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

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Magruder had his headquarters at Houston. The port of Galveston was closed by

the Union blockade, he told General E. Kirby Smith, who commanded the Confed-

erate Trans-Mississippi Department, at the end of April.

We have thus left only the Rio Grande as our outlet, and the occupation of

Brownsville . . . becomes a prime necessity. As long as we can receive sup-

plies by that route, and as long as the door is left open for us to co-operate with

Mexico against the United States, our army will possess a moral inuence very

disproportioned to its numbers. . . . Our relations with the Imperial authorities

are of the most cordial nature.

One week after Magruder wrote, the last Confederate Army east of the Missis-

sippi River surrendered. General Smith’s troops in Arkansas and Louisiana, many

of them Texans, began to desert in droves, simply heading home and taking their

weapons with them. Along the way, they helped themselves to whatever they found

at military supply depots or could take by force from farmers and townspeople.

Some ofcers with better-disciplined commands, such as the cavalry force led by

Brig. Gen. Joseph O. Shelby, began to ponder a move to Mexico. Meanwhile, the

small Confederate garrisons on the lower Rio Grande waited to see what would

happen.

The Union commander at Brazos Santiago, Col. Theodore H. Barrett, made

the next move. On 8 May, he ordered Colonel Branson with eleven ofcers and 250

men of the 62d USCI to the mainland. Barrett’s reasons remain unclear; neither his

nor Branson’s report offers an explanation. It may have begun as a raid to gather

mounts for the 2d Texas Cavalry, two ofcers and fty men of which went along

on foot. It may have been, as Barrett later described it, “a foraging expedition.”

One of his detractors later asserted that he merely wanted “to establish for himself

some notoriety before the war closed.” It was true that Barrett’s previous service

had been unremarkable, consisting mostly of frontier duty in Minnesota after the

Sioux uprising of 1862; but an impulse to distinguish himself during the last days

of the war should have prompted him to accompany the 62d USCI to the mainland

in command of the expedition, rather than to send it and stay behind.

Whatever Barrett’s reasoning, foul weather and the mechanical failure of a

steamboat that was supposed to ferry the troops kept them conned to Brazos

Santiago for most of 8 May. It was 9:30 p.m. before they all reached the mainland.

Moving off the beach, Branson had led them about six miles toward Brownsville

by 2:00 a.m., as far as White’s Ranch, near the Rio Grande. There, nding no Con-

federates, they lay down on the riverbank to rest. Not until 8:30, well after daylight

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 2, pp. 64, 187, 1289 (quotation).

Brad R. Clampitt, “The Breakup: The Collapse of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Army in

Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 108 (2005): 498–534; Carl H. Moneyhon, Texas After the

Civil War: The Struggle of Reconstruction (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004),

p. 6; William L. Richter, The Army in Texas During Reconstruction, 1865–1870 (College Station:

Texas A&M University Press, 1987), p. 13.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 265–69; NA M594, roll 212, 62d USCI; Jeffrey W. Hunt, The

Last Battle of the Civil War: Palmetto Ranch (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), pp. 54–59

(quotations, p. 57).

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

432

revealed their presence to watchers on the opposite shore, did they move on. Later

in the morning, they met a few enemy cavalry, followed them several miles west to

their camp at a place called Palmetto Ranch, and drove them from it. At this point,

the expedition had marched some seventeen miles inland from Brazos Santiago.

The approach at midafternoon of “a considerable force of the enemy,” as Branson

called it, made him order his men back to White’s Ranch, where they spent the

night again.

The Confederate ofcer commanding at Brownsville, Col. John S. Ford, was

a Texan of nearly thirty years’ residence and a man renowned throughout the state

for his service with the Texas Rangers during the Mexican War and the years after

it. A former state senator besides, Ford was able to rally the few hundred soldiers

who still remained at their posts within a day’s ride of Brownsville. A sixty-man

cavalry picket downstream from the town sent word on 12 May that its men had

exchanged shots with a force of three hundred Union troops. Late the next morn-

ing, Ford led two hundred cavalry troopers and a battery of six mismatched cannon

served by thirty gunners—ve or six of them French volunteers from across the

river—to meet the invaders.

