Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

North Carolina and Virginia, 1861–1864 319
forty men had that morning taken breakfast there and started off with the avowed
purpose ‘of giving the black soldiers hell.’” 45
Draper’s men marched warily, always with an advance guard and flankers in
the woods that lined the road. Their practice had been to prepare supper late in the
afternoon and move on to another site before camping for the night. To ward off a
retaliatory attack after their raid on the guerrilla’s farm, they surrounded the camp
that night with a four-foot enclosure of fence rails (destroying several hundred
yards of farmers’ fences). The next morning, they moved on, repairing a bridge the
guerrillas had destroyed and spending the night at a plantation, which they fortified
with the expedition’s wagon train. The women and children in the party took
shelter from a heavy rainstorm in the slave quarters while the men slept in barns
and sheds.
On 22 November, Draper decided to capture another notorious guerrilla
leader who was supposed to be nearby and might pay a visit to his family. Leaving
the wagons and the black civilians in care of an officer and twenty-five men,
Draper took the remaining ninety-two by a circuitous route that brought them,
soon after sunset, close to the guerrilla’s house. A black resident of the neighborhood
led them to a ford where they found a flatboat that allowed them to make
part of the final approach by water. The guerrilla leader did not appear until noon
the next day, and he surrendered only after the men of the 2d North Carolina
Colored shot the hull of his boat full of holes. Also arrested in the course of the
expedition were three Confederate soldiers on furlough and six civilians who
were found with weapons. One of them was reputed to have murdered a Union
soldier; another ran a Confederate post office. “Nineteen twentieths of all the
citizens of Princess Anne appear to be the friends and allies of the guerrillas,”
Draper reported. “The blacks are the friends of the Union.” About 475 of them
accompanied the Union troops, “besides many who came in separately.” The
expedition returned to Norfolk on 26 November, having covered more than two
hundred fifty miles in nine days.
Not all Union officers in southeastern Virginia approved of Draper’s expedition,
although it is not clear whether they opposed the enlistment of black
soldiers in principle or were merely alienated by General Wild’s prickly personality.
For whatever reason, the colonel commanding the 98th New York,
stationed at an outpost along the recruiters’ route, sent a subordinate to interview
farmers in the wake of what the colonel termed Draper’s “marauding &
plundering expedition.” While the colonel’s cover letter spoke of the recruiting
party “having committed the grossest outrages, taking the last morsel of
food from destitute families, grossly insulting defenceless women, . . . stealing
horses & otherwise disgracing their colors & cause,” the captain’s report
identified forty-eight farms that he visited along Draper’s route. Twenty-three
householders—nearly half of those queried—reported having lost no property
45 Information in this and the following paragraphs is from Col A. G. Draper to Capt G. H.
Johnston, 27 Nov 1863, 36th USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA. Draper estimated his regiment’s
strength as “about three hundred officers and men.” Col A. G. Draper to Maj R. S. Davis, 14 Nov
1863, 36th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA. The enemy force that Draper sought was one that even
Confederate authorities referred to as guerrillas. OR, ser. 1, vol. 29, pt. 2, p. 818.