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
asked that all the companies of the 100th USCI be stationed together for the first
time. The regiments at Chattanooga, he pointed out, “have had the good fortune to
be placed in such positions as have given them the facilities” for instruction, and
he asked the same advantages for his own regiment and the others in Thompson’s
brigade. Colonel Thompson agreed with Stone; but General Thomas, who retained
his command because of his victory over Hood, decided that drill was less important
than guarding the Nashville and Northwestern, which was still a major supply
artery for his army. 94
Guard duty did not mean inactivity. Even in the last months of the war, Confederate
guerrillas operated widely throughout the Department of the Cumberland.
Field operations began as soon as the troops reached their new stations. The commanding
officer of Company C, 18th USCI, noted “frequent night scouts” near
Bridgeport, Alabama, in late January “to look for guerrillas, who commit depredations
on the citizens.” For the 42d USCI, an “invalid” regiment that General Steedman
left in Chattanooga during the Nashville Campaign, antiguerrilla duty had
never stopped. One company of the regiment covered an estimated seventy-two
miles in four days during a “short but severe campaign” in early January against
Confederate irregulars who had fired on a party of federal soldiers guarding a cattle
herd. “My men is very mutch exposed & very badly quartered, besides quite
a number of them sick,” one company commander complained as winter ended.
“They have had no less than five fights since the first day of this month.” On 18
March, “the rebel Colonel” Lemuel G. Mead, who had recruited a force known
as Mead’s Confederate Partisan Rangers in Union-occupied Tennessee, attacked
an outpost of the 101st USCI at Boyd’s Station, Alabama, on the Memphis and
Charleston Railroad, killing five men of Company E. A few weeks later, as the
Confederacy collapsed, Union troops accepted the surrender of Mead’s men, although
one federal officer characterized them as “ragamuffins, bushwhackers, . . .
horse-thieves, and murderers.” 95
With the close of hostilities, regiments of U.S. Colored Troops in the Department
of the Cumberland began issuing furloughs to enlisted men for home visits.
Black soldiers in central Tennessee and northern Alabama found themselves closer
to home at the end of the war than did those in most other parts of the conquered
South. For men in the northern and Kentucky regiments of U.S. Colored Troops
who served in Virginia during the war and took ship for Texas soon afterward,
distance prohibited furloughs, as it did for those serving in Florida and around
Mobile. During the war, Memphis and other Mississippi River towns had attracted
black refugees from plantations in the surrounding counties, including the families
of many soldiers in garrison, so that furloughs for troops in garrison there were
not as necessary. Only in the Department of the Cumberland and along the lower
94 Lt Col H. Stone to Brig Gen W. D. Whipple, 16 Jan 1865, f/w 12th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94,
NA.
95 OR, ser. 1, vol. 49, pt. 1, pp. 86 (“the rebel”), 559 (“ragamuffins”), 1023; Capt J. H. Hull to
1st Lt A. Caskey, 24 Mar 1865 (“My men”), 101st USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA. NA M594, roll
207, 18th USCI (“frequent night”); roll 209, 42d USCI (“short but”); roll 215, 101st USCI. Mead’s
Confederate Partisan Rangers had a short official existence, from March 1865 to the Confederate
surrender. Stewart Sifakis, Compendium of the Confederate Armies, 11 vols. (New York: Facts on
File, 1992–1995), 3: 77.