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
managed to join the expedition and accompanied it back to Union lines. As many
as one hundred of them may have been potential recruits. 20
Wild had hoped to continue recruiting in North Carolina, but, as happened
often during the war, events in other parts of the country dictated a change of
plans. At Charleston, South Carolina, Maj. Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore pursued land
operations that summer in support of a naval attack on the city. After his attempt to
storm Fort Wagner failed on 17 July, Gillmore complained to Maj. Gen. Henry W.
Halleck, the Army chief of staff, that disease and battle casualties had sapped his
troop strength, and asked “urgently . . . for 8,000 or 10,000 [veteran] troops.” The
closest reinforcements who could be spared were the men of the 1st North Carolina
Colored. The regiment boarded transports just one week after receiving its colors
and only returned to North Carolina for discharge in the spring of 1866. 21
General Foster had already left New Berne and gone north to Fort Monroe,
where he took command of the new Department of Virginia and North Carolina on
18 July. General Halleck anticipated that the Confederates would draw troops from
their coastal defenses to support the Army of Northern Virginia during the weeks
after Gettysburg and hoped that Foster would “do the rebels much injury.” Just six
weeks after moving to Fort Monroe, Foster ordered the 2d North Carolina Colored
Infantry and the other black regiments in his old department—the 3d North Carolina
Colored Infantry, still recruiting, and the 1st United States Colored Infantry
(USCI), recently arrived from Washington, D.C.—to take station at Portsmouth,
Virginia. 22
The advent of the 1st USCI in North Carolina and of the 3d USCI at Charleston
later in the summer marked an epoch in black soldiers’ role in the war. Of the
regiments raised in the North by the War Department, these were the first to take
the field and among the first to receive consecutive numbers as federal rather than
state volunteers. The new system of designation began that spring, while Governor
Andrew was raising the 54th Massachusetts and Adjutant General Lorenzo
Thomas along the Mississippi River, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks and Brig. Gen.
Daniel Ullmann in Louisiana, and Col. James Montgomery in South Carolina were
also organizing regiments.
On 22 May, Secretary of War Stanton issued an order that established a bureau
of the Adjutant General’s Office in Washington to deal with “all matters relating to
the organization of colored troops” and provided for examining boards to test the
ability of prospective officers. As Adjutant General Thomas organized regiments
along the river that spring, he appointed the officers on his own authority from
among the white troops at towns and steamboat landings where he stopped. Boards
of officers from the river garrisons, rather than boards convened by the War De-
20 OR, ser. 1, vol. 27, pt. 2, pp. 859–67. General Foster estimated the number of escaping slaves
as four hundred (p. 860); Reid, “Raising the African Brigade,” p. 288, quotes a newspaper estimate
of two hundred. The raid’s effect was so slight that John G. Barrett, The Civil War in North Carolina
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963), ignores it entirely, while noting that railroad
officials “kept a large labor force on duty to repair any damage done to the line by raids . . . , and the
road was in operation again by August 1,” after another raid later in the month (p. 166).
21 OR, ser. 1, vol. 28, pt. 2, pp. 23 (quotation), 30.
22 Ibid., vol. 27, pt. 3, pp. 553 (quotation), 723; Capt J. A. Judson to Col A. G. Draper, 29 Aug
1863, 36th USCI, Entry 57C, Regimental Papers, RG 94, NA.