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

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Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia, 1864–1865

411

in North Carolina were nearly over. On 24 March, Confederate cavalry made what

General Paine described as “a reconnaissance in considerable force . . . and . . . a

vigorous attack,” but which several company commanders who took part in it dis-

missed as “a skirmish” and “a slight attack.” Paine’s men held the bridge at the cost

of about a dozen casualties. The division marched twenty-ve miles south the next

day, to Faison’s Station on the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, where it made

camp and waited for the generals to make peace. It stayed in the central part of the

state until early June, when it sent one brigade to Wilmington and the other two to

Beaufort for occupation duty.

While Union troops in North Carolina moved into new territory and marveled

at peach orchards abloom in March, soldiers one hundred miles to the north contin-

ued to occupy the bleak trenches around Petersburg and Richmond. Quartermaster

Sergeant James H. Payne of the 27th USCI assured readers of the Christian Re-

corder that “all [was] quiet along the James.” Grant’s men spent the time strength-

ening their positions and threatening communications between the besieged cities

and the rest of the Confederacy. Rain, snow, and mud had impeded military opera-

tions by both sides all winter. “The roads are bad,” Payne wrote, “the mud deep,

and a great deal of water in the woods and elds, render[s] travel of any kind al-

most impossible.” Chaplain Thomas S. Johnson of the 127th USCI was glad when

warmer weather arrived about mid-March, for troops had stripped the country of

rewood for three miles behind the lines. Late in the winter, an order had been

necessary to make sure that the teams and wagons allotted to each regiment carried

rewood instead of being “diverted to other uses, such as hauling for sutlers and

the private uses of ofcers.” Enlisted men had to gather their own wood on foot.

The practice was common to both divisions in the XXV Corps.

A shortage of fuel compounded by the behavior of venal or selsh ofcers

was not the only trial that the men of the XXV Corps endured. The sheer absence

of ofcers could be as damaging as the callous or inattentive actions of those who

were present. In February, three regiments reported unlled vacancies for ve of-

cers on average besides those absent on detached duty or sick leave. The colonel

of a fourth regiment, newly arrived from Kentucky, blamed a recent unfavorable

inspection report on absent ofcers and a consequent lack of opportunity to drill,

which prevented the troops from learning the commands necessary to move bod-

ies of men in battle. Commanding ofcers also continued to complain of the En-

eld ries issued to their troops. Indeed, some regiments did not receive the newer

OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 1, p. 44 (“rest and all”); pt. 2, p. 925 (“a reconnaissance”); pt. 3, p.

609. NA M594, roll 205, 1st USCI (“a slight attack”); roll 206, 6th USCI (“a skirmish”); roll 208,

30th USCI (“a skirmish”). Bradley, This Astounding Close, pp. 34–35. Dyer, Compendium, p. 825,

lists the Union casualties on 24 March as nine wounded. Colonel Bates listed one man killed and

eleven wounded in his brigade; Captain Carter said the division lost ve killed and nine wounded,

presumably for the entire division. D. Bates to Dear Parents, 26 Mar 1865, Bates Letters; S. A.

Carter to My dearest Emily, 28 Mar 1865, Carter Papers.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, p. 31; Brig Gen G. F. Shepley to Col J. Shaw, 27 Feb 1865 (“diverted

to”), Entry 533, XXV Corps, Ltrs, Orders, and Rpts Recd by Divs, pt. 2, RG 393, NA; Brig Gen E.

A. Wild to Capt D. D. Wheeler, 13 Feb 1865, Entry 549, 1st Div, XXV Corps, LS, pt. 2, RG 393,

NA; Christian Recorder, 25 February 1865 (“all [was]”); T. S. Johnson to Dear Sister, 15 Mar 1865,

Thomas S. Johnson Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison; Krick, Civil War Weather, pp.

147–53. For North Carolina peach blossoms in March, see D. Bates to Mother, 12 Mar 1865, Bates

Letters; Scroggs Diary, 18 Mar 1865.

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

412

model Springelds until after the ghting had ended. Thus, the men’s training suf-

fered, as did instruction in the basic requirements of living in large groups. Hun-

dreds of rural recruits continued “committing nuisances” and “easing themselves,”

not only “between the huts” where they lived, but “in front of the earthworks, . . .

all along the line.”

