Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Southern Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, 1862–1863 97
and Drew had urged him to apply for the vacancy. The colonel of the 75th New York
forwarded Benedict’s application to the brigade commander, who commented, “I
have no objection except that it deprives one of my regiments of an officer.” The
appointment was made. Others were more reluctant to apply. Capt. John W. DeForest
of the 12th Connecticut heard that the Native Guards were destined to garrison
“unhealthy positions” and to perform “fatigue duty, . . . making roads, building
bridges and draining marshes” and decided not to try for a colonelcy in one of the
new regiments. As it turned out, the 1st and 2d Native Guards were ready in time
for a Union expedition to the La Fourche District west of New Orleans. 22
Butler had succeeded in getting Lieutenant Weitzel, his chief engineer, appointed
a brigadier general of U.S. Volunteers. Weitzel had been the secondranking
cadet in West Point’s class of 1855, and he enjoyed wide esteem for his
achievements before and during the war. “A majority of his classmates are now
Generals, Colonels, and Lieut. Colonels, and he is still a Lieutenant,” Butler told
Secretary of War Stanton. “It is unjust.” Stanton agreed, and the 26-year-old officer
made the jump from lieutenant of engineers to brigadier general of Volunteers in
August 1862. 23
Weitzel led a force of more than three thousand men to clear Confederates out
of the Bayou La Fourche. Butler’s idea was to secure what he thought was “by
far the richest” part of the state and to assure the loyalty of Unionist planters by
allowing them to use the railroad from Opelousas to move their cotton and sugar
to New Orleans while at the same time preventing the passage of Texas cattle to
feed Confederate armies farther east. The 1st Native Guards and a New England
infantry regiment moved along the railroad toward Thibodeaux and Brashear City.
In less than a week, the two regiments opened fifty-two miles of the line, built nine
culverts, and repaired a 435-foot bridge that the Confederates had burned, while
clearing the track of grass and weeds that grew so thick they impeded the locomotives.
By the beginning of November, the 1st and 2d Native Guards had taken up
stations protecting bridges along the railroad. 24
As Union troops advanced into the La Fourche District, escaped slaves flocked
to their camps. “I have already twice as many negroes in and around my camp as
I have soldiers within,” General Weitzel complained. The Union move had been
so sudden that retreating Confederates had abandoned “over 400 wagon loads of
negroes,” he wrote on 1 November. Planters who had stayed behind to take the
required loyalty oath were “in great terror, fearing trouble with the negroes.” Five
days later, Weitzel reported that “symptoms of servile insurrection” were apparent
in the district since the Native Guards had arrived. “I cannot command these negro
regiments,” he complained. When Weitzel wrote that “women, children, and even
men, are in terror,” it was quite evident that he did not refer to the district’s black
residents, and just as evident that he did not assign equal value to the opinions,
well-being, and lives of whites and blacks. He begged the assistant adjutant gen-
22 2d Lt A. W. Benedict to Lt Col R. B. Irwin, 2 Feb 1863, and Endorsement, Brig Gen G.
Weitzel, n.d. (“I have”) (B–163–DG–1863), Entry 1756, pt. 1, RG 393, NA; John W. DeForest, A
Volunteer’s Adventures: A Union Captain’s Record of the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1946), pp. 50 (“unhealthy positions”), 51 (“fatigue duty”).
23 OR, ser. 1, 15: 685; Butler Correspondence, 2: 43 (quotation).
24 OR, ser. 1, 15: 159 (quotation), 161, 170, 587.