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
to qualifications.” Colonels of white regiments had used the Corps d’Afrique
as a dumping ground for knaves and incompetents. Men concerned only with
promotion found the new organizations a convenient means of jumping a grade
or two. 71
Unfortunately for the 4th Corps d’Afrique Infantry, some of its officers
were just the sort of men General Banks deplored. One evening in January
1864, four of them, including the officer of the day and the officer of the guard,
set out to inspect the quarters of the company laundresses near Fort Jackson.
Every company was entitled to four laundresses, whose rations, quarters, and
fuel the Army provided. Their wages came from the washing they did, at rates
determined by a council of officers. It was a choice job for an enlisted man’s
wife, and most laundresses had no trouble finding a husband. On the night in
question, the inspecting officers began by making an indecent proposal to one
laundress, who flung the contents of a chamber pot in their direction. They left
Capt. William H. Knapp at the next woman’s cabin, where he had arranged to
spend the night. Two of the other officers then threatened women who washed
for their companies with loss of employment if they did not acquiesce to the
same arrangement Captain Knapp had made with his laundress. One of the
women told an investigator “that then ‘Charley Goff,’ referring to Captain
[Charles A.] Goff, got on her bed, while Lt [William H.] Odell held her, and
she does not know what would have resulted, had not her vigorous cries caused
the inspectors to quit her premises. This they did, stating to her that she was
a bitch, whereat she suggested that they must have descended from a similar
animal.” The investigator also collected testimony from four enlisted men of
the 4th Corps d’Afrique Infantry, as well as from the women who washed
their clothes, “that scenes similar to this one . . . have been of frequent, almost
nightly occurrence for a long time past; that other officers than those arrested
have been at other times equally guilty. So that the names of many officers have
long been held up to the scandal and contempt of the soldiers of the Regiment.”
General Dwight recommended immediate dishonorable discharges for the officers
in order to avoid the necessity of public testimony by “negro women of
more than questionable character” and by enlisted men who knew they would
suffer if the officers were acquitted. The men’s expectations of the officers’
acquittal were justified, for the president revoked the dismissals and they all returned
to the regiment, two of them serving with it through the end of the war. 72
Despite difficulties with the quality of officers and enlisted men, the Corps
d’Afrique grew. In late May, Ullmann had brought parts of five regiments numbering
1,400 men to the siege of Port Hudson. By mid-August, seventeen infantry
regiments reported a total of 8,107 men. A battery of light artillery and
a company of cavalry were organizing. Three companies of heavy artillery
71 OR, ser. 1, vol. 26, pt. 1, p. 458.
72 Brig Gen W. Dwight to Brig Gen C. P. Stone, 27 Jan 1864 (quotations); AGO, SO 190, 28
May 1864; both in 76th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA. ORVF, 8: 252; August V. Kautz, Customs of
Service for Non-Commissioned Officers and Soldiers (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1865), pp. 12–
13; Edward M. Coffman, The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784–1898
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 112–13.