There were other threats to the troops’ health besides lthy surroundings in

their camps. A medical ofcer in the Army of the James that January condemned

the unscrupulous recruiting and lack of physical examinations that had helped to

On vacancies, see Col H. C. Ward to Capt J. H. Evans, 1 Feb 1865; Col L. F. Haskell to 1st Lt

W. M. Burrows, 15 Feb 1865; Col O. A. Bartholemew to 1st Lt J. B. West, 15 Feb 1865; all in Entry

533, pt. 2, RG 393, NA. Col L. G. Brown to Capt D. D. Wheeler, 9 Feb 1865, Entry 517, XXV Corps,

LR, pt. 2, RG 393, NA. On weapons, see Col S. B. Yeoman to 1st Lt G. H. Ropes, 8 Feb 1865, Entry

517, pt. 2, RG 393, NA; Brig Gen E. A. Wild to Capt W. Von Doehn, 2 Apr 1865, Entry 533, pt. 2,

RG 393, NA; Capt R. F. Andrews to Maj D. D. Wheeler, 22 May 1865, 118th USCI, Entry 57C, RG

94, NA. On sanitation, see Capt J. H. Metcalf to Col G. W. Cole, 12 Feb 1865 (“easing themselves,”

“between the huts”), and Maj D. D. Wheeler to Brig Gen E. A. Wild, 5 Feb 1865 (“committing

nuisances,” “in front of”), both in Entry 533, pt. 2, RG 393, NA. For general background on military

sanitation, see Bell I. Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merrill, 1952), pp. 124–28.

Late in the war, recruiting agents from Northern states tried to enlist black Southerners to

ll their states’ draft quotas. The recruits in the right background are undergoing the kind

of cursory physical examination that one medical ofcer complained was doing more to

ll state draft quotas than it was to ll the ranks of the Union Army.

Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia, 1864–1865

413

ll the ranks of the 117th USCI. The purpose of raising the regiment, he wrote,

seemed to have been “to enable the Kentuckians to avoid the draft, and it has done

more service in lling the [state’s draft] quota than it will in lling the army.” He

blamed sickness in the regiment on “excessive exposure in the wet and the cold of

the last month,” and recommended that pickets be allowed to build res in “severe

weather” and that “new troops be relieved from fatigue duty in excess that exhausts

their strength, . . . and depresses their power of resisting disease. The health of the

troops appears to be in direct proportion to the intelligence of the men and the care

taken by the Company Commanders.”

While one of the division commanders in the XXV Corps worried about the

effect of fatigue assignments and picket duty during the winter on the health

of black soldiers (“the . . . consequence of this exposure in the Negro is Pneu-

monia”), the other expressed more concern about rations, and the “total and

sudden change of [the troops’] habit of life.” “The derangement of the physi-

cal system by a change of food without any transition is the abundant cause of

sickness among those new to the army,” wrote Brig. Gen. Edward A. Wild, who

had been a physician before the war.

It seems to be well established, that those recruits whose food had been for some

time the same as that used by soldiers do not suffer much from sickness. The

men who have labored in large numbers under contractors on the public works

soon enjoy the immunity of the veterans. . . . A larger mortality occurs among

the young men who come from our northern farms; but the severest effects are

witnessed among the class known as ‘contrabands,’ the freedmen from the re-

bellious or the border states, who do not obtain in the army a single article of

their usual diet. Habituated to subsist on corn meal, fresh sh, yams, potatoes

and on the varied vegetable products of their garden patches, they have suffered

greatly from being placed suddenly under the regimen of the army ration.

Both generals were justied in their concern. During the last year of the war, the

likelihood of a black soldier contracting pneumonia was nearly four times greater

than that of a white soldier and the mortality rate among black soldiers was more

than 19 percent higher than among whites. The incidence of diarrhea and dysentery

was more than 36 percent higher in black regiments than in white, and black sufferers

were 25 percent more likely to die. The state of medical knowledge at the time was of

little help in treating these ailments: the surgeon general classed diarrhea and dysen-

tery with malaria and yellow fever as “miasmatic diseases” caused by unhealthy air.

Not until 1886 did medical research identify the organism that causes pneumonia.

Early that spring, with Sherman’s army on the move and Union troops in the

Carolinas moving inland from the coastal enclaves that they had so long occupied,

Mobile under siege, and a strong cavalry raid headed toward central Alabama,

Asst Surgeon A. A. Woodhull to Surgeon G. Suckley, 31 Jan 1865, Entry 517, pt. 2, RG 393,

NA.

