Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Along the Mississippi River, 1863–1865 227
attention was paid to the usual route of travel as regarded roads. After one regiment
had passed over the ground it was rendered too boggy for others to follow,
so the command scattered, each regiment seeking a new route, thus leaving a
wide trail, which could be traced years after the war.
More than four hundred freedpeople joined the column. Most managed to survive
the trip to Gaines’ Landing, but not all. Osband estimated that as many as twenty
may have died of exposure along the route. 99
The expedition to northeastern Louisiana was the 3d USCC’s last major effort
of the war. Late in April 1865, detachments of Osband’s brigade at Memphis
boarded four steamers that took them nearly as far as Fort Pillow before putting
them ashore to engage in the kind of operation that had become known as a “guerrilla
hunt.” They managed to capture one man named in their orders, whom they
tried by court-martial and hanged. At the end of the month, the general commanding
at Memphis, thinking that Confederate President Jefferson Davis might flee
the country through his home state of Mississippi, sent the 3d USCC to Vicksburg
by boat. The regiment continued on to Fort Adams, below Natchez, and scouted
the country there. Meanwhile, far to the east, Union cavalry captured Davis near
Macon, Georgia, on 10 May. Not long afterward, the 3d USCC returned to Memphis.
100
As Confederate troops surrendered in the spring of 1865, first east of the Mississippi
River then west of it, regiments of U.S. Colored Troops garrisoned Union
strongholds along the river from Columbus, Kentucky, to Natchez, Mississippi.
They constituted a majority at each post, nearly four-fifths of the troops at Memphis
and more than 83 percent of those at Vicksburg. These regiments—one of
cavalry, thirteen of infantry, four of heavy artillery, and five light batteries—would
muster out in twos and threes between September 1865 and September 1866. Until
then, they would continue to perform duties they had practiced continually during
the war’s closing months: guarding government property, securing contraband cotton,
pursuing outlaws, and protecting the rights of former slaves, many of whom
were their own close relatives. For many of them, the transition from war to peace
must have been barely noticeable, for after the Confederate surrender they faced
the same challenges in their daily lives, on duty and off, that they had before. 101
99 OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 69–71, 665, 806 (quotation); Main, Third United States Colored
Cavalry, p. 246.
100 OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 184, 254–55; vol. 49, pt. 2, pp. 406, 441–42, 557 (quotation), 640.
101 OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 2, pp. 257 (Natchez), 267 (Helena); NA Microfilm Pub M617, Returns
from U.S. Mil Posts, rolls 232 (Columbus), 769 (Memphis), 917 (Fort Pickering), 1330 (Vicksburg).
No returns survive for Helena and Natchez from the spring of 1865.