Dobak William A. Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862-1867 (ENG)
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The last state in which the Union recruited black troops was Kentucky. Stretch-
ing from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River, Kentucky touches
the boundaries of seven other states. Two of these, Tennessee and Virginia, had
joined the Confederacy; two others, Missouri and West Virginia, maintained slav-
ery but stayed in the Union; and three—Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio—were free
states. Kentucky’s neighbors, therefore, reached from Norfolk, Virginia, to St. Jo-
seph, Missouri; from Chattanooga to Chicago; from Cleveland to Memphis. North
or South, whichever side held Kentucky could strike at its opponent from several
different directions. For good reason then, Abraham Lincoln told a condant dur-
ing the rst autumn of the war: “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to
lose the whole game.”
1
The federal census of 1860 counted 38,645 slaveholding Kentuckians in the
state’s white population of 919,517. Their human property amounted to 225,483
persons. Slaves—and nearly all black Kentuckians were enslaved—accounted for
20 percent of the state’s population. Most of them lived in the fertile western and
central parts of the state, where production of grains, hemp, livestock, and tobacco
made their employment protable.
2
The sheer number of slaveholding whites in Kentucky—more than in any
other state but Virginia and Georgia—imposed extreme caution on Union poli-
cymakers during the early months of the war. The governor refused to answer
Lincoln’s call for militia in the spring of 1861, and the legislature declared
the state’s neutrality. Only in September, after a Confederate army fortied
Columbus, Kentucky, which commanded navigation on the Mississippi, did
federal troops cross the Ohio River and occupy towns at the mouths of the
Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. Seven months later, they had moved up
both rivers, occupied Nashville, and beaten back attacking Confederates at
Pittsburg Landing, near the Mississippi state line. In October 1862, some of
1
William L. Miller, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman (New York: Knopf, 2008), p.
110.
2
U.S. Census Bureau, Population of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Ofce, 1864), p. 181, and Agriculture of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Ofce, 1864), p. 229; Sam B. Hilliard, Atlas of Antebellum Southern
Agriculture (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1984), pp. 34, 36–38, 49–50, 52, 54, 59,
61–62, 66–67, 73–77.
Kentucky, North Carolina
and Virginia, 1864–1865
Chapter 12
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
382
the same troops ended the last major invasion of Kentucky when they defeated
a Confederate force at Perryville. Although mounted raiders remained active
until the end of the war, never again did they pose a signicant threat to Union
occupation of the state.
3
When federal troops abandoned their advanced posts in northern Alabama
during the fall of 1862 and hurried north to intercept the invasion of Kentucky,
they brought with them thousands of black refugees from slavery in parts of
the South that the Union could no longer hold. White Kentuckians leaped at
the chance to reenslave the new arrivals. Local authorities arrested those who
strayed too far from the protection offered by Northern soldiers, who by this
time in the war often practiced emancipation, even though they might disagree
with it in theory. In Kentucky, black people without passes faced jail and the
auction block. By April 1863, the military Department of the Ohio, which ad-
ministered all but the westernmost part of the state, had to issue an order on
3
Ira Berlin et al., eds., The Destruction of Slavery (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1985), p. 493; Richard M. McMurry, The Fourth Battle of Winchester: Toward a New Civil War
Paradigm (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2002), pp. 93–96; James M. McPherson, Battle
Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 516–22.
An 1859 map shows the central position of Kentucky between two future Confederate
states, Tennessee and Virginia, and four that remained in the Union, Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, and Missouri. Lincoln is reputed (but not proven) to have quipped, “I hope to
have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.”
Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia, 1864–1865
383
the subject and act to stop the abuse. Having found and freed for a second time
perhaps as many as a thousand of these former slaves, military authorities put
the adults among them to work, the men laboring on construction projects and
the women in army hospitals.
4
By early 1864, with a few dozen black regiments having already taken the eld
in other parts of the South, black Kentuckians’ contribution to the Union war effort
was still restricted to the role of civilian laborers, repairing roads between federal
garrisons in the state or laying track for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.
Black men who wanted to enlist rst had to escape from bondage and then make
their way to the western tip of Kentucky, which lay in the Department of the Ten-
nessee, or leave the state altogether. More than two thousand of them went south to
Tennessee for that purpose. Others crossed the Ohio River to Northern states where
the War Department was also raising black regiments.