Brig Gen E. A. Wild to Capt I. R. Sealy, 18 Jan 1865 (“the . . . consequence”), Entry 518, XXV

Corps, Misc LR, pt. 2, RG 393, NA; Wiley, Life of Billy Yank, pp. 135–37.

Medical and Surgical History, vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 637, 639, 710–11; William Bulloch, The

History of Bacteriology (London: Oxford University Press, 1960 [1938]), p. 237.

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

414

Grant decided that it was time at last to make a decisive move in Virginia. On 24

March, he issued orders. Two corps of the Army of the Potomac were to move

west from their positions in front of Petersburg, outank the Confederate right,

and make sure that the enemy did not thwart a planned cavalry attack on Lee’s last

two remaining rail links to the rest of the Confederacy. Ord’s Army of the James

manned the trenches on the Richmond side of the river. Three of Ord’s divisions—

William Birney’s from Weitzel’s XXV Corps and two from the XXIV Corps—

were to cross from the Richmond side of the river and move to the left of the Union

line, west of Petersburg. Weitzel would stay north of the river with the remaining

two divisions of the Army of the James. The operation was to begin on 29 March.

Ord’s mobile divisions would need two days to cover the thirty-six miles to their

starting positions (Table 3).

In order to conceal the movement from the Confederates, Ord’s force began

its march after dark on Monday, 27 March. Leaving tents standing and campres

burning, the men crossed the James River on bridges strewn with “moist straw and

OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, pp. 50–51, 1160, and pt. 3, pp. 210–11.

Table 3—XXV Corps in the Appomattox

Campaign, 27 March–9 April 1865

XXV Corps (Maj. Gen. Godfrey Weitzel)

1st Division (Brig. Gen. August V. Kautz)

1st Brigade (Bvt. Brig. Gen. Alonzo G. Draper)—22d, 36th, 38th, 118th USCIs

2d Brigade (Brig. Gen. Edward A. Wild)—29th Connecticut, 9th, 115th, 117th USCIs

3d Brigade (Brig. Gen. Henry G. Thomas)—19th, 23d, 43d, 114th USCIs

Attached Brigade (Bvt. Brig. Gen. Charles S. Russell)—10th, 28th USCIs

Cavalry—2d USCC

2d Division (Brig. Gen. William Birney)

1st Brigade (Col. James Shaw Jr.)—7th, 109th, 116th USCIs

2d Brigade (Col. Ulysses Doubleday)—8th, 41st, 45th, 127th USCIs

3d Brigade (Col. William W. Woodward)—29th, 31st USCIs

Eight white artillery batteries

USCC = United States Colored Cavalry; USCI = United States Colored Infantry.

Source: OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, pp. 579–80.

Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia, 1864–1865

415

compost” to mufe the sound of their leather soles on the boards. “We marched

all night,” Chaplain Johnson told his brother. “The next day we marched & broke

camp as many as three times in the rain and laid down with no shelter, or re,

through a cold, rainy night.” On Wednesday morning, they crossed the Wilmington

and Weldon Railroad tracks and went into camp near a stream called Hatcher’s

Run. “Waiting anxiously,” Lieutenant Califf wrote in his diary on Thursday, 30

March, “for the morning and the morrow’s events.”

The next day did not bring the anticipated attack. “Occasionally a shell

would burst or a bullet whistle near our heads but none of us hurt,” Califf wrote

on Friday. “A great deal of skirmish re and considerable shelling most of the

time.” The ring continued all through Saturday, increasing until almost one

hundred fty Union cannon were ring on the Confederate lines. “The Earth

shook & trembled like a frightened brute,” Califf wrote. “Our batteries were in a

semicircular range of hills and were pouring in a continual shower of shell into

the rebel works.” Unknown to Califf and most of the others in Birney’s division,

Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan’s cavalry drove Confederate troops from the South

Side Railroad that day, defeating them near a junction of country roads called

Five Forks, some fteen miles southwest of Petersburg.

