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
the time Curtis’ army reached Helena, word of his “free papers” had attracted a
“general stampede” of escaped slaves. 14
As the summer wore on, relations between black Arkansans and federal occupiers
took many of the same forms that were developing in coastal Georgia and
South Carolina and in southern Louisiana. Union scouting parties in northeastern
Arkansas “received information through negroes” about enemy movements, troop
strength, and morale. Sometimes informants approached furtively, at night. At other
times, officers conferred openly with groups of slaves. Soldiers were perplexed
by the “immense numbers . . . flocking into our camp daily,” of whom “quite a
proportion were women and children, who could be of no use to us whatever.”
“There is a perfect ‘Cloud’ of negroes being thrown upon me for Sustenance &
Support,” the quartermaster at Helena complained in late July, just twelve days
after his arrival there.
Out of some 50 for whom I drew rations this morning but twelve were working
Stock all the rest being women & children What am I to do with them If this taking
them in & feeding them is to be the order of the day would it not be well to
have some competent man employed to look after them & Keep their time, draw
their Rations & look after their Sanitary Condition &c &c As it is, although it
is hard to believe that such things can be, Soldiers & teamsters (white) are according
to Common report indulging in intimacy with them which can only be
accounted for by the doctrine of total depravity. This question of what shall be
done with these people has troubled me not a little & I have commenced my
enquiry in this manner hoping that the matter may be systematized.
Despite the quartermaster’s concern, black refugees at Helena apparently did
not lack for employment. “Every other soldier . . . has a negro servant,” the post
commander told General Curtis. “While this Continues, it will be impossible to get
laborers for the Fort.” As happened elsewhere in the occupied South, the Union
forces’ concern was to care for the refugees and, if possible, to put them to work. 15
The question of what should be done with “these people” was one that bothered
federal commanders on both sides of the Mississippi and indeed wherever
Union troops occupied parts of the South. Black refugees were arriving at La
Grange in southwestern Tennessee “by wagon loads,” Grant told Maj. Gen. Henry
W. Halleck in mid-November. Grant put them to work picking the remains of the
region’s cotton crop and asked for instructions. Halleck had no new ideas: he recommended
farm work and employment as quartermasters’ teamsters and laborers.
14 OR, ser. 1, 13: 28–29, 371, 373, 397–98, 525, 832–33, 875–77; Michael B. Dougan, Confederate
Arkansas: The People and Policies of a Frontier State in Wartime (University: University of Alabama
Press, 1976), p. 91. Independence County (Batesville), where Curtis’ march began, had 1,337 black
residents (all slaves), who represented 9.3 percent of the total population; Phillips County (Helena)
on the Mississippi River was 54 percent black (8,041 slaves and 4 free). Census Bureau, Population
of the United States in 1860, pp. 15, 17–18.
15 OR, ser. 1, 13: 176 (“received information”), 202, 203 (“immense numbers”), 209–10, 262; Ira
Berlin et al., eds., The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Lower South (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1990), pp. 659 (“There is”), 660 (“Every other”) (hereafter cited as WGFL: LS);
Earl J. Hess, “Confiscation and the Northern War Effort: The Army of the Southwest at Helena,”
Arkansas Historical Quarterly 44 (1985): 56–75.