5
In the course of a trip to organize Colored Troops west of the Appalachians,
Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas had stopped for a few days in January at
Frankfort to confer with leading politicians. “My presence at the State capital
was the occasion of quite an excitement among all classes, male and female,”
he told Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, “the opinion being fully expressed
that I could only be there to take their negroes from them and put arms in their
hands.” Thomas suggested that since the state’s black men were enlisting in other
states and being credited toward the draft quotas of those states, Kentucky might
be well advised to raise a few black regiments of its own. The people he talked
to did not care for that idea but appeared less agitated by the end of his visit, he
told Stanton.
6
The Enrollment Act of 24 February 1864 changed everything. An amend-
ment to the act that had instituted conscription one year earlier, it specied that
male slaves, even those of loyal masters, for the rst time became eligible for the
draft. Opposition ared at once in Kentucky, even though the act did not propose
to take any slaves unless a state failed to meet its quota of white volunteers.
The most notorious display of disaffection came on 10 March, when Col. Frank
Wolford of the 1st Kentucky Cavalry addressed an audience that had gathered to
present him with an award for service to the Union cause, urging “the duty of the
people of Kentucky to resist” the measure. Two weeks later, Wolford received a
dishonorable discharge without a trial. The governor likewise advised forcible
resistance to the registration of slaves for the draft. He was about to issue a proc-
lamation to that effect but relented after an all-night conference with Brig. Gen.
Stephen G. Burbridge, who commanded the District of Kentucky. Meanwhile,
guerrillas continued to be active in many parts of the state, and in April raiders
4
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, vol. 23,
pt. 2, p. 287 (hereafter cited as OR); Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The
End of Slavery in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), pp. 78–79; Ira Berlin et al., eds.,
The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Upper South (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1993), pp. 628–30 (hereafter cited as WGFL: US).
5
OR, ser. 1, vol. 32, pt. 2, p. 479; Ira Berlin et al., eds., The Black Military Experience (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 191–92.
6
OR, ser. 3, 4: 60.
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
384
led by Confederate Maj. Gen. Nathan B. Forrest penetrated as far north as Pa-
ducah, on the Ohio River, before returning south.
7
With so much controversy and turmoil, it is no wonder that the rst attempt
to enforce the February 1864 Enrollment Act in Kentucky failed. The next month,
more drafted men ignored or evaded the summons than answered it. General Bur-
bridge set to work to supply the decit. That he was a native Kentuckian and a slave-
holder typied Lincoln’s kid-glove approach to Kentucky, where three-quarters of
the Union troops in garrison belonged to regiments raised in the state. Despite his
local ties or any personal inclinations he may have had, Burbridge announced on
18 April that the War Department had named him superintendent of recruiting in
Kentucky and set forth the rules for enrolling black recruits: a slave could enlist
only with his owner’s consent; the owner would receive a certicate entitling him
to as much as four hundred dollars’ compensation for each slave enlisted. Once
sworn in, slaves would travel to a central depot at Louisville and from there “with
all possible dispatch” to “the nearest rendezvous or camp of instruction outside
of the State.” Burbridge repeated this provision in the last paragraph of the order.
Stanton called the repetition superuous but approved the rest of the order and di-
rected that Kentucky recruits go to Nashville, where Capt. Reuben D. Mussey was
organizing black regiments in the Department of the Cumberland.
8
In a state with Kentucky’s turbulent history during the previous three years,
the response of prospective black recruits to the federal initiative was quick and
enthusiastic. By the rst week in June, three hundred forty of them had reached
Mussey’s headquarters in Nashville, so many that he asked Stanton for authority
to increase the number of recruiters and to set up receiving centers in Kentucky
rather than ship recruits outside the state. A week later, Adjutant General Thomas
authorized the increase of recruiters and the establishment of eight camps, with
Camp Nelson, some twenty miles south of Lexington, receiving recruits from two
of the state’s nine congressional districts. Before the end of the month, General
Burbridge reported that ve regiments could be ready “in a very short time” if the
War Department would name the ofcers. According to Thomas, eighteen hundred
recruits had arrived at Louisville and Camp Nelson and awaited assignment to
regiments.
9
Many would-be volunteers headed for the nearest army camp without observ-
ing the legal requirement by obtaining their owners’ permission. Recruiting of-
cers accepted some of them, but those who could not pass the physical examination
and had to return home faced whippings and other physical punishment, including
mutilation. Moreover, the families of men who were able to convince recruiters to
accept them also found themselves facing ill treatment. Because of these “cruel-
7
OR, ser. 1, vol. 32, pt. 3, pp. 88, 132–33, 146–47, 172–73, 418; ser. 3, 4: 132, 146, 174–75.
