Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Southern Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, 1863–1865 145
of Georgia what measures state authorities were prepared to take in their own
defense. 56
At Pensacola, after devoting nearly three weeks to the distribution of new
weapons and the repair of old ones, to drill and inspections—“to cut down to
fighting trim,” as Colonel Densmore put it—the 1st Division, U.S. Colored
Troops, and two brigades of the all-white XIII Corps headed north through a
dense fog on the morning of 20 March. Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele commanded
the entire force of twelve thousand men in which the Colored Troops numbered
just over five thousand. “After marching three or four miles we came to a spur
of Pensacola Bay which runs nearly westward to the main land,” as Captain
Crydenwise described the 73d USCI’s part in the expedition to his parents. “It
was about one half a mile in width & 2 1/2 or 3 ft deep. This the whole army had
to ford. When we came to it we were ordered to take off Pants, drawers, shoes &
stockings. Then fastening our things over our shoulders we crossed very nicely.”
The soldiers had to wade two arms of the bay, “one of the finest sights I have
witnessed in the war,” Colonel Densmore thought. “Away in the distance the
steady column was disappearing into the mist, the veil beyond which the breakers
were roaring angrily.” Looking behind him, he could see the men emerge
from the fog, wade past him, and then disappear again into the fog ahead. Once
across, the troops
moved up along the beach for a time & then struck inland—wandering through
groves of shady pines, or skirting along thickets of live-oak and magnolias.
Among the pines there is no underbrush, and the tread of many feet is muffled
by the thick coat of dead leaves fallen. . . . On horseback it was a fair march,
novelty and beauty on all sides. . . . But on foot the day had a different aspect.
Under a knapsack on which a woolen blanket, and a rubber [blanket], and a
shelter tent, and a hot sun are bearing, . . . there is less leisure & less spirit, for
admiring a country that has fostered only rebels. . . . To heap upon a man a load
which he is obliged soon to cast out on the rodeside . . . would not ordinarily
seem reasonable. But such is life, especially in the army.
One man of the 50th USCI died on the first day’s march. Soldiers who had served
long in garrison responded to the heat by strewing their path through the pine
forest with discarded belongings. 57
Rain sprinkled them on and off during the day but began in earnest on the night
of 20 March. Col. Hiram Scofield, commanding a brigade of Hawkins’ division,
reported that “the mud & quicksands are bottomless.” “Horses, mules & wagons
sink down,” he went on, “& an advance [is] impossible except by corduroying,” the
laborious process of cutting logs and laying them across the roadway to provide
a surface. Colonel Merriam and the 73d USCI were in the thick of it. “Labored
56 Ibid., pp. 60–61, 67 (quotation), 1043–44.
57 Ibid., p. 279; Merriam Diary, 5–13 Mar 1865. Densmore to Dear Brother, 12 Feb 1865 (“to cut
down”), and to Dear Friends, 19 Mar 1865 (“one of the”), Densmore Papers. Densmore must have
misdated his second letter; Generals Hawkins and Steele both give the date as 20 March. OR, ser.
1, vol. 49, pt. 1, pp. 280, 287. H. M. Crydenwise to Dear Parents & All, 22 Mar 1865, Crydenwise
Letters; H. Scofield to C. C. Andrews, 1 Apr 1866, C. C. Andrews Papers, MHS.