Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

The Mississippi River and its Tributaries, 1861–1863 177
The effect of course will be to make the negroes desperate, and when in turn
they commit horrid acts of retaliation we will be relieved of the responsibility.
Thus far negroes have been comparatively well behaved. . . . The Southern army,
which is the Southern people, . . . will heed the slaughter that will follow as the
natural consequence of their own inhuman acts.” 51
The new black regiments in northeastern Louisiana formed a command known
as the African Brigade. Its leader was Brig. Gen. John P. Hawkins, a 33-year-old
West Point graduate from Indiana. At the beginning of the war, Hawkins had transferred
from a regular infantry regiment to the Subsistence Department; in April
1863, he received promotion from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general in order
to lead the African Brigade. It is hard to tell what it was in his background that fitted
him for the job of organizing and leading black troops; but Charles A. Dana, the
secretary of war’s confidential agent with Grant’s army, reported that he “[did] not
know here an officer who could do the duty half as well as [Hawkins]. . . . [N]one
but a man of the very highest qualities can succeed in the work.” 52
A year’s service in the lower Mississippi Valley had taken its toll on Hawkins’
health; on 11 May, he went on sick leave, relinquishing command of the brigade
to Col. Isaac F. Shepard of the 1st Mississippi (AD). Two weeks later, Shepard
sent Adjutant General Thomas a long letter in which he reported “good progress”
in organizing the regiments. The 1st Arkansas had nearly reached its authorized
maximum strength, he said, and the 8th and 10th Louisiana each had seven or
eight hundred men. There was some difficulty in the 9th Louisiana, where the
commanding officer had distributed arriving recruits evenly among the companies.
The result was that the regiment had ten companies, none of which had the statutory
minimum number of men necessary to muster into service. The colonel had
not realized that pay began only when a company mustered in, not at the time of a
man’s enlistment or an officer’s appointment. The commanding officer of the 11th
Louisiana was going about his job correctly, Shepard went on, and his regiment
had four full companies mustered in and 361 recruits waiting for medical inspection.
Shepard’s own regiment had only one company mustered in. His officers had
not yet reported, and he did not know whether they were still with their old regiments
at the siege of Vicksburg. Still, he was not discouraged, for black recruits
were arriving at Milliken’s Bend “on the average of at least 75 daily.” 53
Less encouraging was the difficulty Shepard had in feeding and supplying the
new regiments. Some of his requisitions were disregarded because they lacked
the signature of a general officer. The quartermaster at Young’s Point, who had
uniforms for three regiments, refused to release them to anyone except a regularly
appointed officer of the Quartermaster Department, certainly not to the lieutenant
from Shepard’s old regiment, the 3d Missouri, whom the colonel had detailed as
his new brigade quartermaster. The 10th Louisiana sent its regimental quartermas-
51 OR, ser. 1, vol. 32, pt. 3, p. 464 (“I know well”); Parkinson to My Wife, 17 May 1863 (“I do
not”); Janesville [Wis.] Daily Gazette, 26 June 1863 (“the greatest”).
52 OR, ser. 1, vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 106 (quotation); on Dana, see Thomas and Hyman, Stanton, pp.
267–69.
53 Col I. F. Shepard to Brig Gen L. Thomas, 24 May 1863, Entry 2014, Dist of Northeast
Louisiana, Letters Sent, pt. 2, Polyonymous Successions of Cmds, RG 393, Rcds of U.S. Army
Continental Cmds, NA.