WGFL: US, p. 625; James W. Geary, We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War (DeKalb:
Northern Illinois University Press, 1991), pp. 64, 130–31; Victor B. Howard, Black Liberation in
Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 1862–1884 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,
1983), pp. 57–62 (quotation, p. 58).
8
OR, ser. 1, vol. 32, pt. 3, p. 572; ser. 3, 4: 132, 233–34 (quotations), 248–49. Howard, Black
Liberation in Kentucky, p. 63. An account of Mussey’s efforts in Tennessee is in Chapter 7, above.
9
OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 2, p. 140 (quotation); ser. 3, 4: 423, 429–30, 460. Howard, Black
Liberation in Kentucky, pp. 65–67.
Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia, 1864–1865
385
ties,” Burbridge was able to urge successfully, early in June, that recruiters be au-
thorized to accept any man who presented himself for enlistment. Those who were
not t for operations in the eld could perform garrison duty in an “invalid” regi-
ment composed of men with similar disabilities, like others in service elsewhere
in the South. The 63d and 64th United States Colored Infantries (USCIs) were
already guarding plantations along the Mississippi River, and the 42d and 100th
USCIs were performing guard and garrison duties at Chattanooga and Nashville.
10
Although the Army eventually set up camps to house soldiers’ dependents,
slaveholders’ abuse of the earliest recruits’ families slowed the pace of enlistment
during late spring. By summer, Burbridge found it necessary to send recruiting
parties through the state, as authorities in Tennessee had had to do a year earlier.
These groups faced active opposition. At Covington, across the Ohio River from
Cincinnati, the ofcer commanding the 117th USCI reported that a “small squad”
of his men led by a sergeant suffered one wounded and “several captured” in late
July. The next month, the size of recruiting parties had increased, by order, to no
fewer than fty men. An expedition through Shelby County, halfway between Lou-
isville and the state capital, required three hundred fty. Larger, well-armed parties
were better able to defend themselves against the “marauding Bands” mounted on
“eet Horses” that operated in most parts of Kentucky. Seventy men of the 108th
USCI routed a group of about sixty guerrillas northeast of Owensboro in mid-Au-
gust, wounding seven and capturing nine of them. Within three weeks, the ofcer
of the 118th USCI who commanded the garrison at Owensboro reported the mur-
der of three of his men by guerrillas. Despite such violent opposition, a recruiter
at Henderson, an Ohio River town some twenty-ve miles west of Owensboro,
reported enlisting “from forty to sixty men daily.” By mid-September, Adjutant
General Thomas was able to tell the secretary of war that fourteen thousand black
Kentuckians had joined the Army.
11
General Burbridge wanted to mount two of his new black regiments and use
them to hunt guerrillas. He spoke of this to Brig. Gen. Joseph Holt, the judge advo-
cate general, who happened to be in Louisville and sent an enthusiastic telegram to
the secretary of war: “These regiments, composed of men almost raised . . . on horse-
back, of uncompromising loyalty, and having an intimate knowledge of the topog-
raphy of the country, would prove a powerful instrumentality in ridding the state of
those guerrilla bands of robbers and murderers which now infest and oppress almost
every part of it.” After conferring with Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Stanton wrote back
to suggest that mounted infantry might prove a more versatile force than cavalry.
He approved Burbridge’s proposal to mount the troops on horses conscated from
disloyal owners. Despite Stanton’s suggestion, Burbridge went ahead and organized
10
OR, ser. 3, 4: 422 (quotations); Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion
(New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1959 [1908]), pp. 1731, 1733–34, 1738; Berlin et al., Black Military
Experience, pp. 193–96; Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky, p. 64.
11
OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, p. 492; ser. 3, 4: 733. Col L. G. Brown to Capt J. B. Dickson, 23 Jul
1864, 117th United States Colored Infantry (USCI); Lt Col J. H. Hammond to Col W. H. Revere, 30
Aug 1864, and 30 Aug 1864, both in 107th USCI; Capt J. L. Bullis to Maj Gen S. G. Burbridge, 17
Sep 1864 (quotations), 118th USCI; Capt J. C. Cowin to 1st Lt T. J. Neal, 17 Aug 1864, 108th USCI;
all in Entry 57C, Regimental Papers, Record Group (RG) 94, Rcds of the Adjutant General’s Ofce,
National Archives (NA).
