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
kansas River in search of recruits. They scouted the west bank of the Mississippi on
the way down and the east bank on their return, sometimes venturing as far as seven
miles inland. At one point, a party of Confederates on shore fired on the vessel and
the Union troops aboard fired back. Prentiss reported that the men of the detachment
“fought with a hearty will and did good service. . . . The regiment is rapidly filling
up, and in a few days it is hoped it will be full.” 3
The general was so wrong about the progress of recruiting for the 2d Arkansas
(AD) that it calls into question the rest of his remarks about the men of the regiment.
Sixteen days after Prentiss’ report, 2d Lt. Minos Miller wrote in a private letter
that the regiment was “about 300 strong.” A month after that, in mid-July, Lt. Col.
George W. De Costa, the commanding officer, complained that four hundred recruits
at Vicksburg who had been promised to him had been withheld instead and that he
would have to go to Memphis in search of others. Late in October, Col. Charles S.
Sheley admitted that he still had only four hundred men organized in four-and-a-half
companies (enough to entitle the regiment to a full colonel in command). A recruiting
party of six officers had rounded up enough men during Maj. Gen. Frederick
Steele’s advance on Little Rock in August and September to complete the regiment,
but Steele refused to send them to Helena. “They are destitute of clothing and suffer
much from inclement weather,” Sheley told Adjutant General Thomas at the end of
October. Sheley tried to send uniforms from Helena for the recruits at Little Rock,
but he reported that General Prentiss’ successor there “prevents me, stating he would
not furnish them clothing until they are placed under his command.” The last five
companies of the 2d Arkansas (AD) mustered in separately later that fall at Duvall’s
Bluff, Little Rock, and Pine Bluff, where the men were camped. 4
Prentiss’ report of the regiment’s progress in recruiting that spring had been
too optimistic by half a year. He had not gone on the expedition that his report described
and may merely have been passing on what Colonel De Costa told him. It
is possible, too, that he wanted to appear energetic in his pursuit of the new policy
of black enlistment, which General Thomas had announced to the troops at Helena
only seven weeks earlier. Prentiss had been an Illinois lawyer and local politician
in civilian life. In the spring of 1863, his immediate superior was Maj. Gen. John
A. McClernand, a five-term Illinois congressman noted for bombast and mendacity
but a strong supporter of the Union and of measures for prosecuting the war.
Whatever the cause of Prentiss’ optimistic forecast for the 2d Arkansas (AD), the
report’s inaccuracy placed it in the same category as Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks’
description of the Louisiana Native Guard’s assault on the Confederate trenches
at Port Hudson: fine promotional literature for the new federal policy of enlisting
black soldiers but wishful rather than factual.
Besides General Steele’s alleged lack of cooperation, there was another
reason for the regiment’s slow growth. Potential recruits were reluctant to enlist.
“We have an order from Prentis[s] to press all able bodied negroes that is
3 OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, p. 340.
4 M. Miller to Dear Mother, 12 Jun 1863, M. Miller Papers, University of Arkansas (UA),
Fayetteville; Lt Col G. W. De Costa to Brig Gen L. F. Ross, 19 Jul 1863, and Col C. S. Sheley to
Brig Gen L. Thomas, 28 Oct 1863, both in 54th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA; NA M594, roll 211,
54th USCI.