Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

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Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
River. As had their ancestors, Louisiana’s “free men of color” stood ready to protect
“their homes [and] property . . . from the pollution of a ruthless invader.” 5
By 24 March, when the Native Guards rallied to Louisiana’s defense for the
second time, the potential invaders had been gathering off the Gulf Coast for sixteen
weeks. Two Union regiments had landed on Ship Island, a spit of land about
ten miles south of Biloxi, Mississippi, in early December 1861. The island lay halfway
between Mobile Bay and Lake Pontchartrain, and its occupiers could threaten
either Mobile or New Orleans. By the end of March, more than ten thousand federal
troops were poised to attack the Confederate mainland. 6
Their leader was a politician of no previous military experience but with a
national reputation gained while he commanded a Union beachhead in Virginia
during the spring and summer of 1861. Massachusetts had awarded Benjamin F.
Butler a state commission a few days after Fort Sumter’s surrender, and the president
appointed him a major general of U.S. Volunteers in May. He avoided the
debacle at Bull Run, spending the late spring and summer in command of Fort
Monroe, across the James River estuary from the port of Norfolk. While there,
Butler admitted escaped slaves into the Union lines and won national fame for
terming them contrabands. 7
By midsummer, Butler yearned for an independent command. That August,
with Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Sherman already assigned to lead the land force in
an expedition to Port Royal Sound, South Carolina, Butler secured authority
from the War Department to raise five thousand men—six infantry regiments—
in New England for a maritime venture. A pro-Union, pro-war Democrat, he
aimed to revive his region’s flagging military recruiting by offering command
of the new regiments to other leading Democrats. State governors awarded
field officer commissions in their states’ volunteer regiments; and Butler believed
that Republicans had received most of them thus far, which discouraged
New England’s many Democratic voters from enlisting. In late autumn, when
the force was well on its way to completion, authorities in Washington decided
to use it to occupy Ship Island and eventually to seize the port of New Orleans.
While Butler attended to the final details of organization in New England, he
asked for the assignment of Brig. Gen. John W. Phelps, a West Point graduate
with twenty-three years’ service, to lead the Ship Island landing. He had
known Phelps at Fort Monroe, he told the secretary of war, and had “great
confidence in him.” 8
Phelps, a Vermonter, was one of the few avowed abolitionists among the
Army’s career officers. Once ashore on Ship Island, he issued a manifesto addressed
to “the loyal citizens of the South-West” in which he announced his
5 Of the state’s “slave” inhabitants, 32,623 were “mulatto” and 299,103 “black.” Census Bureau,
Population of the United States in 1860, p. 194. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 70 vols. in 128 (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1880–1901), ser. 1, 15: 556, 557 (quotation); ser. 4, 1: 625, 869 (hereafter cited as OR).
6 OR, ser. 1, 6: 463–68, 707.
7 Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 2 vols.
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1903), 1: 268.
8 OR, ser. 1, 6: 677; ser. 3, 1: 423, 637 (quotation), 815. Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography
and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benj. F. Butler (Boston: A. M. Thayer, 1892), pp.
295–309; OR, ser. 3, 1: 820–21.