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
386
two twelve-company regiments of cavalry, the 5th and 6th United States Colored
Cavalries (USCCs). Adjutant General Thomas saw several companies of the 5th at
Lexington in mid-September. “The men are all selected with reference to weight and
riding qualities,” he told Stanton. “This will make one of the very best regiments in
the service.”
12
Although the 5th USCC was not completely mustered in by late September
1864, it was one of the rst of the new black regiments from Kentucky to go into
action. Earlier that month, some of General Burbridge’s white regiments “utterly
routed and dispersed” an unusually large band of guerrillas, estimated at more than
one hundred fty men, that had recently murdered “a squad of 8 or 10 colored
troops” near Ghent, halfway between Louisville and Cincinnati. With the threat of
irregular warfare somewhat abated, Burbridge turned his attention to a large salt-
works across the state line in southwestern Virginia. Saltville, the closest town, lay
near the tracks of the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad, the only line through
the mountains between Harpers Ferry and Chattanooga. It connected with other
roads that led east to Richmond and carried the saltworks’ product to the Confed-
erate Army of Northern Virginia. When word of this project reached Atlanta, Maj.
Gen. William T. Sherman scoffed, “I doubt the necessity your sending far into
Virginia to destroy the salt works, or any other material interest; we must destroy
their armies.” At that point in the war, Sherman’s Military Division of the Missis-
sippi included all the territory south of the Ohio River between the Appalachians
and the Mississippi River and stood two organizational levels above the District of
Kentucky. Nonetheless, Burbridge continued to plan his attack on Saltville.
13
On 20 September, a division that included nine regiments of Kentucky cavalry
and mounted infantry and one cavalry regiment each from Michigan and Ohio left
Mount Sterling, Kentucky. A four-day march brought it to Prestonburg, some nine-
ty miles to the southeast. There, a mixed force of some six hundred hastily armed
and mounted black recruits joined it. The new troops had just covered more than
one hundred miles from Camp Nelson. Col. James S. Brisbin, commanding ofcer
of the 5th USCC, called these men “a detachment” of his regiment, although an
ofcer of the 6th USCC led them and they included recruits of the 116th USCI as
well. On 27 September, the column continued toward Virginia. Brisbin complained
of the abuse that his men suffered from the overwhelmingly Kentuckian white
troops of the command, “petty outrages, such as . . . stealing their horses, . . . as
well as the jeers and taunts that they would not ght.”
14
As the federal column drew closer to its objective, it met some slight opposi-
tion from a small Confederate cavalry brigade. The troopers of the 5th USCC,
one Confederate wrote, were “the rst [black soldiers] we ever met.” The colonel
commanding the brigade with which the regiment marched mentioned only two
exchanges of shots, although General Burbridge claimed to have fought all the way
12
OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 2, pp. 208 (“These regiments”), 231; ser. 3, 4: 733 (“The men”).
13
OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 2, pp. 323 (“a squad”), 335, 341, 360 (“utterly routed”), 447 (“I
doubt”); NA Microlm Pub M594, Compiled Rcds Showing Svc of Mil Units in Volunteer Union
Organizations, roll 204, 5th United States Colored Cavalry (USCC).
14
OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 553, 556–57 (quotations, pp. 556–57), and pt. 2, p. 436; NA M594,
roll 204, 5th USCC; George S. Burkhardt, Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath: No Quarter in the
Civil War (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007), p. 194.
Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia, 1864–1865
387
“from the Virginia line up to the salt works.” By 2 October, local militia and rein-
forcements brought by rail had increased the defenders’ numbers to about twenty-
eight hundred, more than half the strength of the attacking force. That morning,
the Union column approached the North Fork of the Holston River. Saltville lay
behind a range of hills on the south bank.
15
Seeing the Confederate position about halfway up the slope, the Union troops
moved forward that morning with the 5th USCC on the extreme left of the line.
The black recruits “behaved well for new troops,” the division commander wrote
afterward. By afternoon, Union attackers had occupied most of the enemy position
but soon found themselves with empty cartridge boxes. General Burbridge did not
explain his failure to provide enough ammunition for this, his pet project. As dark-
ness fell, the federal troopers withdrew as quietly as possible, leaving the saltworks
largely undamaged. They marched all night, putting as much distance as possible
between themselves and the enemy.
