporting Bronson’s pension application.

Bronson then personally in command of his Co. passed me I then saw . . . blood

on the calf of his left leg, . . . noticed that he limped and sup[p]orted himself on

his gun in answer to me he said he had been struck by a piece of a shell—This all

took place in less time than it takes to write it, there was no time then to more than

glance at a wounded man, as I was personally in command of my company and

was suffering severely from two wounds, was soon after wounded a third time.

In the 6th USCI, 1st Sgt. Alexander Kelly “seized the colors, which had fallen

near the enemy’s inner line . . . , raised them, and rallied the men, at a time of confu-

sion and a place of the greatest possible danger,” his citation read. Pvt. William H.

Barnes and 1st Sgt. Edward Ratcliff had been among the rst men of Company C,

38th USCI, to enter the Confederate trenches in their part of the line. Pvt. James

Gardner of the 36th USCI “shot a rebel ofcer, who was on the parapet cheering his

men, and then ran him through with his bayonet.” In the same regiment, Cpl. Miles

James “loaded and discharged his piece with one hand” after being wounded in the

arm, “and urged his men forward . . . within 30 yards of the enemy’s works.” These

soldiers’ acts were of the kind for which most Medals of Honor were awarded during

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, pp. 761, 767, 769, 772, 774, 793–94; Longacre, Army of Amateurs,

p. xi. A specimen of the Birney-Shaw controversy is William Birney, General William Birney’s

Answer to Libels Clandestinely Circulated by James Shaw, Jr. . . . (Washington, D.C.: privately

printed, 1878).

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 3, p. 169; U.S. Department of the Army, The Medal of Honor of

the United States Army (Washington, D.C. Government Printing Ofce, 1948), 174–75; Butler

Correspondence, 5: 622.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, p. 136; R. A. Pinn to Commissioner of Pensions, 14 Mar 1883, in

Pension File SO343751, James H. Bronson, CWPAF.

Virginia, May–October 1864

379

the Civil War: saving the regiment’s

colors or capturing the enemy’s, being

the rst to enter the enemy’s position,

or refusing to leave the ght after be-

ing wounded.

The men whose awards came in

April 1865 were the rst black soldiers

to be honored with a military decora-

tion. A few others received medals

after the war. In November 1865, Sgt.

Decatur Dorsey of the 39th USCI re-

ceived one for bravery at the Peters-

burg Crater fteen months earlier. His

medal was one of only four awarded

for that battle until long after the war.

Sgt. James H. Harris of the 38th USCI

distinguished himself on 29 Septem-

ber but did not receive a medal for his

actions until 1874, although his name

appeared in the same orders as those

of the other men. Sgt. William H. Car-

ney of the 54th Massachusetts had to

wait until 1900 to be decorated for his

bravery at Fort Wagner in July 1863.

Sgt. Andrew J. Smith of the 55th Mas-

sachusetts received a medal as recently

as 2001. Such delays were not unusual

in the nineteenth century. Criteria for

award of the Medal of Honor have

changed over the years; a survey of 121

medals awarded for valor at Gettys-

burg, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania

Court House shows that sixty-nine of

them, or 57 percent, were issued dur-

ing the 1890s.

It is obvious that all of the medals awarded to black soldiers during the war

stemmed from one action and went to men of the 3d Division, XVIII Corps, in

General Butler’s Army of the James. None of the medals for New Market Heights

went to members of the black division of the X Corps. This is not surprising, for

only three of the seventeen medals awarded to white troops for the action went

to X Corps soldiers. Butler undertook his own project to overcome discrimina-

tion against black troops. He designed a medal with the motto ferro iis libertas

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 3, pp. 168 (“shot a”), 169 (“seized”); Department of the Army, Medal

of Honor, p. 176 (“loaded and”).

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 3, p. 169; Department of the Army, Medal of Honor, pp. 137–43,

151–52, 154–57, 166.

Christian A. Fleetwood in an undated

photograph taken long after the war. He

wears the uniform of an ofcer in the

Washington, D.C., militia and the Medal of

Honor awarded him for saving the colors of

the 4th U.S. Colored Infantry at New Market

Heights, 29 September 1864.

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

380

perveniet (“freedom attained by the sword”), and may have distributed as many

as two hundred of them. Yet geographical as well as racial factors were at work in

the distribution of decorations. Soldiers in Virginia received the vast majority of

medals. Not one went to a soldier who took part in the disastrous Red River Expe-

dition, or the defeat at Brice’s Crossroads, Mississippi, or the victory at Tupelo, all

in 1864. The crushing Union victory at Nashville in December of that year resulted

in the issuance of fourteen medals the following February. The successful assault

on Fort Blakely, at Mobile, in April 1865, brought only six medals two months

afterward, although eight more were recommended and awarded in later years.

General Grant himself had come from City Point, across the James River, to

watch the attack on 29 September. Although he was impressed by the strength of

the Confederate positions that Union troops captured, he concluded by midday

that the Union advance was not sufciently rapid to reach Richmond before dark

or numerous enough to hold the city. “If our troops do not reach Richmond this

afternoon,” he told Butler, it might be best to withdraw those farthest in advance,

and to select a defensible line “now.” With the attack stalled in front of Fort Gilmer,

Butler’s men began to dig in opposite the Confederate trenches. Sporadic coun-

terattacks, which seldom involved the black regiments, ceased by mid-October.

Another episode of the great siege began.

Throughout October, daytime temperatures, which had reached the mid-

eighties during the battle of 29 September, gradually cooled. The second week of

the month brought the rst perceptible frost. And on 18 October, a new regiment

of Colored Troops, the 117th USCI, arrived at City Point. It was the rst regi-

ment of black soldiers to report from a reservoir of manpower that the Lincoln

administration had long been reluctant to tap: the slaveholding but unseceded

state of Kentucky.

Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benj. F.

Butler (Boston: A. M. Thayer, 1892), pp. 742–43; Department of the Army, Medal of Honor, pp.

166–68, 181–82, 202–03.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, p. 20, and pt. 2, pp. 1090–92, 1110 (quotation); Sommers, Richmond

Redeemed, pp. 418–19.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 3, p. 269; Lt Col S. B. Lawrence to Brig Gen H. H. Lockwood, 15 Oct

1864, 117th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA; Krick, Civil War Weather, pp. 140–41.