Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

The South Atlantic Coast, 1863 –1865 81
This wagon track through woods was typical of country roads throughout the
South—indeed, the United States—in the mid-nineteenth century. Along such roads,
Union troops in South Carolina advanced inland in April 1865.
Confederate opponents overcame obstacles that had long baffled the troops of
a backwater beachhead. 62
The need to recruit more black soldiers was much on the mind of General
Foster that winter as he prepared to relinquish command of the Department of the
South to go on medical leave. Thousands of black Georgians had followed Sherman’s
army to the sea, and Foster saw a chance to “raise two or three regiments”
from the men among them. By mid-January, he had filled his existing regiments
of U.S. Colored Troops to the statutory minimum and recruited “several hundred”
men besides. He asked the adjutant general to assign him numbers for “at least
four” new regiments. Yet Foster had to admit on 1 February that “recruiting of negroes
does not progress well.” Only four hundred fifty men had enlisted, for which
Foster blamed General Saxton, who had “created some disorder by his harangues
before mass meetings of negroes, which he called in Savannah.” The Union occupying
force would prohibit any more mass meetings, Foster promised. Meanwhile,
62 OR, ser. 1, 44: 848, 855; vol. 47, pt. 1, p. 377 (“heavy details”). W. Nelson Diary, 13 Jan 1865,
Michigan State University Archives, East Lansing; A. Reed to Dear Mother, 11 Jan 1865, A. Reed
Papers, DU; Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, pp. 269–70.