The victory blocked one possible route out of Petersburg and Richmond for

Lee’s army, which by mid-March was losing more than one hundred men each day

by desertion, the troops either going over to the Union lines or returning to their

homes. On 2 April, the day after Five Forks, Lee wrote to the Confederate secretary

of war: “I see no prospect of doing more than holding [Richmond and Petersburg]

till night. I am not certain that I can do that.” The Confederate government at once

began preparations to abandon its capital, and Lee to withdraw the Army of North-

ern Virginia from its trenches and march to Amelia Court House, some fty miles

to the west. There he expected to nd supplies and a railroad that would allow him

to unite his army with the remaining Confederate force in North Carolina. Evacu-

ating Petersburg, Confederates set re rst to warehouses full of leaf tobacco, then

to military stores, and, last of all, to the bridges by which they left the city.

So it was that in the predawn hours of 3 April, Union troops discovered the

Confederate trenches empty and began to move cautiously, piecemeal, into Peters-

burg. Lieutenant Califf of the 7th USCI was on picket duty. “No ring occurred

after 12 o’ck,” he recorded in his diary. “A heavy explosion took place about 2 1/2

& then several large res. . . . About daylight . . . our skirmishers entered the city

of Petersburg. I missed it myself. They were the rst troops in without a doubt.”

Thomas Morris Chester agreed, telling readers of the Philadelphia Press that Cal-

iff’s regiment and the 8th USCI, raised in Philadelphia, “were the rst to enter

Petersburg”; but reports from the IX Corps show that some Michigan troops had

run up their regimental colors in the city an hour before rst light and were patrol-

ling the streets by sunrise, when Califf said that his own men reached the city. A

Ibid., pt. 1, p. 1160 (“moist straw”); T. S. Johnson to My Dear Brother Barnabas, [3] Apr 1865,

Johnson Papers; Califf Diary, 30 Mar 1865.

Califf Diary, 30 Mar (“Occasionally”) and 1 (“The Earth”) and 2 Apr (“Our batteries”) 1865;

A. Wilson Greene, Civil War Petersburg: Confederate City in the Crucible of War (Charlottesville:

University of Virginia Press, 2006), p. 243.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 3, pp. 1353, 1378 (quotation); Greene, Civil War Petersburg, pp. 245, 249–51.

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

416

few Union regiments stayed in Petersburg to ght res and prevent looting. Most

pressed on westward in pursuit of Lee’s army.

North of the James River on 3 April, Confederate deserters began to reach

Union outposts well before dawn with news of the evacuation of Richmond. As the

sky began to lighten, General Weitzel reported “explosions and res in the enemy’s

lines. . . . I will move at daybreak.” His two divisions, one from the XXIV Corps

and another from Weitzel’s own XXV Corps, were ready. In the 19th USCI, Capt.

James H. Rickard jotted additions to a letter home during spare moments through-

out the day. Before leaving camp, he composed a few pages with pen and ink:

Standing in line this morning a little past four o clock I witnessed one of the

grandest sights I ever beheld . . . a great heavy column of bright blaze & smoke

rose high in the heavens followed by a crash that shook the ground[.] [A]t day-

light another similar in the direction of Richmond. . . . We have just got orders

to be ready to move immediately. We go for them to-day I guess. I must stop &

eat my breakfast.

Later in the morning, he continued in pencil:

7.45 o clock passing through the rebel line they have evacuated our front[;]

res still burning. [T]hey have left their tents standing torpedoes [land mines]

in front of their works 11 [a.m.] waiting in front of the city . . . to nd a place

to cross the river Richmond is in ames constant explosions are taking place

continuous roar the rebels are just ahead of us we are after them close Fine day,

one of the most glorious of my life. . . . [O]ur troops are lled with the greatest

enthusiasm. 12 o clock M. in Richmond we have now entered Richmond the city

is on re we are going now on board a Steamer to cross the river. . . . 2 1/2 P.M.

we are now in the city of Manchester [on the south bank of the James, opposite

Richmond] the people very glad to see us come the negros ock around us in

thousands & are in Extacies It is thought we may stay here a while.

That evening, Rickard reverted to ink: “Manchester 8 P.M. We are now en-

camped on the south side of the city. I have just ridden into the town to see about

going back to morrow for our knap sacks which we left behind coming away in

such a hurry. I have no time to write any more, will give you more details some

other time.”

