Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

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Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
1864, General Taylor seemed willing to put black prisoners of war to work rather than
slaughter them. 36
Most river garrisons, from Paducah and Columbus in Kentucky south to New
Orleans and its nearby forts, included an outsized twelve-company regiment called
heavy artillery. In peacetime, most companies of the Army’s four artillery regiments
had served in coastal fortifications; only one or two companies in each regiment had
trained as horse-drawn light artillery. Fielding as many as six cannon, these companies
were called batteries. During the war, most regular and volunteer artillery accompanied
the field armies as light batteries; only with the fortification of Washington, D.C., in
the fall of 1861 and the capture of Memphis and New Orleans the next spring did the
need for specially trained heavy artillery regiments become apparent. The maximum
authorized strength for a heavy artillery regiment was 1,834 officers and men, but none
of the Union’s black heavy artillery regiments ever enrolled that many. 37
While white troops moved in and out of the Mississippi River port of Natchez, the
2d Mississippi Heavy Artillery (AD) remained in garrison. The regiment had begun
recruiting in mid-September and had filled its twelfth and final company only on 21
January 1864. Most of its officers had come from the 30th Missouri Infantry, which
had arrived at Natchez the summer before. Nearly all of the enlisted men in the regiment
were from plantations in nearby counties and parishes. Many of them became
sick soon after enlisting, for Natchez was a notoriously unhealthy place. The number
of residents in a nearby contraband camp dwindled from four thousand to twenty-five
hundred that fall, partly because of mortality that on one occasion reached seventy-five
deaths in one day. Some of the surviving freedpeople fled in disgust or despair to their
home plantations. 38
By February 1864, Company A of the 2d Mississippi Heavy Artillery (AD) was
serving as mounted infantry in the village of Vidalia, across the river on the Louisiana
shore, attracting the Confederates’ attention by forays inland. The men of Companies
I, K, L, and M, the most recently organized, had not yet received rifles and could not
practice the infantry drill that soldiers in a heavy artillery regiment were required to
master. They conducted artillery drill instead, using large cannon mounted in the earthworks
around the city that they and other former slaves had helped to dig. The average
number of enlisted men in each company was less than half the 147 authorized by law
for artillery. 39
On Sunday, 7 February, the 2d Mississippi’s commander, Col. Bernard G. Farrar,
was across the river at the Union outpost in Vidalia. Lt. Col. Hubert A. Mc-
Caleb remained in Natchez commanding the regiment. About 2:30 that afternoon,
36 OR, ser. 1, vol. 24, pt. 2, p. 459 (“unfortunately”), and pt. 3, pp. 425–26 (Grant), 443–44
(Taylor); vol. 34, pt. 2, pp. 935 (“If you come”), 952 (“It is desirable”). WGFL: LS, pp. 642–43;
Dudley T. Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (New York:
Longmans, Green, 1956), pp. 163–70.
37 OR, ser. 3, 2: 519; Dyer, Compendium, pp. 1693–1709, 1721–23.
38 ORVF, 8: 154; personnel data from Descriptive Book, 6th USCA, Regimental Books, RG 94,
NA; James E. Yeatman, A Report on the Condition of the Freedmen of the Mississippi (St. Louis:
Western Sanitary Commission, 1864), pp. 13–14.
39 OR, ser. 1, vol. 34, pt. 1, p. 129; Jeff Kinard, Lafayette of the South: Prince Camille de
Polignac and the American Civil War (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001), p. 121.
War Department, General Orders 126, 6 Sep 1862, established the maximum strength of a volunteer
artillery company at 152 officers and men. OR, ser. 3, 2: 519.