16
Just what happened after the battle is hard to determine. “Nearly all the
wounded were brought off, though we had not an ambulance in the command,”
Colonel Brisbin reported. “The negro soldiers preferred present suffering to being
murdered at the hands of a cruel enemy.” The chief medical ofcer, on the other
hand, claimed to be able to give only an estimate of casualties because four of the
surgeons who accompanied the expedition had stayed behind on the eld with the
wounded. What gures he was able to offer showed clearly that the 5th USCC and
the Michigan and Ohio regiments brigaded with it had the hardest ght, suffering
129 killed and wounded, more than two-thirds of the attacking force’s casualties.
Fifty-three men in the 5th USCC constituted more than half the total of missing for
the entire division. This gure probably reected the troops’ inexperience, since
some of those missing found their way back to the regiment later in the war.
17
Confederates certainly murdered some of the wounded they found after the
battle, even invading their own hospitals to do it. Kentucky guerrillas who joined
forces temporarily with the defenders of Saltville committed a number of these
acts; their leader, a notorious gure named Champ Ferguson, shot several wounded
soldiers, black and white, including a Unionist Kentucky ofcer. A spirit of rage
against Unionist Southerners, whom General Forrest called “renegade[s]” and
“Tories,” moved Confederate Kentuckians at Saltville, as it had Forrest’s troopers
at Fort Pillow nearly six months earlier. Viewed by the Confederates as merely
rebellious slaves, black soldiers were an equally inviting target. One of the Union
surgeons who stayed behind with the wounded mentioned that seven black soldiers
were murdered in Confederate hospitals. Left on the eld, other wounded also died,
but their number is uncertain. The day after the ght, a Confederate ofcer noted
in his diary, “Great numbers of them were killed yesterday and today,” although it
is not clear whether he based this remark on hearsay, the sound of indiscriminate
ring after the battle, or personal observation. Another Confederate’s reminiscence
15
OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, p. 552 (“from the”); Thomas D. Mays, “The Battle of Saltville,”
in Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era, ed. John David Smith
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), pp. 200–226 (“the rst,” p. 210).
16
OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 552–53, 556 (quotation).
17
Ibid., pp. 553–54, 557 (“Nearly all”); Mays, “Battle of Saltville,” p. 218.
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
388
of a wounded trooper nimble enough to dodge, so that it took two shots to kill him,
is at odds with Colonel Brisbin’s insistence that every man who was able to move
by himself accompanied the Union retreat.
18
Saltville was the largest expedition that black troops from Kentucky took
part in west of the Appalachians. From October 1864 to the end of the war,
military activity in the state took the form of constant patrols and infrequent but
sometimes fatal clashes with guerrillas. The two cavalry and four heavy artil-
lery regiments raised in Kentucky did not leave the state; most of the seventeen
infantry regiments did.
19
When Burbridge returned to his headquarters at Lexington on 9 October, he
found Adjutant General Thomas there making arrangements to move some of the
new black regiments to Virginia. At Covington and Louisville, ofcers and men
of these regiments boarded steamboats for travel to one of the West Virginia river
ports, Wheeling or Parkersburg. From there, they moved to Baltimore by rail.
The last leg of the journey was again by water, down the Chesapeake Bay to Fort
Monroe and City Point. Five organizations from Kentucky—the 107th, 109th,
116th, 117th, and 118th USCIs—were in Virginia by the end of the month. The
Union’s ability at this stage of the war to raise ve regiments in as many months
and ship them hundreds of miles to where it meant to use them was a vivid dis-
play of its superiority to the Confederacy in men and machinery. Although black
soldiers in the eld, nationwide, did not number as many as ninety thousand until
January 1865, their presence in the trenches of Virginia, along railroads west of
the Appalachians, and at Mississippi River garrisons was a powerful inuence on
the outcome of the war.