The advance on Richmond that morning was a race. The ofcer who com-

manded the XXIV Corps pickets “noticed that the pickets of the Twenty-fth

Corps were advancing to the [Confederate trenches] on their front. Our skirmish-

ers were at once set in motion. . . . We had moved about two miles when General

Wild and staff overtook us with about a company of colored soldiers. . . . I sent

OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, pp. 1040, 1047, 1049; Califf Diary, 3 Apr 1865; 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), p. 313.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 3, p. 533; J. H. Rickard to Dear Brother, 2–3 Apr 1865, J. H. Rickard

Letters, AAS.

Rickard to Dear Brother, 2–3 Apr 1865.

Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia, 1864–1865

417

word . . . to move past the colored troops, . . . and for the skirmishers to advance

more rapidly.” The race stopped at the city’s edge. Weitzel had already sent a small

party of cavalry into Richmond to nd the civil authorities and receive a formal

surrender. Mounted patrols stopped the infantry advance until the general and the

mayor had completed their arrangements. Weitzel found “the greatest confusion,

pillaging and disorder reigning, and the city on re in several places.” The arson

and disorder were far greater than what greeted Union troops when they rst en-

tered a Confederate city, Nashville, in February 1862. Soldiers and city residents

were not able to bring the res under control until midafternoon. Weitzel left one

brigade of the XXIV Corps in Richmond to preserve order and distributed the rest

of his force in the old Confederate positions around the outskirts.

Southward, along the Appomattox River, the men of Birney’s division rested that

night about ten miles west of Petersburg. The next day, they pushed on with the rest

of the Army of the Potomac in pursuit of Lee. General Ord’s three divisions aimed

for Farmville, where they expected to nd Confederate supply trains on the railroad.

By the time Ord’s men arrived, the boxcars had moved on to Appomattox Court

House. One brigade of Birney’s division followed the wrong road for most of 4 April

and had to retrace its steps. As a result, its men may well have covered, during the en-

tire march, the ninety-six miles that their commanding ofcer claimed in his report.

For the rest of Birney’s division, the average was somewhat shorter, but each day’s

march was by no means of equal length. On 8 April, the two brigades covered some

thirty miles, to arrive near Appomattox Court House at about 1:30 a.m. the next day.

Sheridan’s cavalry had reached there the day before and captured three train-

loads of Confederate supplies. Just before daybreak, Sheridan conferred with Ord,

who agreed to bring his infantry forward while the cavalry, dismounted, engaged

the Confederates. Those men in Birney’s division who managed to get any sleep

OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, pp. 1212 (“noticed that”), 1227 (“the greatest confusion”).

Ibid., pp. 1162, 1235–36, 1239.

Richmond, April 1865

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

418

at all had a couple of hours at most before the next day’s work. Moving forward

soon after 7:00 a.m., they met Sheridan’s cavalry skirmishers retreating in what

one brigade commander called “a panic-stricken mob” that “pressed . . . along

my line, through which they vainly tried to break.” One of the cavalry division

commanders admitted having been “forced back by overwhelming numbers.” Col.

Samuel C. Armstrong summarized tersely the reaction of the 8th USCI: “Formed

line of battle; arrested the progress of the enemy.” By 9:30, Birney’s two brigades

had advanced about one mile, driving the Confederates from some thick woods.

Not long after that, word arrived of a Confederate ag of truce and the guns fell

silent. Rumors of surrender had been running through the ranks of the army since

Tuesday, 4 April, but Sunday’s truce was no rumor.

Several commanding ofcers in Birney’s division took care to praise their men’s

conduct during the nal campaign. “The majority of the ofcers . . . proved them-

selves worthy of the trust reposed in them,” wrote Lt. Col. James Givin, of the 127th

USCI, whose regiment had spent seven months in the trenches before Petersburg

and Richmond. “The men, though short of rations and almost worn out with fatigue,

moved on without a murmur as long as there was an enemy to follow.” The chief

medical ofcer praised Chaplain Johnson’s “untiring attention and care in providing

for [the men’s] wants, . . . in strong contrast with the other chaplains of the division.”

Even the men of the brigade that lost its way showed “the true spirit and fortitude of

the soldier” in “their endurance of . . . hard marches, and short rations.”