Meanwhile, Colonel Barrett had come ashore with two hundred men of the

34th Indiana. They reached Branson’s camp at White’s Ranch about daylight on

13 May. Assuming command of the entire force, Barrett ordered an advance with

the 62d USCI in the lead. A march of an hour or two brought the force to Palmetto

Ranch again—Barrett’s report recorded their arrival “by 7 or 8 a.m.”—where the

troops nished their interrupted work of destroying the Confederate camp. Sporad-

ic ring had occurred during the advance. Perhaps in order to discover its source,

Barrett ordered two companies of the 34th Indiana to seize the only nearby hill,

which stood in a bow in the river a mile or two south of the ranch. When they

met resistance in the underbrush along the river, he sent the 62d USCI to their as-

sistance. There the regiment suffered its rst casualty of the expedition, one man

wounded. All the while, Barrett seemed uncertain of his purpose, asking one com-

pany commander, 2d Lt. Charles A. Jones, “What do you think should be done?”

Breaking off the action about midafternoon, he told Jones, who had helped to take

the hill a little while earlier, “Well, if you think best, we will [retire] and eat sup-

per.” Such remarks did not infuse Barrett’s subordinates with condence.

The Confederates neared the eld about 3:00 p.m., as Barrett’s men were dis-

engaging from the skirmish that had occupied them all day. By this time, Barrett

had apparently decided that his force would return to the coast. His reason for this

decision is as obscure as his reason for undertaking the expedition in the rst place.

Ford, for his part, decided that the best chance of defeating his opponents was to

catch them on the march before they reached their goal. He ordered some of his

horsemen and two cannon forward to block the road at Palmetto Ranch ahead of

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 267–68; Case of Lt Col R. G. Morrison (MM–2967), transcript,

p. 20, Entry 15A, General Court Martial Case Files, RG 153, Rcds of the Judge Advocate General’s

Ofce, NA; Hunt, Last Battle, pp. 58–59; Townsend, Yankee Invasion, p. 127.

Hunt, Last Battle, pp. 7–8, 62–63, 82, 171.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 266–68; Hunt, Last Battle, pp. 68–71, 73 (“What do you”), 79

(“Well, if you”).

South Texas, 1864–1867

433

the retreating Union force. Meanwhile, the rest of his cavalry dismounted to attack

through the riverside undergrowth.

Ford’s mounted men hastened toward the ranch while his remaining guns

opened re on the Union troops, still in the bow of the river where they had en-

joyed a brief rest from the day’s skirmishing. Barrett’s infantry scrambled to form

ranks while the Confederate artillery, about one mile distant, sought their range.

Branson led the 62d USCI off rst, followed by the 34th Indiana and the few dozen

men of the 2d Texas Cavalry, all moving at the double. The Indiana regiment left

behind two companies, an ofcer and forty-eight men, to cover the retreat. These

the Confederates soon captured. Meanwhile, Barrett, in order to avoid a headlong

rout, ordered Branson to slow his regiment’s pace. Branson obeyed, but the 34th

Indiana, continuing at the double on a separate trail through the undergrowth that

lined the riverbank, ran into and through the 62d USCI a little way short of Pal-

metto Ranch. While ofcers separated the men of the two regiments and formed

the line of march again, Barrett detailed the two companies of the 2d Texas Cavalry

as a rear guard despite their ofcers’ protests that their men had only one or two

rounds of ammunition left. When they had discharged those, the horseless troopers

sneaked into the undergrowth and hid. There the Confederates captured them later

in the afternoon.

The Confederate horsemen had swung wide, hoping to reach Palmetto Ranch

unobserved; but an ofcer of the 62d USCI spotted them soon after they started

out, and the federal troops made for the ranch by a more direct route. The mixup

of the 62d with the 34th Indiana had left the white troops at the head of the re-

treat, covered by half of the companies of the 62d USCI acting as skirmishers in a

line that stretched for some twelve hundred yards. “Every attempt of the enemy’s

cavalry to break this line was repulsed with loss to him,” Barrett wrote, “and the

entire regiment fell back . . . in perfect order, under circumstances that would have

tested the discipline of the best troops.” Only two hours of daylight remained by

the time Barrett’s force reached Palmetto Ranch and the road to the coast, ahead

of the Confederates. The 62d, nearly intact, and some one hundred twenty men of

the 34th Indiana reached the coast half an hour after nightfall, Branson’s regiment

“marching as from Dress Parade, 28 inch step, music playing.” All the troops were

back on Brazos Santiago before dawn the next day. Most of the expedition’s losses

were by capture. That the 62d USCI had suffered ve wounded in two days and

two men taken prisoner indicates the desultory nature of the ghting.