20
The new arrivals found themselves assigned to General Butler’s Army of the
James. Lt. Col. John Pierson of the 109th USCI found this a pleasant change from
Kentucky. “The Colored Troops are as much thought of here by the white soldiers
and ofcers as any men in this Department and treated as well,” he told his daugh-
ter, “and all that I have seen seems glad to see us come and the white Regiments are
anxious to have us Brigaded with them they say the Darkies are Bully fellows to
ght and all the predjudice seems to be gone Ofcers of colored men are as much
thought of as any.” Some old hands in the Army of the James took a more critical
view. “Those . . . new regiments are perfect donkeys,” 2d Lt. Joseph M. Califf of
the 7th USCI wrote in his diary just one day after Pierson addressed his daughter,
“not only with regard to picket [duty] but almost every thing else military.”
21
There can be no doubt that the men of the Kentucky regiments arrived in Vir-
ginia with little grasp of a soldier’s duties; they had few ofcers to instruct them.
General Thomas lled the regiments destined for Virginia with recruits and reas-
18
OR, ser. 1, vol. 32, pt. 1, pp. 607 (“renegade[s]”), 610 (“Tories”); vol. 39, pt. 1, p. 554. Mays,
“Battle of Saltville,” pp. 212 (“Great numbers”), 214–16.
19
OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 857–58, 876; vol. 45, pt. 1, p. 876; vol. 49, pt. 1, pp. 9, 49. NA
M594, roll 204, 6th USCC; roll 212, 72d USCI; roll 217, 121st USCI.
20
OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 3, pp. 157, 200, 219. Monthly mean strength of “Colored Troops in the
United States Army” from The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 2 vols. in 6
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Ofce, 1870–1888), vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 664–65, 684–85, 704–05.
21
J. Pierson to Dear Daugter [sic], 30 Oct 1864, J. Pierson Letters, Clements Library, University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor; J. M. Califf Diary, 31 Oct 1864, Historians les, U.S. Army Center of
Military History (CMH).
Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia, 1864–1865
389
signed to them a few ofcers from regiments that were to stay in Kentucky a while
longer. He could do nothing, though, about ofcers who failed, for whatever rea-
son, to report at all. All ve of the ten-company regiments from Kentucky arrived
in Virginia lacking at least one-fourth of the captains and lieutenants that each
required to reach full strength.
22
Maj. Edward W. Bacon joined the 117th USCI in January 1865. Two months
later, he observed “considerable improvement in the command, but much remains
to be done before it reaches even tolerable prociency.” Sickness had reduced the
regiment’s strength to below the minimum number necessary to muster in new of-
cers to drill the men and see to their food, clothing, and shelter. The 118th USCI
needed twenty-one to make up its complement. Absence of instruction and disci-
pline would handicap the Kentucky regiments throughout their service.
23
Lack of ofcers was common, too, in older regiments that had been in the eld
for months. By early fall, Lieutenant Califf himself was one of only eleven ofcers
on duty with his regiment. An ofcer in the 45th USCI wrote at the end of October:
During the last six weeks the company has neither marched nor drilled except a
small squad each day, being the number relieved from guard. At 7 1/2 o’clock
a.m. each day the line is formed for fatigue duty and the men (all except the
sick & a guard) . . . work until 5 o’clock P.M. There are so few ofcers . . . that
each has to take his turn on fatigue about every third day. The amount of labor
required of the command and the lack of ofcers to give the necessary supervi-
sion, has rendered the company less efcient . . . than any well-wisher of our
cause would hope.
24
Ofcers throughout the army were aware of the problem. When Maj. Lewis L.
Weld brought six companies of the 41st USCI from Philadelphia to Virginia in Oc-
tober, he reported to General Butler, who was surprised to learn of the regiment’s
arrival. Butler had requested that ve companies of the 45th USCI, detached at
Washington, D.C., be sent to join their regiment. “You see, Major,” Butler said, “I
didn’t ask for you at all. . . . I suppose your men are perfectly green.” “Perfectly
so, sir,” Weld replied. “Well, I’ll give you a chance to drill,” Butler said. “Send the
major to Deep Bottom,” he told an aide, “with orders to . . . put him on no duty
that can be helped & let him alone till further orders. . . . By the way, Major, teach
your men carefully the loadings & rings.” “Certainly, General, but had I not bet-
ter teach them how to make a right face rst?” “Yes, yes, that is the rst essential,”
Butler agreed, “but don’t forget the other.” Weld took his regiment to Deep Bot-
tom on the James River, a place he knew well from his time as a captain in the 7th
22
OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 3, p. 219; Brig Gen L. Thomas to Col P. T. Swaine, 6 Oct 1864, 117th
USCI, and Col O. A. Bartholomew to “Captain,” 3 Nov 1864, 109th USCI, both in Entry 57C, RG
94, NA; Edward A. Miller Jr., The Black Civil War Soldiers of Illinois: The Story of the Twenty-
ninth U.S. Colored Infantry (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), p. 114.