The ghting may have ended, but the hard marching had not. Ord relieved

Birney of command on 10 April, “for mismanagement of various sorts,” surmised

Major Bacon of the 117th USCI. Under a new commander, Brig. Gen. Richard

H. Jackson, the division started for Richmond the next day, following, much of

the way, the road it had just traveled. The chief quartermaster described the next

six days as “arduous in the extreme, a great deal of rain falling . . . making the

roads muddy and heavy.” As though bad weather were not impediment enough,

Confederate and Union armies had picked over the country during their westward

march the week before and had left nothing for the division’s draft animals. “Our

rations were short and our horses were some of the time with nothing to eat at all,”

Chaplain Johnson wrote. On the third day of the march, orders arrived directing the

division to Petersburg. It reached its old campgrounds there on 17 April. “We hope

now that we are in a region where we can get enough to eat for ourselves and our

horses and can be comfortable while we [recuperate] a while,” Chaplain Johnson

wrote the next day. “Some think we shall be sent to Texas. . . . We cannot tell what

may be and simply must abide the issue.”

At Richmond, the occupation regime began in earnest the day after the fall of

the city. General Grant ordered Weitzel to arrest all newspaper editors and publish-

ers and send them to Fort Monroe under guard. In camp across the river, Brig. Gen.

Ibid., pp. 1121 (“forced back”), 1132, 1136, 1236 (“a panic-stricken”), 1237 (“Formed line”),

1239; Califf Diary, 4 and 8 Apr 1865.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, pp. 1231 (“untiring attention”), 1235 (“the true spirit”), 1241 (“The

majority”).

Ibid., p. 1233 (“arduous”), and pt. 3, pp. 694, 763; E. W. Bacon to Dear Kate, 26 Apr 1865,

Bacon Papers; T. S. Johnson to My Dear People, 18 Apr 1865, Johnson Papers; Califf Diary, 14 Apr

1865.

Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia, 1864–1865

419

August V. Kautz’s 1st Division of the XXV Corps received an order that adjured

company commanders to make sure that “every man appears at Guard-mounting

Inspections and Parades in the best possible condition, clean hands and face, shoes

blacked, accoutrements properly adjusted, clothing brushed clean, caps on, coats

buttoned, pants turned down, guns and equipments clean, and every thing pertain-

ing to a good soldier strictly adhered to.” On 5 April, Weitzel assigned an ofcer

to supervise repair and maintenance of the municipal gasworks. The next day, the

medical inspector warned that a “low estimate” credited Richmond with “a hun-

dred houses of prostitution, and probably a thousand prostitutes, many of them

foully diseased.” He called for licensed brothels and medical inspections paid for

by license fees.

The order to Kautz’s division about daily routine, dress, and deportment also

tried to restrict the number of absences by issuing passes to one ofcer in each

regiment and two enlisted men in each company. Soldiers who had been under re

only a few days before tended to ignore the rule. As the chaplain of the 29th USCI

observed, “forced marches and short rations” encouraged “a decided tendency to

recklessness and profanity.”

On the night of 11 April, an event occurred that helped to set the course of

the XXV Corps for Texas. The troops’ after-hours jaunts had already caused com-

plaints at divisional headquarters, where General Kautz warned two of his brigade

commanders about “soldiers . . . going beyond our lines committing depredations

upon private property and . . . other disorderly conduct,” and urged “prompt mea-

sures to prevent such irregularities.” Union soldiers, black and white, were apt to

stray from camp during spells of inactivity throughout the war and in all parts of

the South. While the XXIV Corps division in Richmond also issued orders about

clean clothing and passes to visit the city and warned its soldiers against despoiling

nearby civilians, General Weitzel felt obliged on 11 April, after one week of oc-

cupation, to tell Colonel Draper of his “regrets that so many complaints are being

made in regard to the colored troops of his command.”

Some time after 10:00 that night, two sergeants, a corporal, and ve privates

of the 38th USCI talked their way past regimental sentries and made their way to a

nearby house. Along the way, four of the privates left the party. The other four men

entered the house and took some food and clothing. While the remaining private

made off with the loot, the three noncommissioned ofcers raped the two white

OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 3, p. 567; 36th USCI, General Orders (GO) 43, 4 Apr 1865, 36th USCI,

Regimental Books, RG 94, NA; Detachment Army of the James, SO 92, 5 Apr 1865, Entry 522,

XXV Corps, Special Orders, pt. 2, RG 393, NA; 1st Div, XXV Corps, GO 29, 5 Apr 1865, Entry

533, pt. 2, RG 393, NA; Surgeon N. Folsom to Lt Col W. A. Conover, 6 Apr 1865 (F–96–DV–1865),

Entry 5063, Dept of Virginia and Army of the James, LR, pt. 1, RG 393, NA.

