Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

North Carolina and Virginia, 1861–1864 317
ers, father and son. The father called White a “Damned Nigger-stealing son of a
bitch,” and the son spat in his face; each fired at him, the father with a shotgun,
the son with a revolver. Another shotgun blast took off the hat of Pvt. John W.
Bantum, who accompanied White, and lodged a few birdshot pellets in his scalp.
Bantum ran for his life and took news of White’s death to his captain. The killers
escaped to Virginia. When another officer of the recruiting detail rode forty miles
to the Union garrison at Point Lookout to report the murder, the commanding
officer’s response expressed a frustration common to officers attempting to keep
order in an occupied but hostile country: “Jesus Christ, we have fivety miles to
Gaurd [sic] and but Three Hundred men to do it with.” 41
By the late fall of 1863, black regiments raised in Maryland and the North
were serving either along the coast of Florida and South Carolina in the Department
of the South or around the mouth of the James River in Virginia. Anticipating
a Confederate move in Virginia, General Foster had withdrawn troops from
his North Carolina garrisons in August to reinforce the federal military and naval
bases at Norfolk and Portsmouth. On the north bank of the James, forays by
enemy cavalry trying to gather conscripts for the Confederate Army could cause
what the local Union commander called “a general skedaddle” among white
residents of the peninsula between the James and the York. Such raids had to be
deterred, if not stopped entirely. By the third week of November, the 4th USCI,
the first of Maryland’s black regiments, and the 6th USCI, the second black regiment
organized at Philadelphia, were camped near Yorktown on the peninsula.
At Portsmouth and Norfolk were the 1st USCI, which had arrived in September
after a brief posting to North Carolina; the 5th, from Ohio; and the 10th, organized
in Virginia. There, too, were the 2d and 3d North Carolina Colored, both
regiments still striving to fill their companies. Wild’s three North Carolina regiments
would receive new designations—the 35th, 36th, and 37th USCIs—in the
coming spring. Meanwhile, attempts to enlist black civilians who were already
working for the Army brought officers of these regiments into conflict with local
quartermasters and other staff officers, and they began to look outside Union
lines for recruits. 42
November brought another change to the Department of Virginia and North
Carolina: Maj. Gen Benjamin F. Butler returned to Fort Monroe, where he had
spent much of the first spring and summer of the war. He had been without
an assignment since December 1862, when he left the Department of the Gulf.
One of the most prominent pro-war Democrats and a possible vice-presidential
or presidential nominee in the 1864 election, Butler was a man for whom the
Lincoln administration had to find a place. He took command at Fort Monroe
41 Col W. Birney to Adjutant General of the Army, 20 Aug 1863 (B–128–CT–1863, f/w B–40–
CT–1863), and to Lt Col W. H. Chesebrough, 26 Aug 1863 (B–134–CT–1863, f/w B–40–CT–1863);
W. T. Chambers to Col W. Birney, 22 Aug 1863 (C–134–CT–1863); Capt L. L. Weld to Col W. Birney,
23 Nov 1863 (“Damned”) (B–505–CT–1863, f/w W–151–CT–1863); 1st Lt E. S. Edgerton to Col W.
Birney, 25 Nov 1863 (“Jesus”) (E–51–CT–1863, f/w W–151–CT–1863); all in Entry 360, RG 94, NA.
42 OR, ser. 1, vol. 29, pt. 2, pp. 99, 104 (quotation). Capt H. F. H. Miller to Col A. G. Draper, 11
Sep 1863; 2d Lt J. N. North to Col A. G. Draper, 16 Sep 1863; both in 36th USCI, Regimental Books,
RG 94, NA; NA M594, roll 205, 1st USCI, and roll 206, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 10th USCIs; Richard M.
Reid, Freedom for Themselves: North Carolina’s Black Soldiers in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2008), pp. 76, 123, 153.