Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

The Mississippi River and its Tributaries, 1861–1863 175
left us as lonesome as an alligator on a sand bank.” Brig. Gen. Peter J. Osterhaus
called one Union outpost in northeastern Louisiana “perfectly secure, as only the
levee is out of water, and [it] cannot be flanked.” But while the enemy could not
move, neither could recruiters for the new black regiments. 45
By late April, the water had subsided enough for Grant’s main army to cross
the Mississippi and begin the campaign against Vicksburg. As the army advanced,
officers who had been appointed to the new black regiments began to look for
recruits. The 9th Louisiana (AD) at Milliken’s Bend numbered about one hundred
men at the end of April, enough for two minimum-strength companies. “We drill
twice each day,” 1st Lt. Jacob Bruner told his wife.
They learn very fast and I have no doubt they will make as rapid progress
as white soldiers. As fast as we get them we clothe them from head to foot
in precisely the same uniform that “our boys” wear, give them tents, rations
and Blankets and they are highly pleased and hardly know themselves. The
company non-commissioned officers will be colored except the [First] Serg’t.
I am happy and think myself fortunate in enjoying so much of the confidence
of my country and the President to be able to assist in this new and as I believe
successful experiment. 46
When white officers’ exhortations failed to persuade black men to enlist, 1st
Lt. David Cornwell of the 9th Louisiana (AD) promoted one of his recruits to sergeant
and took him to visit neighboring plantations. Sgt. Jack Jackson was eager to
wield authority and acted like a one-man press gang, ordering plantation hands to
fall in and join the column, thus securing sixty recruits during a four-day walking
tour of the country around Milliken’s Bend. The sergeant’s approach to his duties
grew out of his experience in a world where authority was immediate and personal,
but his method of recruiting was common among white Northerners too. When the
11th Louisiana (AD), also headquartered at Milliken’s Bend, ordered its officers to
“make every exertion to procure recruits,” the implication was clear. 47
The result was a body of men whose expectations of the freedom that had
come to them so recently hardly matched the realities of military service. “The
negroes are a great deal of trouble,” Capt. William M. Parkinson wrote home from
the camp of the 8th Louisiana (AD).
They are very ignorant, and they expected too much. They thought they would
be perfectly free when they became soldiers, and could almost quit soldiering
whenever they got tired of it, & could come and go as they pleased. But they find
45 OR, ser. 1, vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 490 (“perfectly secure”); J. L. Mathews to Most Ancient and Well-
Esteemed Jonadab C., 15 Mar 1863 (“had made”), J. L. Mathews Papers, State Historical Society of
Iowa, Iowa City.
46 J. Bruner to Dear Wife, 28 Apr 1863, Bruner Papers.
47 John Wearmouth, ed., The Cornwell Chronicles: Tales of an American Life . . . in the Volunteer
Civil War Western Army . . . (Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1998), pp. 196–99; Anthony E. Kaye,
“Slaves, Emancipation, and the Powers of War: Views from the Natchez District of Mississippi,”
in The War Was You and Me: Civilians in the American Civil War, ed. Joan E. Cashin (Princeton,
Princeton University Press, 2002): 60–84, esp. pp. 61, 66–67; 11th Louisiana Inf, SO 2, 3 May 1863
(quotation), 49th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA.