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
ments of Africans” to defend Camp Parapet. He claimed to have more than three
hundred men organized in five companies. 19
Instead of filling the requisition, Butler told Phelps to put the men to work
cutting trees in order to clear a field of fire north of the camp. Phelps submitted his
resignation rather than obey the order. “I am not willing to become the mere slavedriver
which you propose, having no qualifications that way,” he told Butler. When
the resignation arrived in Washington, the president quickly accepted it. Phelps left
Louisiana in September. 20
Butler had refused to countenance Phelps’ organization of black troops at the
end of July, but before August was out, a Confederate attack on Baton Rouge made
him withdraw the Union garrison from the town and consider seriously where he
was to find more men. He had filled existing regiments with Unionist Louisiana
whites, he told Stanton in mid-August, and would accept the Native Guards into
the federal service. On 22 August, Butler called on “all the members of the Native
Guards . . . and all other free colored citizens” to enlist. A few weeks later, he
boasted to Stanton that he would soon have “a regiment, 1,000 strong, of Native
Guards (colored), the darkest of whom will be about the complexion of the late
[Daniel] Webster.” By “accepting a regiment which had already been in Confederate
service,” as Collector of Customs George S. Denison pointed out, the general
“left no room for complaint (by the rebels) that the Government were arming the
negroes.” Even so, Butler was disingenuous in his letter to Stanton; only 108 of
the free men of color who served in the old regiment reenlisted; and as the new
regiment filled up, no one inquired whether a recruit was an escaped slave. “As a
consequence,” Denison reported to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase,
“the boldest and finest fugitives have enlisted,” and most of the enlisted men in the
reorganized Native Guards, as it turned out, were not “free men of color.” On 27
September 1862, the 1st Louisiana Native Guard mustered into federal service. A
second regiment was ready in October and a third the month after. The 4th Native
Guards took the field in February 1863. 21
There was not much inquiry, either, into the backgrounds of officer candidates
for the Native Guards. One of them, 2d Lt. Augustus W. Benedict of the 75th New
York Infantry, wrote directly to Lt. Col. Richard B. Irwin, the department adjutant
general, to propose himself for the major’s position in the 4th Native Guards,
which was then organizing. Benedict had served in the 75th New York with 1st Lt.
Charles W. Drew, the 4th Native Guards’ newly appointed colonel, he told Irwin,
19 OR, ser. 1, 15: 534 (“three regiments”), 558 (“My commissary”), 572. J. Carlyle Sitterson,
Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 1753–1950 (Lexington: University of
Kentucky Press, 1953), p. 209 (“a perfect”). Department of the Gulf commissary records from this
period have not survived, but troop strength before Banks’ arrival was more than ten thousand.
OR, ser. 1, 6: 707, and 15: 613. A “contraband ration,” issued to black refugees not employed by
the Army, was less than a soldier’s daily ration. 1st Lt G. H. Hanks to Capt R. O. Ives, 17 Jan 1863
(H–24–DG–1863); requisitions filed with Brig Gen J. W. Phelps to Capt R. S. Davis, 30 Jul 1862 (no.
19); both in Entry 1756, pt. 1, RG 393, NA.
20 OR, ser. 1, 15: 535 (quotation), 542–43.
21 Ibid., pp. 549, 557 (“all the members”), 559 (“a regiment”); Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native
Guards, p. 18; “Diary and Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase,” in Annual Report of the American
Historical Association for . . . 1902, 57th Cong., 2d sess., H. Doc. 461, pt. 2 (serial 4,543), p. 313
(“accepting”); Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion (New York: Thomas
Yoseloff, 1959 [1909]), p. 1214.