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
ernment officials, or threats to life and property by “bushwhackers and horse
thieves” with secessionist leanings. News of the surrender of the Army of Northern
Virginia on 9 April reached General Reynolds at Little Rock by telegraph;
two days later, the War Department ordered him to publish the terms that Grant
had offered Lee and to begin negotiating the Confederate surrender in Arkansas.
Both Maj. Gen. James F. Fagan at Camden and Brig. Gen. M. Jeff Thompson in
the northeastern part of the state flatly rejected Reynolds’ suggestion at first, but
Thompson had second thoughts and on 11 May surrendered his 7,454 officers
and men to a Union officer from the adjoining Department of the Missouri. 70
With that, the Confederate collapse came quickly. The fact that Thompson’s
command included 157 companies that averaged fewer than 50 men each illustrates
one problem that had faced Union occupiers in Arkansas. These companies
had operated independently for the most part and indeed without deference to
any outside authority. Federal officers saw an instance of this when two Confederate
companies rode into Pine Bluff to surrender on 14 May and the leader of
one group killed the leader of the other “in a personal altercation.” Men like these
did not fear federal troops as much as they did their own Unionist neighbors, who
fought them with stealth and ferocity that matched their own. One Confederate
leader told General Reynolds that his men would not agree to lay down their arms
“until they have some assurance from the U.S. authorities that those independent
companies and squads claiming protection under the Federal Government are
immediately disarmed.” The Unionists were responsible for “many murderous
crimes and outrageous depredations,” he complained. It was the middle of June
before the business of paroling the last surrendered Confederates in Arkansas got
under way. 71
By that time, Union generals had been planning the occupation of the state
for weeks and pondering a move into Texas. But federal troops in Arkansas
made no move in that direction. Instead, the 56th USCI stayed at Helena guarding
plantations along the Mississippi River. Colonel Williams’ brigade remained
in Little Rock. The 57th USCI, formerly the 4th Arkansas (AD), garrisoned
Lewisburg and Dardanelle, farther west. Companies of a Louisiana regiment,
the 84th USCI, steamed up the Ouachita River to occupy Camden, for a navigable
stream was still the quickest route in many parts of the South. Along the
Arkansas River and elsewhere in the state, white regiments guarded Fort Smith,
Pine Bluff, and a few smaller places. After four years of warfare, the state’s
roads and bridges could not support a large troop movement, the department’s
chief engineer reported. They had received no repairs “since the rebellion,” and
the population was in no better shape. “An army cannot get through Arkansas
now,” the officer commanding at Fort Smith asserted. “There are no supplies
in the country; the people who are left are in a starving condition.” Instead of
70 OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 103, 235, 237, and pt. 2, pp. 6 (“bushwhackers”), 7, 40, 68–70,
190, 249.
71 Ibid., pt. 1, p. 237, and pt. 2, pp. 69, 76, 467 (“in a personal”), 495 (“until they,” “many
murderous”), 893.