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
and 51st USCIs) was in reserve. Scofield noted “some firing on the picket line
tonight, & everything indicates the immediate presence of the enemy.” 64
After sunrise the next morning, firing intensified between Drew’s and Pile’s
pickets and the Confederates. Federal troops found themselves facing a continuous
line that included nine redoubts, mounting a total of thirty-one guns. In front
of the gun emplacements was a line of trenches for the infantry protected by an
abatis—a line of sharpened stakes—and in front of that individual rifle pits for
the defenders’ skirmishers. Late in the morning, as Brig. Gen. Christopher C.
Andrews’ division of the XIII Corps, which had also made the march from Pensacola,
came into line on their left, Pile’s and Drew’s brigades moved forward.
Two companies of each regiment advanced as skirmishers over “thickly wooded
and broken country,” Colonel Drew reported, their men spaced three paces apart,
with the other companies behind them in line of battle. “Notwithstanding the
numerous obstacles in the way,” he added, “there was scarcely a break in the line
the whole distance.” To Drew’s left, Pile’s brigade “soon met the enemy’s skirmish
line in front of their works, steadily driving them and advancing.” When the
retreating Confederates scrambled past the abatis, Pile’s men halted, took cover,
and waited for dark to begin digging their own trenches. 65
On the extreme right of the Union advance, the 68th USCI found things
somewhat more complicated. The lieutenant commanding the regiment’s pickets
that morning “could discover no rebs on his front,” Colonel Densmore recalled,
and he moved his men forward to reconnoiter. “They proceeded without interruption
for some distance,” he wrote:
and began to think they should find a clear track into the town, when suddenly
from a clump of trees (near the edge of the slashing) . . . the Johnnies opened
on them with a handsome volley. . . . In a short time the firing became general
in that direction. . . . With the advance of our line the enemy fell back, crowded
by our skirmishers. . . . In the midst of shot, shell, and bullets we had to cover
an abrupt, deep, broken ravine made double difficult by a dense tangle of undergrowth.
We expected to come out of it a confused throng. The officers of the
Co[mpanie]s emerged, took their respective distance still moving forward, and
to our surprise the line quickly filled up, and swept along. . . . Coming at length
to a ravine the line was halted, as it was found that . . . the rebels were occupying
their rifle pits.” 66
The 68th’s skirmishers succeeded in clearing the enemy out of the woods on the
high ground that sloped into the swamp and advanced to within one hundred fifty
yards of the Confederate defenses. The 48th USCI halted five hundred yards from
64 Densmore to Andrews, 30 Aug 1866; Scofield to Andrews, 1 Apr 1866. Scofield gives the
distance marched as fifteen miles, Densmore as seventeen, Hawkins as “eighteen or nineteen.”
Scofield to Andrews, 1 Apr 1866; Densmore to Andrews, 30 Aug 1866; OR, ser. 1, vol. 49, pt. 1, p.
281. Merriam, who detailed a company of the 73d USCI to guard the prisoners, gives the number
of prisoners as seventy-three; other sources say seventy-four or seventy-five. Merriam Diary, 1 Apr
1865; OR, ser. 1, vol. 49, pt. 1, pp. 95, 281.
65 OR, ser. 1, vol. 49, pt. 1, pp. 215, 288, 295 (quotation), and pt. 2, p. 311.
66 Densmore to Andrews, 30 Aug 1866.