Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

178
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
ter to Memphis “and drew a full equipment of everything.” If the Young’s Point
quartermaster did not cease quibbling, Shepard told the adjutant general, he would
order the other regiments to draw supplies at Memphis as well. Despite these difficulties,
he thought that the new soldiers’ “progress in instruction [was] truly wonderful.
I witnessed an evening parade which would have been no discredit to many
old regiments.” 54
Many officers agreed that the recruits adapted well to army life. They were
less pleased, though, with the quality of weapons provided for the new troops.
Armies on both sides in the war used the Lorenz rifle, with the North alone buying
more than 226,000 in various calibers from Austrian manufacturers. The new
black regiments along the Mississippi received the .58-caliber model. One colonel
called it “an inferior arm, but the best that could be had.” Captain Parkinson of
the 8th Louisiana (AD) called the weapons “good second class guns.” Parkinson’s
regiment got its rifles the second week in May. The one hundred fifty men of the
1st Mississippi (AD), twenty miles downriver at Milliken’s Bend, did not receive
theirs until 6 June. 55
The African Brigade drilled in camps along the Mississippi while Grant’s
Army of the Tennessee crossed the river south of Vicksburg and marched northeast
to Jackson, then west toward Vicksburg, beating the Confederate opposition
five times in three weeks. This rapid movement came at the end of four months
that the army had spent relatively immobile as it searched for a route that led
through the flooded Louisiana countryside to the river south of Vicksburg. While
Grant’s soldiers negotiated the swamps, the general moved his headquarters to
Milliken’s Bend, a steamboat landing upstream from the objective, on the opposite
bank. The Army of the Tennessee began its campaign at the end of April,
leaving the Louisiana side of the river in the care of four thousand recently arrived
white troops and the half-dozen new black regiments that were still struggling
to organize (Table 1). 56
Throughout May, officers appointed by Adjutant General Thomas to lead
the new regiments arrived at landings along the river and began searching the
surrounding country for recruits. By early June, the four black regiments that
were organizing at Milliken’s Bend—the 1st Mississippi (AD) and the 9th,
11th, and 13th Louisiana (AD)—numbered nearly one thousand men. For those
among them who had weapons, musketry instruction had begun only in the last
week of May. 57
By then, Grant’s army had Vicksburg hemmed in, but the Confederate Maj.
Gen. Richard Taylor, commanding the District of West Louisiana, hoped to disrupt
the federal supply line and raise the siege. A raid on the main Union supply
54 W. M. Parkinson to Brother James, 28 May 1863, Parkinson Letters. Col I. F. Shepard to Brig
Gen L. Thomas, 24 May 1863 (“and drew,” “progress”), Entry 2014, pt. 2, RG 393, NA.
55 Col J. M. Alexander to Lt Col J. H. Wilson, 10 Sep 1863 (“an inferior arm”), 55th USCI,
Entry 57C, RG 94, NA. Parkinson to Brother James, 28 May 1863 (“good second”); to James, 11
May 1863. Annual Return of Alterations and Casualties for 1863, 51st USCI, Entry 57, Muster Rolls
of Volunteer Organizations: Civil War, RG 94, NA; William B. Edwards, Civil War Guns: The
Complete Story of Federal and Confederate Small Arms (Gettysburg, Pa.: Thomas Publications,
1997), p. 256.
56 OR, ser. 1, vol. 24, pt. 3, pp. 249, 251.
57 Ibid., pt. 2, p. 447; Wearmouth, Cornwell Chronicles, pp. 204–05, 211, 217.