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
The regiment took nearly two months to fill its ranks, but this was no longer than the
time needed to recruit the first black regiments in other Northern and border-state cities
during the summer of 1863. Despite antagonism from many white residents in places
like Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, black regiments during the third summer
of the war were able to organize as quickly as many white volunteer regiments had
done in 1861 and 1862, when enthusiasm for the war was high. 34
The streets of Washington provided a setting for the kind of rowdiness and violence
that typify boom towns. In July 1863 alone, city police arrested 1,647 soldiers,
nearly all of them white, mostly for absence without leave, drunkenness, and disorderly
behavior. Many white civilian residents were new arrivals who worked for
the Army or Navy and competed directly for jobs as laborers and teamsters with
black Washingtonians and escaped slaves. These white workers displayed a hostility
toward black recruiting that often took physical, even brutal, forms. The murder
and arson that characterized the New York Draft Riots in July were only extreme
examples of the hatred directed at black people that flourished in American cities at
the middle of the nineteenth century. In Washington, an act of Congress had abolished
slavery eight months before the Emancipation Proclamation. With that, black
people lost their cash value and their lives became worth nothing in the eyes of many
white ruffians. Racially inspired assaults among civilians occurred several times a
week during the summer of 1863, and individual black soldiers in town also suffered
insults and beatings. As companies of the 1st USCI mustered in, military authorities
withdrew them to Analostan Island (since renamed Theodore Roosevelt Island), less
than two miles due west of the White House and just south of Georgetown. 35
An urgent call for protection from the chaplain who commanded one of the
Washington contraband camps brought two companies of the regiment back to
the mainland. At the beginning of June, the camp had suffered an attack by rioters
whom the Evening Star described as “a disorderly gang.” White troops from the
city’s garrison went to New York in mid-July to help suppress the Draft Riots, leaving
the camp without an armed guard. The camp chaplain heard remarks “freely
uttered by the rowdy class” that “threatened outbreaks of popular violence here
similar to those so recently occurring in New York,” and asked for a guard from
“the colored regiment” and 150 muskets to arm able-bodied male residents of the
camp. Two companies arrived within a few days, and stood guard over the camp
while the regiment received its last recruits. The 1st USCI sailed for North Carolina
at the beginning of August, after a review by Maj. Gen. Silas Casey, a veteran
of the Mexican War and Indian campaigns on the Pacific Coast who chaired the
examining board that met in Washington to evaluate officer applicants for the U.S.
Colored Troops. The old soldier observed cautiously that the new regiment looked
34 NA Microfilm Pub M594, Compiled Rcds Showing Svc of Mil Units in Volunteer Union
Organizations, roll 205, 1st USCI; (Washington) Evening Star, 5 May 1863; Edward G. Longacre,
A Regiment of Slaves: The 4th United States Colored Infantry, 1863–1866 (Mechanicsburg, Pa.:
Stackpole Books, 2003), pp. 13, 19, 28; Paradis, Strike the Blow for Freedom, pp. 5, 9, 11, 22–23,
29–31; Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, p. 12.
35 Arrest statistic is in (Washington) Evening Star, 3 August 1863. Incidents of insult and assault
offered to black soldiers are issues for 22 May and 5, 12, and 23 June 1863. Iver Bernstein, The New
York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil
War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 27–31.