Branson’s report praised the conduct of the 62d, his own regiment. “The men did

their duty nobly,” he reported. “First Sergeants [Willis] Shipley, Company E, and [Hen-

ry] Brown, Company D, proved themselves, as far as eld duty . . . , t to command

companies.” Unlike many regiments that enlisted former slaves from the Mississippi

Valley, the 1st Missouri Colored Infantry had from the beginning lled all noncommis-

sioned positions with black soldiers rather than appoint a white rst sergeant in each

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 266, 268; Hunt, Last Battle, pp. 84–90.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, p. 268; Case of Lt Col R. G. Morrison (MM–2967), transcript, p.

21, Entry 15A, RG 153, NA; NA M594, roll 212, 62d USCI; Hunt, Last Battle, pp. 91–100, 102–03.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, p. 267 (“Every attempt”); Morrison Case, p. 92 (“marching as from”);

Hunt, Last Battle, pp. 104–05.

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

434

company to assist the ofcers with drill and necessary paperwork. The attempt to ap-

point black soldiers as company rst sergeants in the 62d USCI had resulted in some

poor choices at rst, as company commanders selected men in December 1863 on the

basis of a few weeks’ acquaintance. By May 1865, only one of the original ten rst

sergeants still held that rank. Brown and Shipley had both taken the places of men who

had been found unsuitable for one reason or another. Like more than nine-tenths of the

men in the regiment, both sergeants had been slaves before the war. Nor were they the

only noncommissioned ofcers who distinguished themselves on 13 May: Sgt. Isham

Boggs was appointed rst sergeant of Company F “for gallantry in action,” and Sgt.

William A. Messley became rst sergeant of Company G.

Even before the defeat at Palmetto Ranch, Department of the Gulf headquarters

had planned to send an ofcer more senior than Colonel Barrett to command the

troops at the mouth of the Rio Grande. Brig. Gen. Egbert B. Brown, a veteran of

campaigns in Arkansas and Missouri, arrived not long after the battle. He soon wrote

to New Orleans, requesting rations and reinforcements, but before either could ar-

rive he ordered another advance inland. When his troops reached Brownsville on 30

May, they found the Confederates gone. The nal Union reoccupation of Browns-

ville meant that any Confederates seeking an escape route to Mexico would have to

travel far out of their way to nd a sanctuary south of the Rio Grande.

Meanwhile, the Army was rushing troops to Texas, although not in response to

General Brown’s request. On 17 May, three days after Barrett’s expedition returned

to Brazos Santiago, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant sent Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan

from Virginia to take charge of a new geographical division. Called the Military

Division of the Southwest (after 27 June, the Military Division of the Gulf), Sheri-

dan’s new command stretched from the Florida Keys to the Rio Grande. At his

disposal were three corps, predominantly of infantry, and two cavalry divisions.

The XIII Corps started from Mobile, where it had helped to capture the city the

month before. One of its divisions moved by river to northeastern Texas. Another

took possession of Houston and Galveston. The third division of the corps steamed

for the Rio Grande. From Tennessee, the IV Corps, veterans of the previous year’s

battle of Nashville, took riverboats to New Orleans and ships from there to Indi-

anola on the Texas coast. Two columns of Union cavalry marched overland from

Shreveport and Alexandria in Louisiana to San Antonio and Houston, while from

Virginia, nearly sixteen thousand ofcers and men of Maj. Gen. Godfrey Weitzel’s

XXV Corps, black infantry, cavalry, and artillery, took ship for southern Texas.

Preparations for the voyage from Virginia were as thorough as possible. Regi-

ments left sick men behind to be cared for at Army hospitals. Besides the usual Army

ration, ships carried foods such as pickles, sauerkraut, and dried apples to ward off

scurvy. Still, Assistant Surgeon James O. Moore of the 22d USCI complained that

the water on board his ship “fairly stunk.” This was hardly surprising after the convoy

touched at New Orleans, where at least one vessel replenished its casks with river

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 268–69 (quotation); Company Descriptive Books, 62d USCI,

Regimental Books, RG 94, NA; Col T. H. Barrett to Brig Gen L. Thomas, 30 Apr 1864, 62d USCI,

Entry 57C, Regimental Papers, RG 94, NA.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 2, pp. 300, 381–82, 564–65, 827–28.

Ibid., vol. 46, pt. 3, p. 1032; vol. 48, pt. 2, pp. 476, 1004. Richter, Army in Texas, pp. 14–17.

For Union operations around Mobile in 1865, see Chapter 4, above.

