Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

The Mississippi River and its Tributaries, 1861–1863 173
Vicksburg, viewed from the Mississippi River. On the horizon stands the Warren
County Court House, completed in 1860.
out of the country and colonize them.” The Chickasaw Bluffs expedition failed,
and Bruner was in northeastern Louisiana three months later when he told his wife
about General Thomas’ visit. “Uncle Abe has at last sensibly concluded to arm the
darkey and let him fight,” he wrote. After being appointed a lieutenant in the 9th
Louisiana (AD), he told her, “My wages will be . . . thirteen hundred and twenty
six dollars a year! . . . [N]ow my dear what do you think of it did I meet your approbation
in accepting?” 41
By the time black recruiting got under way in the Mississippi Valley, the previous
year’s federal advance into northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas and
a subsequent retreat before a Confederate counteroffensive in the fall had caused
tens of thousands of black Southerners to leave home and follow the Union Army.
Many were men of military age, ready to volunteer or to be coerced into uniform.
By the end of May 1863, six new regiments had organized at towns and
steamboat landings along the Mississippi River and at the rail junction in Corinth,
Mississippi. Two more were recruiting. In June, four more began to form at
Columbus, Kentucky, and La Grange and Memphis, Tennessee. The main federal
effort that spring was Grant’s campaign against Vicksburg. When that Confederate
stronghold fell, more extensive efforts to raise black regiments could go forward.
Well to the rear of the Union advance, the enlistment and organization of black
soldiers took a different shape. Tennessee, for instance, was exempt from the provisions
of the Emancipation Proclamation. Just one day after the secretary of war
dispatched Adjutant General Thomas to Cairo and points south, the president wrote
to Johnson, the military governor of Tennessee, urging the necessity of “raising a
negro military force.” Johnson was an East Tennessee Democrat who declared for
the Union, the only U.S. senator who did not resign his seat when his state seceded.
Soon after Union troops occupied Nashville in February 1862, Lincoln appointed
him a brigadier general of volunteers and put him in charge of Tennessee’s recon-
41 J. Bruner to Dear Martha, 3 Jan 1863 (“For my part”); to Dear Wife, 9 Apr 1863 (“Uncle
Abe”); to Martha, 15 Apr 1863 (“My wages”); all in J. Bruner Papers, OHS.