Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Southern Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, 1862–1863 103
infantry regiments. As colonel of a New York regiment, he had served with Banks
in Virginia the year before; Banks thought him “a poor man . . . [who] will make
all the trouble he can.” Banks was not alone in his low opinion; after observing
Ullmann for a few months, Collector of Customs Denison told Treasury Secretary
Chase that he was “not the right kind of man for the position.” Ullmann’s appointment
to a department where the commanding general was already organizing black
troops was one of the first occasions when authorities in Washington ordained two
conflicting authorities for black recruiting in the same jurisdiction. It would not be
the last. 38
Politicians in New England were deeply interested in the organization of
Ullmann’s brigade. Governor John A. Andrew was prepared to recommend as
officers “several hundreds” of deserving Massachusetts soldiers. The governor
of Maine had his own candidates to propose. Vice President Hannibal Hamlin,
another Maine man, proclaimed a special interest in Ullmann’s nomination as
brigadier general. The vice president’s son would become Col. Cyrus Hamlin of
Ullmann’s third regiment, eventually numbered as the 80th United States Colored
Infantry (USCI). The field officers, adjutant, and quartermaster of the first
regiment Ullmann raised in Louisiana had been captains and lieutenants in his
previous command, the 78th New York. In an age when reliable personnel records
did not exist, there was no substitute for personal acquaintance. 39
Banks ordered Ullmann to set up his depot at New Orleans, where there
were many potential recruits and where Ullmann would be out of the way of
“active operations.” Banks also countered Ullmann’s instructions from the War
Department on 1 May by announcing his intention to organize an all-black Corps
d’Afrique of eighteen regiments, including artillery, cavalry, and infantry, “with
appropriate corps of engineers.” The regiments that Ullmann had planned to
number the 1st through the 5th U.S. Volunteers would bear the numbers 6th
through 10th Corps d’Afrique Infantry. The new regiments would start small,
no more than five hundred men each, “in order to secure the most thorough instruction
and discipline and the largest influence of the officers over the troops.”
Banks cited precedent from the Napoleonic Wars, when the French Army organized
recruits in small battalions. He did not add that in regiments made up of
former slaves the burden of clerical tasks would fall entirely on the officers and
that smaller regiments would mean less paperwork. In order to avoid any hint of
radicalism, the former governor who had barred black men from the Massachusetts
militia denied “any dogma of equality or other theory.” Instead, recruiting
black soldiers for the war was merely “a practical and sensible matter of business.”
“The Government makes use of mules, horses, uneducated and educated
white men, in the defense of its institutions,” he declared. “Why should not the
negro contribute whatever is in his power for the cause in which he is as deeply
38 OR, ser. 3, 3: 14, 100–103; James G. Hollandsworth Jr., Pretense of Glory: The Life of General
Nathaniel P. Banks (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998), p. 151 (“a poor man”);
“Diary and Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase,” p. 393 (“not the right”).
39 J. A. Andrew to Brig Gen D. Ullmann, 2 Feb 1863, D. Ullmann Papers, New-York Historical
Society; A. Coburn to Brig Gen D. Ullmann, 3 Feb 1863, and H. Hamlin to Brig Gen D. Ullmann,
14 Feb 1863, both in Entry 159DD, Generals’ Papers and Books (Ullmann), RG 94, NA; ORVF, 2:
550, 8: 254.