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
your river posts. Don’t attempt to hold the interior further than as threatening to
[Confederate] lines of supply.” 82
Unlike U.S. Colored Troops infantry and artillery regiments, which stayed
close to their river-town garrisons during the last ten months of the war, the
only black cavalry regiment in the region, the 3d United States Colored Cavalry
(USCC), remained active. During the last half of 1864, it was continually in the
field taking part in several expeditions that illustrate clearly the nature of warfare
in a military backwater. The intention of most of these expeditions was to assist
Union operations in other parts of the South or to impede the enemy’s.
During the first week of July, the 3d USCC was part of an otherwise white
force of 2,800 infantry and cavalry that marched from Vicksburg to Jackson
to destroy a railroad bridge over the Pearl River. General Sherman in northern
Georgia had read in an Atlanta newspaper that the bridge was being rebuilt
since Union troops had last visited the site and recommended a weekly expedition
against some part of the Mississippi Central Railroad, “breaking it all the
time, and especially should that bridge at Jackson be destroyed.” The expedition
reached Jackson and destroyed the bridge, but Confederate opposition inflicted
two hundred fifty casualties. The 3d USCC lost eight officers and men killed and
ten enlisted men wounded. On 11 July, a few days after reaching the Big Black
River and replenishing its supplies, the expedition turned east again and spent
the next few days marching to Grand Gulf by way of Raymond and Port Gibson,
a move intended to support General Smith’s Tupelo Campaign by keeping
Confederates in southwest Mississippi from joining Forrest in the northern part
of the state. From Grand Gulf, the troops returned to Vicksburg by steamboat on
17 July, by which time Smith’s troops had found Forrest, beaten him, and begun
their return to Memphis. 83
The next nine weeks were comparatively quiet around the Mississippi River
garrisons, but in the second half of September, the 3d USCC began a period of
intense activity that lasted until the end of November. In September, the Confederate
General John B. Hood reacted to Sherman’s capture of Atlanta, first by
attacks in northern Georgia on Sherman’s supply line to Chattanooga, then by
a withdrawal into Alabama to begin preparing his own move against the Union
garrison and shipping point at Nashville, still farther in the Union rear. Hood’s
subordinate, Forrest, operated meanwhile in support of the larger Confederate
force. Once again, events taking place elsewhere determined the shape of affairs
along the river.
On 19 September, the Union general in command at Natchez reported that a
Confederate force that he had thought might be advancing to attack him “was but
a portion of Forrest’s command visiting this section for supplies.” The 3d USCC
conducted one of several raids by federal troops that week to deprive the enemy
of food and forage in southwestern Mississippi. A month earlier, Colonel Osband
had assumed command of the District of Vicksburg’s entire cavalry force:
five regiments with a combined strength of perhaps two thousand. He sent three
82 OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 3, pp. 527–28.
83 Ibid., pt. 1, p. 243, and pt. 2, p. 151 (“breaking it”); Main, Third United States Colored
Cavalry, p. 177.