South Texas, 1864–1867

435

water while steaming into the mouth of the Mississippi, below the city. Whatever the

difculties of life aoat, few men died during the voyage—only eight in the entire 1st

Division, the commanding general reported: “No more than might have been expect-

ed had we remained in camp.” Those who died on board ship were buried at sea.

However diligent medical authorities had been in providing antiscorbutics for

the voyage, the Quartermaster Department did not take equal care when it hired

transport ships. While no mishaps occurred during the trip, the oceangoing vessels

that brought two brigades of the XXV Corps to Indianola had hulls too deep to pass

over a seven-foot bar that kept them out of the harbor. They remained there, pitch-

ing in a high sea for six days before steaming back to New Orleans for more coal

and water. By the time they returned, the weather had calmed and the troops were

able to land in light-draft vessels; but the pickles, sauerkraut, and dried apples had

long since run out, and signs of scurvy had begun to appear.

Once ashore, the troops at Indianola found themselves in a populated re-

gion and were able to supplement their rations with local produce. Those who

landed at Brazos Santiago, nearly two hundred miles to the south, had no such

luck, but they were able to disembark more promptly than the other force and so

postponed the threat of scurvy for a little while. On Brazos Santiago, “as far as

the eye can reach nothing but sand is seen,” Chaplain Thomas S. Johnson of the

127th USCI wrote. “There is not a spear of vegetation growing within sight of

my tent,” 1st Lt. Oliver W. Norton told his sister. The sole water condenser on the

island had a capacity of six thousand gallons a day. It provided only three pints

per man, “boiling hot,” Pvt. Samuel H. Smothers of the 45th USCI told readers

of the Christian Recorder. Another contributor to the paper, who signed his let-

ter “M. R. Williams” and claimed to belong to the 41st USCI, alleged that the

water ration was one cup per day and that men had to pay one dollar for a piece

of hardtack. An investigation of the complaint revealed that there was no man

by that name on the rolls of the regiment. The lack of water necessitated moving

the regiments inland to Brownsville as quickly as possible. This meant, in the

words of one of General Weitzel’s aides, “as soon as the condition of the roads

will permit.”

The same foul weather that had met the transports at Indianola had turned

the road from Brazos Santiago to Brownsville into “a dozen miles of swamp,”

as Surgeon Charles G. G. Merrill of the 22d USCI called it. It was Merrill’s job

Col M. R. Morgan to Capt C. Wheaton Jr., 21 May 1865, Entry 518, XXV Corps, Misc Ltrs,

Orders, and Rpts Recd, pt. 2, Polyonymous Successions of Cmds, RG 393, NA. Maj Gen G. A. Smith

to Lt Col D. D. Wheeler, 24 Jul 1865 (“No more”); Col J. C. Moon to Maj A. Ware, 19 Jul 1865;

Col T. D. Sedgwick to Maj A. Ware, 20 Jul 1865; Col S. B. Yeoman to Maj A. Ware, 21 Jul 1865;

all in Entry 525, XXV Corps, LR Relating to Troop Movements, pt. 2, RG 393, NA. J. O. Moore to

My Dearest Wife, 9 Jul 1865 (“fairly stunk”), J. O. Moore Papers, Duke University, Durham, N.C.;

W. Goodale to Dear Children, 8 June 1865, W. Goodale Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society,

Boston. For burials at sea, see J. M. Califf Diary, 6 and 14 Jun 1865, Historians les, U.S. Army

Center of Military History; Oliver W. Norton, Army Letters, 1861–1865 (Chicago: privately printed,

1903), p. 266.

Col J. Shaw to Maj E. B. Parsons, 20 Jun 1865, and to Capt R. C. Shannon, 8 Jul 1865, both

in Entry 533, XXV Corps, LR by Divs, pt. 2, RG 393, NA; Califf Diary, 13–17 and 25 Jun 1865.

Maj J. F. Lacey to Maj Gen G. Weitzel, 26 Jun 1865, Entry 533; Col J. Shaw to Capt R. C.

Shannon, 8 Jul 1865, Entry 518; Maj Gen F. Steele to Maj Gen P. H. Sheridan, 15 Jun 1865, Entry

2063, U.S. Forces on Rio Grande, Letters Sent (LS); all in pt. 2, RG 393, NA. T. S. Johnson to Dear

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

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to pick up stragglers, following the division with two four-mule ambulances.

