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
Sgt. Henry J. Maxwell,
2d U.S. Colored Artillery
Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands
would assume “control of all subjects
relating to refugees and freedmen
from rebel states, or from any district
of country within the territory embraced
in the operations of the army.”
Its first concern was the welfare of
“destitute and suffering refugees and
freedmen and their wives and children.”
As the year wore on, the Bureau’s
agents would supervise labor
contracts between former slaves and
white planters, who were no longer
slaveholders but still owned most of
the best farmland. 100
In July 1865, the 14th USCI had
six men on furlough and nine applications
pending when the regimental
commander asked permission for
three of his soldiers to attend “the
Convention of Colored People of this
State” at Nashville the next month.
Garrison and district headquarters
approved the soldiers’ request. Many
black Southerners were aware of impending
political changes that would
affect their future and sought to influence
the results by exercising their
new rights to petition and to assemble
peaceably. 101
The convention met on 7 August
at a chapel of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church. Twenty of the
116 delegates were soldiers in Tennessee
regiments of the U.S. Colored
Troops. Sgt. Henry J. Maxwell of
Battery A, 2d USCA, addressed them
on the first day. “We want the rights
guaranteed by the Infinite Architect,”
he told them. “We have gained one—
100 U.S. Statutes at Large, 13: 507–08; Ira Berlin et al., eds., The Wartime Genesis of Free
Labor: The Lower South (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 373–74. H. R. 51,
introduced on 14 December 1863, originally called for a “Bureau of Emancipation.” Congressional
Globe, 38th Cong., 1st sess., 134: 19.
101 Lt Col H. C. Corbin to Brig Gen A. J. Alexander, 19 Jul 1865 (“the Convention”), 14th USCI,
Entry 57C, RG 94, NA. See also “Petition of the Colored Citizens of Nashville,” 9 Jan 1865, in Berlin
et al., Black Military Experience, pp. 811–16.