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
Soldiers from one of the Corps d’Afrique engineer regiments at work along the
Bayou Teche in the fall of 1863
there seems to have been no effort to enlist artisans for the engineer regiments
of the Corps d’Afrique. 75
The role of the Corps d’Afrique itself, and of black soldiers in the Union
Army generally, was still uncertain. The post commander at Port Hudson, for
instance, wondered whether the 19th Corps d’Afrique Infantry, “ordered to report
. . . for duty in the Quartermaster’s Department, [was] to be on such duty
permanently and whether as soldiers or laborers.” Early in 1863, Secretary of
War Stanton had sent Adjutant General Thomas west to raise black regiments
in Union-occupied stretches of the Mississippi Valley. Thomas conceived of
the new organizations as garrison troops to man fortified places along the river,
to protect plantations that were being worked by freed slaves, and to “operate
effectively against the guerillas. This would be particularly advantageous
on the Mississippi River, as the Negroes, being acquainted with the peculiar
country lining its banks, would know where to act effectively.” It is uncertain
whether the adjutant general had seen Col. Thomas W. Higginson’s report of
his raid in Florida two months earlier; but the commanding general of the Department
of the South had sent it to the War Department on 2 February, and
there was plenty of time for Thomas to have read Higginson’s observation that
“black troops . . . know the country, while white troops do not” before he left
Washington in the last week of March. 76
In the space of two months that spring and summer, battles in Louisiana,
Mississippi, and South Carolina called public attention to black soldiers’ mettle
in both attack and defense. General Andrews, the post commander at Port
75 OR, ser. 1, vol. 34, pt. 3, pp. 221–22; vol. 41, pt. 2, p. 118. Returns showed 530,306 officers and
men present for duty, of an aggregate of 847,886, on 30 June 1863. OR, ser. 3, 3: 460. Descriptive
books of Companies B, G, H, and I, bound as one, constitute the only surviving volume of the 81st
USCI records. 81st USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA.
76 OR, ser. 1, 14: 194–98 (“black troops,” p. 198); Andrews to Irwin, 21 Aug 1863 (“ordered to
report”) (A–321–DG–1863); Brig Gen L. Thomas to E. M. Stanton, 1 Apr 1863 (“operate effectively”)