“The roads are horrible,” wrote the division commander. “The wagons were

ordered to load only eight hundred pounds and they have had an awful time at

that. Some of the way we were obliged to have the men carry the loads and then

twelve mules [double teams] stalled with empty wagons.” The men marched

“sometimes over shoe tops in mud, and again through water up to our waists,”

Sgt. Charles W. Cole of the 29th Connecticut told readers of the Christian Re-

corder. The division took two days to cover twenty-odd miles to Brownsville.

Assistant Surgeon Moore, who cared for the 22d USCI while Surgeon Merrill

brought up the rear of the march, told his wife that the town was “one of the

most forsaken looking holes you ever saw.”

Once in camp at Brownsville, the commanding ofcer of the 43d USCI

wrote to divisional headquarters to explain why the provost guard had arrested

fty of his men—the equivalent of an entire company—as stragglers during

the march. In the rst place, the men were “much debilitated” from twenty-

ve days’ close connement on shipboard. Going ashore, they were “ordered

to camp on ground which became ooded . . . after each shower, completely

drenching” their clothing and blankets. The regiment had had to change its

campsite three times in two days because of ooding. On the march, wagons

“were continually . . . compelling the men to dive into the dense chapperel

which grew close to each side of the road.” Finally, there was the matter of ra-

tions, which had arrived at regimental headquarters too late to be distributed to

the men. Companies detailed men to fetch the rations and follow the column,

and the provost guard arrested them as stragglers. The 43d was last in the line

of march, “subject to all the difculties of halting on account of delays at the

front and rapid marching to regain lost distances.” If the regiment had been

farther ahead, the men with the rations could have “passed along the anks of

the other regiments unnoticed,” but, being so far behind, they were arrested in-

stead. The march to Brownsville was not as urgent as some that the XXV Corps

had undertaken in Virginia, but it was no less exasperating.

Lieutenant Norton had an opportunity to observe the country as his regiment

followed the route several days later, after the road had dried somewhat. He saw

a boundless prairie, dotted here and there with prickly pears and Spanish bayo-

net. . . . Part of the way the road lay through mesquit chaparral, impenetrable

thickets of scrubby, thorny trees, too small for shade and too dense to admit a

breath of air. . . . In passing through some parts of the country, the chaparral

People, 24 Jun 1864, T. S. Johnson Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison; W. Goodale to

Dear Children, 4 Jul 1865, Goodale Papers; Christian Recorder, 29 July and 11 November 1865;

Norton, Army Letters, pp. 267–68; Edwin S. Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from

African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press,

1992), p. 197.

Maj Gen G. A. Smith to Lt Col D. D. Wheeler, 29 Jun 1865, Entry 525, pt. 2, RG 393, NA; 1st Div,

XXV Corps, GO 49, 27 Jun 1865, Entry 533, pt. 2, RG 393, NA; NA M594, roll 216, 114th USCI; Christian

Recorder, 9 September 1865; C. G. G. Merrill to Dear Father, 2 Jul 1865, C. G. G. Merrill Papers, Yale

University, New Haven, Conn.; J. O. Moore to My Dearest Lizzie, 30 Jun 1865, J. O. Moore Papers.

Lt Col H. S. Hall to Maj A. Ware, 2 Jul 1865, 43d USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA.

South Texas, 1864–1867

437

cleared up and the mesquit trees with the wild grass under them, looked exactly

like an old orchard of half-dead apple trees in a eld of half-ripe oats.

To a Northern eye, the vegetation seemed to be either not quite mature or long

past ripeness, and “take it all in all, I would not live in this country if I could own

a whole county.”

This view was widespread among Union troops. Capt. James H. Rickard of the

19th USCI thought that southern Texas offered “some of the hardest soldiering I

have ever seen & in the meanest part of the world. [N]othing grows here except a

few short stunted brush covered with thorns & the cactus in its different varieties.”

It was a view shared by 1st Lt. Warren Goodale of the 114th USCI. “All vegetable

life seems thorny, & insect & reptile life venomous,” he told his children. Soldiers

had expressed such sentiments since the Army rst marched to the Rio Grande in

1846, at the start of the Mexican War, and would continue to do so for decades.

