Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

288
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
Union troops aboard a train in northern Georgia in 1864
within Union lines and in a hospital at Nashville along with other wounded prisoners
from the 44th. Pvt. Martin Buck and Pvt. Wiley Hunt both died there weeks
later, Buck of typhoid fever and Hunt of pneumonia. The Confederates, many of
whom lacked shoes, took Strawder’s and marched him barefoot with the other
unwounded captives to Franklin. There, Pvt. Henry Walker and other men with
frostbitten feet joined the wounded in a Confederate hospital. They returned to the
Union Army at Nashville by the end of the month. Those well enough to march
continued south. “They . . . put 33 of us in jail without food left us there two days
& marched us to Meridian Miss,” Pvt. Owen Gideon recalled, “& on the way . . . it
snowed and I stole a blanket from a rebel captain & slept.” The survivors remained
prisoners until the following spring. 78
When the ranking officers of the 14th and 44th USCIs reported the names of
the day’s casualties, they listed 26 enlisted men wounded, 48 missing, and 12 taken
prisoner. In all, nearly half of the eighty-six soldiers in the casualty list survived
the war to file their own pension claims and at least one other testified on behalf
of a comrade’s application without filing his own. By the time the two regiments
mustered out of service in the spring of 1866, only seven of the men named in the
two casualty lists still appeared on the rolls as “missing in action.” Confederates
78 Asst Surgeon C. W. Oleson to 1st Lt F. McNeil, 9 Dec 1864, 14th USCI, and Col L. Johnson
to Adj Gen, 2 Jan 1865, 44th USCI, both in Entry 57C, RG 94, NA. Deposition, Granville Scales, 18
Dec 1878 (quotation), in Pension File WC969411, Granville Scales; Pension File MO317804, Martin
Buck; Pension File SC805183, Joseph Cloudis; Pension File MC254302, Wiley Hunt; Pension File
SC486807, Jacob Strawder; Pension File WC512598, Henry Walker; Deposition, Owen Gideon,
23 Feb 1897 (“They . . . put”), in Pension File WC599132, Owen Gideon; all in CWPAF. For other
soldiers of the 44th USCI who received medical attention in Confederate hospitals, see Pension Files
SC189837, David Steele, CWPAF, and C2513010, Prier.