23
E. W. Bacon to Dear Kate, 9 Mar 1864, E. W. Bacon Papers, American Antiquarian Society
(AAS), Worcester, Mass.; Col A. A. Rand to Capt I. R. Sealy, 24 Oct 1864, 118th USCI, Entry 57C,
RG 94, NA. Bacon was appointed major in the 117th USCI on 5 January 1865; he had been a captain
in the 29th Connecticut and is mentioned in that grade later in this chapter.
24
NA M594, roll 210, 45th USCI; Califf Diary, 17 Oct 1864.
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
390
USCI. His divisional commander, Brig. Gen. William Birney, “promise[d] that I
shall not be put into the eld until I have had time to organize & drill somewhat,”
Weld told his mother, “several weeks at least.” Two more companies of the 41st
joined later in the year, but the last two did not arrive until February. Only then was
the regiment up to strength.
25
Butler was not alone in wanting his men prepared for battle. The 127th USCI
also reached Virginia in October and at once took up fatigue duty at Deep Bot-
tom. General Birney, to whose division the regiment belonged, asked for it to be
relieved from this duty and sent to him. “The regiment is new, and the men have
not yet been drilled in the ‘loadings and rings,’” he wrote. “If it is the intention
to have them take an active part in the present campaign, it is absolutely necessary
that opportunity be afforded for drilling and disciplining them. . . . I would prefer
not to put this regiment under re, until the men are taught how to load and re,
and have attained some prociency in drill.” Both the 127th USCI and Weld’s
41st came from Camp William Penn, and the ofcers and men probably had heard
of the disaster that resulted when another untried Philadelphia regiment, the 8th
USCI, went into action at Olustee, Florida, that February.
26
When General Butler told his aide that Weld’s newly arrived troops should be
“put . . . on no duty that can be helped,” he was probably referring to the Dutch
Gap Canal, an excavation that occupied labor details from at least seven black
regiments in the Army of the James during the late summer and fall of 1864. Five
hundred feet long, the canal cut across a neck of land formed by one of the many
bends in the river. Its purpose was to afford passage for U.S. Navy gunboats past
a stretch where the water at low tide was only eight feet deep, half as much as the
draft of the vessels required, and where the re of Confederate batteries could
reach them. Such a canal, Union generals hoped, would also allow them to move
troops more quickly by water than the Confederates could by land.
27
Butler tried to begin his project with a call on 6 August for twelve hundred
volunteers “to do laborious digging[,] to work 7 1/2 hours a day for not more than
twenty days.” Two shifts would labor all the daylight hours. Volunteers would re-
ceive eight cents an hour, an amount that would nearly double a private’s monthly
pay, and an eight-ounce ration of whiskey daily or its cash equivalent. Company
commanders were to read the order to their men at two consecutive daily parades,
25
OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 2, p. 1044. Lt Col L. Wagner to Maj C. W. Foster, 10 Oct 1864
(W–811–CT–1864); 21 Oct 1864 (W–848–CT–1864); 7 Dec 1864 (W–950–CT–1864); all in Entry
360, Colored Troops Div, Letters Received (LR), RG 94, NA. NA M594, roll 209, 41st USCI; L.
L. Weld to My dearest Mother, 17 Oct 1864 (quotations), L. L. Weld Papers, Yale University, New
Haven, Conn.
26
Brig Gen W. Birney to 1st Lt W. P. Shreve, 8 Oct 1864, Entry 7035, 3d Div, X Corps, Letters
Sent (LS), pt. 2, Polyonymous Successions of Cmds, RG 393, Rcds of U.S. Army Continental Cmds,
NA.
27
OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, p. 657. NA M594, roll 206, 4th and 6th USCIs; roll 208, 22d
USCI; roll 216, 118th USCI; roll 217, 127th USCI. Weld to My dearest Mother, 17 Oct 1864
(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, 10: 345 (hereafter cited
as ORN); Dyer, Compendium, pp. 1724, 1727, 1730, 1739; Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography
and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benj. F. Butler (Boston: A. M. Thayer, 1892), pp.
743–44; John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 30 vols. to date (Carbondale and
Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967– ), 12: 446.