In overall command of southern Texas was Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele, who

had seen action during the war in Arkansas and, in April 1865, at Mobile. General

Grant’s instructions to Steele were to “occupy as high up [the Rio Grande] as your

force and means of supplying them will admit of.” With two brigades at Indianola

and Corpus Christi and the balance of the XXV Corps camped near the mouth of

the river, Steele ordered the reoccupation of prewar forts that had not seen a federal

garrison since the spring of 1861. The principal sites were Ringgold Barracks, at

Rio Grande City, some one hundred miles upriver from Brownsville; Fort McIn-

tosh, at Laredo, another hundred miles farther on; and Fort Duncan, at Eagle Pass,

roughly three hundred miles above Brownsville. Troops also established posts at

the little settlement of Roma, some fteen miles west of Ringgold Barracks; Ed-

inburg, a town about sixty-ve miles west of Brownsville; and White’s Ranch, on

the Rio Grande between Brazos Santiago and Brownsville. Light-draft steamboats

carried supplies up the river as far as Ringgold Barracks.

In order to move those supplies eleven miles inland from the saltwater port at

Brazos Santiago to a wharf on the Rio Grande at White’s Ranch, thus bypassing a

treacherous bar at the mouth of the river, troops of the XXV Corps began in July to

lay track for a rail line. Weitzel had thought about bringing civilian laborers from

Virginia, but Grant overruled the idea. “There are plenty of negroes in Texas,” he

told General Weitzel, but Grant was thinking of the agricultural part of the state,

far from the Rio Grande. Instead, the work fell to soldiers. With details that varied

from four hundred fty to six hundred fty men a day, they nished the line by the

end of the year. While they did this, troops at Indianola repaired an existing forty-

mile line between that port and the inland town of Victoria to get supplies across

Norton, Army Letters, pp. 271, 275.

J. H. Rickard to Dear Friends, 2 Jul 1865, J. H. Rickard Papers, American Antiquarian

Society (AAS), Worcester, Mass.; Goodale to Dear Children, 4 Jul 1865. For an example of Army

ofcers’ opinions of the lower Rio Grande, see Thomas T. Smith et al., eds., The Reminiscences of

Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 1854–1876 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2007), pp.

11, 426; Arnoldo De Leon, They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes Toward Mexicans in Texas,

1821–1900 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), pp. 53–62.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 2, p. 525. Brig Gen R. H. Jackson to Lt Col D. D. Wheeler, 23 Jul 1865,

Entry 517, XXV Corps, LR; Maj Gen H. G. Wright to Maj Gen G. Weitzel, 18 Sep 1865, Entry 518;

both in pt. 2, RG 393, NA.

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

438

a waterless stretch of eighteen miles that lay between the two. General Sheridan

reported that the Army eventually sold both lines to civilian operators at a prot.

The headquarters of Steele’s District of the Rio Grande and Weitzel’s XXV

Corps remained at Brownsville. The stations of most troops along the river, from

Brazos Santiago inland to Ringgold Barracks, lay in the lower valley, which was

less sparsely populated than the stretch upriver, northwest of Ringgold Barracks.

From their posts, the Americans kept an eye on the struggle between Imperial and

Liberal forces that ared up from time to time in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas,

which ran along the opposite bank of the Rio Grande from a point just north of

Laredo to the mouth of the river. Steele’s orders from Grant were to “observe a

strict neutrality.” The rst step in that direction was to prohibit all enlisted men and

ofcers without passes from crossing the river at Clarksville to visit the Mexican

port of Bagdad. Prohibition or not, rumors soon gained circulation that black cav-

alrymen were selling carbines and revolvers to Mexicans. Moreover, a German-

speaking ofcer of the 45th USCI stood accused of crossing the river to urge Aus-

trian troops in the Imperial army to desert. Attempts to restrict troops’ movements

during off-duty hours were never entirely effective.

Long before the XXV Corps arrived, one of the reasons for enlarging the

Union force on the Rio Grande had become outdated. On 10 May, Union cavalry

in Georgia had captured the eeing Jefferson Davis. Still, the whereabouts of other

Confederates and their plans were less well known. Several hundred horsemen,

all that remained of General Shelby’s command, accompanied their leader across

the Rio Grande in early July. The tiny force made its way to Mexico City, where

Shelby offered its services to the Imperialist cause. When Maximilian declined,

the group dispersed. Other former Confederates had bolder ideas. Lt. Gen. Jubal A.

Early hoped to inspire a war between France and the United States that would drain

the South of occupying troops and make possible a Confederate military revival.

After a few weeks’ stay in the Mexican capital, he pronounced the Imperialist

movement “an infernal humbug” and returned eventually to the United States.

