Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

North Carolina and Virginia, 1861–1864 309
partment, examined Thomas’ candidates. For most of the next two years, Thomas,
west of the Appalachians, continued to correspond directly with Stanton rather
than with the new Bureau for Colored Troops in his own Washington office. Such
vague areas of responsibility and ill-defined chains of command characterized the
Union’s effort to enlist black soldiers throughout the last two years of the war. 23
During the rest of 1863, one Northern governor after another adopted the
program of black recruitment. The wholesale organization of new state regiments
that had occurred during the first two summers of the war was over.
Henceforth, white men who enlisted or were drafted would go to fill the ranks
of existing regiments. Helping to organize U.S. Colored Troops therefore gave
state governors a last chance to distribute patronage by naming the thirty-nine
officers required to field an infantry regiment. The governor of Ohio was one of
the first to express an interest. Maj. Charles W. Foster, chief of the Bureau for
Colored Troops, sent him a copy of the War Department order that stipulated
the number of officers and men necessary to make up a regiment, adding: “To
facilitate the appointment of the officers, it . . . would be well to forward to the
War Department as early as practicable the names of such persons as you wish
to have examined for appointments.” The same sentence appeared that summer
and fall in letters to the governors of Rhode Island, Michigan, and Illinois.
Each of those states raised a black regiment, as did Connecticut and Indiana.
Ohio managed to raise two. 24
In New York City, a private organization seized the recruiting initiative from the
state’s reluctant Democratic governor. Early in December 1863, after the governor
told the recruiting committee of the Union League Club that “the organization of negro
regiments . . . rests entirely with the War Department in Washington,” committee
members wrote directly to Secretary of War Stanton. Describing their organization
as “composed of over 500 of the wealthiest and most respectable citizens,” the writers
offered their money and energy in the cause of black enlistment. Major Foster
quickly conveyed Stanton’s acceptance of the proposal, and local recruiters went to
work. Even though private citizens rather than elected officials took charge of the
project, they made sure that the list of officer candidates was heavy with veterans of
New York regiments. 25
The first of the New York Union League’s regiments, numbered the 20th USCI,
took ship for New Orleans early in March 1864. Presentation of colors in Union
Square and the regiment’s march down Broadway attracted tens of thousands of
spectators. Among daily newspapers, the Republican Times allotted two-and-a-
23 OR, ser. 3, 3: 100–101, 215–16 (quotation, p. 215). Brig Gen L. Thomas to Col E. D. Townsend,
14 Apr 1863; to Maj Gen J. A. McClernand, 8 May 1863; to Col E. D. Townsend, 20 May 1863; all
in Entry 159BB, Generals’ Books and Papers (L. Thomas), RG 94, NA. Michael T. Meier, “Lorenzo
Thomas and the Recruitment of Blacks in the Mississippi Valley, 1863–1865,” in Black Soldiers in
Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era, ed. John David Smith (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2002), pp. 249–75.
24 OR, ser. 3, 3: 380 (quotation), 383, 572, 838. The War Department order that fixed the
personnel limits of regiments is on pp. 175–76.
25 OR, ser. 3, 3: 1106–07 (quotations, p. 1107), 1117–18; 4: 4, 10–11, 55. Maj C. W. Foster to G.
Bliss, 28 and 29 Dec 1863, 14 Jan 1864, all in Entry 352, Colored Troops Div, Letters Sent (LS),
RG 94, NA. Melinda Lawson, Patriot Fires: Forging a New American Nationalism in the Civil War
North (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), pp. 88–90, 98–120.