Chaplain G. S. Barnes to Adj Gen USA, 30 Apr 1865, 29th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA. A

week after General Orders 43 ordered cleanliness in arms, uniform, and person, 36th USCI, GO 44,

11 Apr 1865, noted that “several non-commissioned ofcers of the regiment have been absent from

camp without permission.” 36th USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA.

Capt W. von Doehn to Commanding Ofcers, 1st and 2d Brigades, 9 Apr 1865 (“soldiers . . .

going”), Entry 549, pt. 2, RG 393, NA; Maj D. D. Wheeler to Col A. G. Draper, 11 Apr 1865 (“regrets

that”), Entry 512, XXV Corps, LS, pt. 2, RG 393, NA; Wiley, Life of Billy Yank, pp. 197–98. For

examples of XXIV Corps orders, see Circular, 5 Apr 1865, Entry 7026, XXIV Corps, 3d Bde, 3d

Div, General Orders, pt. 2, RG 393, NA; 2d Bde, 3d Div, XXIV Corps, GO 17, 14 Apr 1865, Entry

6946, 2d Bde, 3d Div, XXIV Corps, General Orders, pt. 2, RG 393, NA.

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

420

women who lived there. The younger of the two victims was only thirteen years

old. Colonel Draper, one of the brigade commanders who had received a warning

letter, learned of the crime within hours and took only a few days to identify the

culprits, partly by stolen goods in their possession and partly by their own remarks

to other soldiers. A general court-martial made up of seven ofcers who belonged

to regiments in the division convened to try three of the men on charges of rape,

assault, and “plundering and pillaging.” By the rst week in May, the court had

condemned them to hang and the president had approved the sentences. The fourth

man was tried only on the last charge. He nished his enlistment at hard labor,

wearing a ball and chain, and received a dishonorable discharge.

Black soldiers, individually and in small groups, had committed felonies in

Virginia and other parts of the South, but never before had they committed such a

sensational crime almost under the noses of the Union’s senior generals. Halleck,

who had succeeded Ord in command of the Department of Virginia on 16 April,

told Grant that Ord thought “want of discipline and good ofcers in the Twenty-

fth Corps renders it a very improper force for the preservation of order in this

department. A number of cases of atrocious rape by these men have already oc-

curred. Their inuence on the colored population is also reported to be bad.” Hal-

leck concurred with his predecessor’s opinion. From the camp of the 117th USCI

near Petersburg, Major Bacon wrote:

I think the suspension of hostilities is going to rid the service of many incapable

ofcers. . . . I wish very much that our Colored Service could be put through a

sieve. The atrocities which disgraced the Corps at Richmond (not so numerous,

happily, as to amount to a rule) were due chiey to the fact that our ofcers are

as a rule not ofcer like enough to teach their men . . . or discipline them into a

proper respect for those entitled to it or worthy of it.

As if to prove these allegations, the Department of Virginia announced the dismiss-

al of three ofcers of the 38th USCI: the regiment’s lieutenant colonel for “bor-

rowing money from enlisted men and suppressing the order prohibiting the same”

and two lieutenants for “peddling candy, tobacco and trinkets to enlisted men.” The

dismissals came on the same day Bacon committed his thoughts to paper and three

days before Halleck wrote to Grant.

Although knowledge of the rapes was widespread among troops in eastern

Virginia, not even a crime so sensational could nd space in the black-bordered

columns of newspapers during the week after the president’s assassination. Grant

was in Washington during the confused days just after the event, while armed par-

ties sought the assassin and conspirators and administrators arranged the proces-

sion that would take Lincoln’s body to the railroad station to begin its journey to

Cases of Sgt Dandridge Brooks (MM–1972), Sgt William Jackson (MM–1984), Cpl John

Shepard (MM–2006), and Pvt John Adams (OO–753), Entry 15A, General Court Martial Case Files,

RG 153, Rcds of the Judge Advocate General’s Ofce, NA. AGO, General Court Martial Order 268,

7 Jun 1865, which includes presidential approval of the death sentences, is in the regimental order

book, 38th USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 3, pp. 788, 1005 (quotation); Dept of Virginia, GO 48, 26 Apr 1865, 38th

USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA; Bacon to Dear Kate, 26 Apr 1865.