The end of Confederate military activity left several tasks for the Union oc-

cupiers of southern Texas. Since the Rio Grande lay hundreds of miles from the

center of the state’s population, few of these duties had to do with the work of

Reconstruction that military and civilian ofcials pursued elsewhere in the South.

Relations between local residents and occupying troops along the Rio Grande,

where few black people had lived before the war, certainly differed from those far-

OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 3, p. 1193 (quotation); vol. 48, pt. 1, p. 299. 3d Div, XXV Corps, Special

Orders (SO) 7, 18 Jul 1865, and Maj F. D. Kent to Maj O. O. Potter, 18 Sep 1865, both in Entry 533,

RG 393, NA; Capt J. M. Lee to Maj L. S. Barnes, 15 Dec 1865, Entry 539, XXV Corps, Ltrs and Rpts

Recd by Inspector General, both in pt. 2, RG 393, NA; NA M594, roll 209, 38th USCI.

OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 2, p. 525 (quotation); Cav Bde, XXV Corps, GO 5, 5 Jul 1865, 5th Mass

Cav, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA; Col J. G. Jenkins to Lt Col D. D. Wheeler, 5 Apr 1866, 19th

USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA. Brig Gen G. W. Cole to Brig Gen R. H. Jackson, 11 Jul 1865,

Entry 533; Maj Gen G. Weitzel to Commanding Ofcer, Bagdad, 12 Jul 1865, Entry 512; Lt Col D.

D. Wheeler to Brig Gen W. T. Clarke, 11 Sep 1865, Entry 2073, U.S. Forces on Rio Grande, LR; all

in pt. 2, RG 393, NA.

Andrew F. Rolle, The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico (Norman: University

of Oklahoma Press, 1965), pp. 17–18, 74–77, 122–24 (quotation, p. 124); Thomas D. Schoonover,

Dollars over Dominion: The Triumph of Liberalism in Mexican–United States Relations, 1861–

1877 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), pp. 189–90.

South Texas, 1864–1867

439

ther north. Sergeant Cole of the 29th

Connecticut praised the hospitality of

Brownsville’s Mexican residents in

the pages of the Christian Recorder,

and Sgt. Maj. Thomas Boswell of the

116th USCI predicted a few weeks

later, “If our regiment stays here

any length of time we will all speak

Spanish, as we are learning very

fast.” The commanding ofcer of the

19th USCI reported, “The Mexicans

are without much prejudice against

the negroes on account of color and

if let alone by the whites would give

no trouble.”

The situation was different north

of the Nueces River, where slavery

had been the basis of the social and

economic order. One of Grant’s staff

ofcers on a tour of Sheridan’s com-

mand landed in Galveston and wrote

to the chief of staff:

One man an ex-Confederate navy

ofcer was very savage on a negro

regiment brought here for fatigue

duty—denounced it as an outrage

and intended humiliation of the peo-

ple—would evidently like the privi-

lege of shooting them. . . . A squad of

them were marching down [a] street

the other day and met some white men who did not give way . . . . [O]ne of the citi-

zens thinking a negro hit him with his elbow in passing, struck the soldier with his

cane whereupon soldier No. 2 hit citizen an astonisher under the ear. Of course this

was an outrage and in good old times the negroes would have been lynched—in the

present case investigation showing the negroes not in fault the citizens were advised

to let the soldiers alone in future—to their great indignation and disgust.

Ofcers of the XXV Corps regiments at Corpus Christi, Indianola, and towns

inland meanwhile busied themselves with administering loyalty oaths to former

Confederates who sought full restoration of their civil rights. In contrast, troops

along the Rio Grande merely kept an eye on the conict between Imperialists and

Col J. G. Perkins to Lt Col D. D. Wheeler, 7 Apr 1866 (“The Mexicans”), 19th USCI,

Regimental Books, RG 94, NA; Christian Recorder, 9 September 1865; Redkey, Grand Army of

Black Men, p. 203 (“If our regiment”).

German-speaking Edelmiro Mayer (shown

here as major of the 7th U.S. Colored

Infantry) was lieutenant colonel of the 45th

U.S. Colored Infantry when he crossed the

Rio Grande to harangue Austrian troops in

the Imperialist army. The 45th, like other

regiments raised in the North, mustered out

not long afterward, and Mayer never faced

punishment for his breach of neutrality.

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

440

Liberals for control of the region across the river and tried to prevent or punish the

activities of those perennial border worries, livestock thieves and Indian raiders.

