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
spring, federal troops took possession of Corinth, Mississippi (30 May), and
Memphis (6 June). Thus, by the first week of June, the armies of the North controlled
two of Tennessee’s major cities and had established garrisons at or near
important railroad junctions in neighboring parts of Mississippi and Alabama.
A Confederate drive into Kentucky late that summer caused the Union occupiers
to abandon Huntsville on 31 August and evacuate much of Middle
Tennessee, but they kept their hold on Corinth by defeating a Confederate army
there early in October. 10
Large numbers of black people escaped from bondage and sought refuge near
Union Army camps, as they did elsewhere in the South whenever an opportunity
offered. “The negroes are our only friends,” General Mitchel at Huntsville wrote
to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton early in May. “I shall very soon have
watchful guards among the slaves on the plantations bordering the [Tennessee
River] from Bridgeport to Florence, and all who communicate to me valuable
information I have promised the protection of my Government.” Stanton agreed.
“The assistance of slaves is an element of military strength which . . . you are
fully justified in employing,” he told Mitchel. “Protection to those who furnish
information or other assistance is a high duty.” Mitchel did try to protect former
slaves who aided the Union occupiers, but in July, he was given a new command
in South Carolina and could do no more than protest to the War Department
at reports that some of his Alabama informants had been returned to their former
masters. Union officers in northern Alabama continued to use black laborers
to cut timber, build fortifications, and drive teams. With the departure of
Huntsville’s garrison, many black refugees followed the retreating federals as far
north as Kentucky. 11
As Union troops withdrew across Tennessee in the late summer of 1862,
they managed to hold on to Memphis and Nashville. Memphis lay far west of
the Confederates’ main thrust northward, and a pause to attack Nashville would
have interrupted that effort. Even so, the continued federal grip on the two cities
certainly owed something to the efforts of the black laborers who had toiled on
their defenses. On 1 July, Grant reported “very few negro men” in Memphis, but
within two weeks, he had two hundred at work and another ninety-four on the
way. By the end of the month, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, who succeeded
Grant in command of the city, had “about 750 negroes and all soldiers who are
under punishment” building Fort Pickering to guard the southern approaches.
Toward the end of October, Sherman pronounced the fort “very well advanced,
and . . . a good piece of work. We have about 6,000 negroes here, of which
2,000 are men—800 on the fort, 240 in the quartermaster’s department, and
about 1,000 as cooks, teamsters, and servants in the regiments.” Similar efforts
were under way at Nashville, where Governor Andrew Johnson had “control of
a good many” black refugees who were expected to work on the city’s defenses.
Johnson believed that a ring of redoubts—earthen gun emplacements like those
that surrounded most contested cities—would deter an attack on Nashville. The
10 OR, ser. 1, 7: 426–27; vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 642.
11 OR, ser. 1, vol. 10, pt. 2, pp. 162 (“The negroes”), 165 (“The assistance”); vol. 16, pt. 2, pp.
92, 269, 332, 420, 437, 538–85.