Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

North Carolina and Virginia, 1861–1864 323
fighter like Wild caused the same revulsion in Grabill that Col. James Montgomery
of the 2d South Carolina Colored had inspired earlier that year in Shaw. 50
Grabill wrote his letter of complaint on the peninsula north of the James River.
The 5th USCI had left Norfolk on 20 January and sailed to Yorktown, on the north
side of the peninsula, where it reinforced the 4th and 6th. Those two regiments had
arrived from Baltimore and Philadelphia in early October. Within a week of its arrival
on the peninsula, the 4th USCI took part in a raid across the York River. Ten
gunboats accompanied a transport that bore 744 officers and men of the regiment,
500 white cavalrymen and their horses, and 4 artillery pieces to Mathews County,
on Chesapeake Bay. During the next four days, the expedition destroyed about
one hundred fifty small craft that the raiders believed might be of use to Confederate
irregulars and captured a herd of eighty cattle. The general commanding at
Yorktown, who had not seen black soldiers before, reported favorably: “The negro
infantry . . . marched 30 miles a day without a straggler or a complaint. . . . Not a
fence rail was burned or a chicken stolen by them. They seem to be well controlled
and their discipline, obedience, and cheerfulness, for new troops, is surprising, and
has dispelled many of my prejudices.” 51
Colonel Duncan was pleased with his regiment, the 4th USCI. “The endurance,
and the patience of the men, uttering no complaints, was remarkable,” he told
his mother. “On the homeward trip, which was severer than marching out, the men
were shouting and singing most of the way, and upon reaching camp they fell to
dancing jigs.” Duncan thought well of his officers, too, “fine, accomplished gentlemen,”
and of the regimental chaplain, a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, “Mr. [William H.] Hunter—an able and agreeable and hard working
man—as black as the ace of spades.” Constant fatigues left no time for drill, for
the campsite at Yorktown was filthy after more than two years of occupation, first
by Confederate and then by Union troops. The arrival of the 6th USCI spared
Duncan’s regiment some of that work. Among the officers of the 6th the colonel
recognized two acquaintances from the 14th New Hampshire and soon developed
a close working relationship with their regiment. A month later, after taking part in
another expedition, Duncan’s confidence was undiminished. “The colored soldiers
develop remarkable qualities for marching, and I think will be equally brave in
battle. . . . I am perfectly willing to risk my reputation with the negro soldiers.” 52
One of these was Sgt. Maj. Christian A. Fleetwood, a free-born, literate Baltimorean
who had been among the first to show an interest in the new regiment
that summer. After putting his affairs in order, the 23-year-old signed his enlistment
papers on 11 August. Eight days later, the commanding officer appointed
him the senior noncommissioned officer of the regiment. A neat appearance,
50 E. F. Grabill to Dear Anna, 23 Jan 1864, E. F. Grabill Papers, Oberlin College (OC), Oberlin,
Ohio; Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil
War (New York: Free Press, 1987), pp. 180–85, 191–201, 211–15; James M. McPherson, For Cause
and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp.
168–76; Charles F. Royster, The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson,
and the Americans (New York: Knopf, 1991), pp. 361–63.
51 OR, ser. 1, vol. 29, pt. 1, pp. 205–07 (“The negro,” p. 207); NA M594, roll 206, 4th, 5th, and
6th USCIs.
52 S. A. Duncan to My Dear Mother, 18 Oct 1863 (“The endurance”), and to My Dear Friend, 20
Nov 1863 (“The colored”), both in Duncan-Jones Papers.