Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

196
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
taught them to how handle their weapons. Good colonels tried to get rid of incompetent
or vicious officers. An exasperated commanding officer might resort to bizarre
measures. At one point, Colonel Alexander polled officers of the 1st Alabama to
determine whether he or Maj. Edgar M. Lowe should resign. The vote was a tie. 13
As the regiments mustered in, company by company, they began to take part in
military operations. In late May, twenty-seven officers and men of the 2d Arkansas
(AD), accompanied by detachments from two white regiments, cruised both shores
of the Mississippi for recruits, ranging from Helena as far south as the mouth of
the Arkansas River and sometimes moving inland six or seven miles to investigate
a likely plantation. At one point, the waterborne recruiters exchanged shots with
Confederates on shore. “The conduct of the colored soldiers was highly creditable,”
reported Brig. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss, commanding at Helena. “The [plantation]
blacks hailed with joy the appearance of the colored soldiers.” The expedition
returned with 125 recruits. 14
That fall, the regiments at Goodrich’s Landing began to scout the country nearby
for cotton and livestock. On 23 September, officers and men of the 10th Louisiana
Infantry (AD) found one hundred ten bales on a plantation a day’s march from their
base. A week later, companies of the 1st Mississippi (AD) returned from a three-day
scout with sixty bales. These expeditions were not always bloodless. On 11 November,
forty-five men of the 6th Mississippi (AD) left Natchez with a train of four
wagons. Only two miles outside the town, about sixty Confederate cavalry attacked.
The train’s escort drove them off, but at a cost of four men killed and six wounded.
“The men behaved well, returning the enemy’s fire briskly and finely routing them,”
the regiment’s adjutant reported, even though continual details to work on the town’s
fortifications had forestalled any attempts at military training. 15
Before being appointed colonel of the 1st Mississippi Cavalry (AD), Captain
Osband had led a battalion of the 4th Illinois Cavalry through the country around
Vicksburg rounding up laborers to improve the town’s defenses. “You will arrest and
bring in . . . all able-bodied negroes who are found floating around doing nothing,
and bring them in to be put on the new fortifications to work,” Maj. Gen. James B.
McPherson ordered. Once recruiting for Osband’s new regiment began, his officers
had to seek soldiers rather than laborers, but the method remained much the same.
On 10 October 1863, the date of Osband’s appointment as colonel, General Grant advised
that the new regiment should fill its ranks “from the plantations around owned
by persons of disloyalty.” Soon afterward, Osband led the one organized company of
his new regiment and a battalion of the 4th Illinois Cavalry on a raid that went as far
as Satartia, a village on the Yazoo River about thirty miles northeast of Vicksburg. By
mid-November, he had secured enough men to muster in three companies. A march
from the mouth of the Yazoo to Skipwith’s Landing, on the Mississippi River in Issaquena
County, revealed “a deserted and abandoned country” that had been picked
Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 2 vols. in 6 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1870–1888), vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. xxxvii, xliii.
13 Testimony, Capt H. Simmons, Investigation, 17 Mar 1864, and Endorsement, Brig Gen A. L.
Chetlain, 1 Apr 1864 (quotation), in A–15–CT–1863, Entry 360, Colored Troops Div, LR, RG 94,
NA. 14 OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, pp, 339–40.
15 NA M594, roll 210, 48th and 51st USCIs, and roll 211, 58th USCI (quotation).