Land and cattle were the two principal sources of wealth along the lower Rio

Grande. With recently arrived English-speaking Texans owning an ever-increasing

share of the land, extended families of Mexican origin occupying both banks of

the river, and an easily forded stream serving as the international boundary, theft

of livestock thrived. Although the trade in stolen cattle had not reached the heights

that it would a few years later, it occupied the attention of ofcers and men scat-

tered along the river in one-company posts at tiny settlements with names like

Rancho Barrancas, Rancho Cortina, and Rancho Santa Maria. The XXV Corps

had been in Texas only one month when its commissary ofcer called attention to

the porous border and its effect on the local beef supply. In a vain attempt to stop

the illicit trafc, the black regiments patrolled the river until the last of them left

Texas. Although a patrol from Fort McIntosh managed to impound a herd of 137

head in November 1865, such efforts more often failed, as would any such attempts

by people new to a country they were trying to police.

Unlike the central and northern plains, Texas did not see many armed clashes

between whites and Indians in 1865. Maj. Gen. Wesley Merritt, commanding a

division of cavalry at San Antonio, called “this part of the country at least . . . very

quiet.” Nevertheless, the Department of Texas asked General Steele to dispatch “a

regiment of colored troops” to Fort McIntosh, at Laredo, “to look after the fron-

tier between Ringgold Barracks and Eagle Pass.” When the choice settled on the

62d USCI a few weeks later, Colonel Barrett received the caution that “it is just

possible that Indians may pass for raiding or other evil purposes”; his instructions

were “to defeat & frustrate their doings.”

Although Indian disturbances were rare while the XXV Corps served in south-

ern Texas, rumors were plentiful. A report of one occurrence in the summer of

1865 affords an instance abounding with difculties of the sort that would dog the

Army in the West for a generation. Late in the afternoon of 11 August 1865, Maj.

Thomas Wright led a party of four companies from the 31st and 116th USCIs,

some 175 ofcers and men, out of Roma “in pursuit of a party of Hostile Indians,

Lt Col C. B. Comstock to Maj Gen J. A. Rawlins, 7 Feb 1866 (quotation), Entry 35, Letters

Sent and Recd by General Grant, RG 108, Rcds of the Headquarters of the Army, NA. For loyalty

oaths, see 2d Lt R. A. Kent to Maj Gen G. Weitzel, 11 Aug 1865, Entry 533, pt. 2, RG 393, NA; Califf

Diary, 12, 27, and 28 Jul 1865.

Capt R. C. Shannon to Col T. H. Barrett, 31 Oct 1865; 1st Lt H. H. Miller to 1st Lt T. C. Barden, 12

Nov 1865, and to Capt J. H. Looby, 18 Nov 1865; all in Entry 533; Lt Col C. Wheaton to Capt L. Rhoades,

28 Jul 1865, Entry 2073; Brig Gen R. H. Jackson to Lt Col D. D. Wheeler, 13 Aug 1865, Entry 517; all in

pt. 2, RG 393, NA. Col T. D. Sedgwick to 1st Lt G. C. Potwin, 18 Nov 1866; Col J. G. Perkins to Capt T.

C. Barden, 11 Oct 1866; Capt A. McIntyre to Col T. D. Sedgwick, 31 Oct 1866; all in 114th USCI, Entry

57C, RG 94, NA. Capt J. H. Looby to Commanding Ofcr, 116th USCI, 30 Oct 1865; 2d Lt M. Himes to

Capt R. C. Shannon, 9 Nov 1865; Maj Gen H. G. Wright to Maj Gen G. W. Getty, 14 May 1866; all in

116th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA. NA Microlm Pub M617, Returns from U.S. Mil Posts, roll 681, Fort

McIntosh, Nov 1865; Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, pp. 30–53; Thompson,

Cortina, pp. 22–23, 31–33, 200–202. Place names from Weekly Station and Effective Force Rpt, 10 Sep

1866, Entry 4790, Dept of Texas, Ltrs and Misc Rpts Recd, pt. 1, RG 393, NA.

Maj Gen W. Merritt to Brig Gen G. A. Forsyth, 31 Oct 1865 (“this part of”), Entry 4495, Mil

Div of the Southwest, LR, pt. 1, and Maj Gen H. G. Wright to Maj Gen F. Steele, 18 Sep 1865 (“a

regiment of”), Entry 2073, pt. 2, both in RG 393, NA; Capt R. C. Shannon to Col T. H. Barrett, 31

Oct 1865 (“it is just”), 62d USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA.