Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

North Carolina and Virginia, 1861–1864 325
Charles City Court House, on the road between Williamsburg and Richmond, in the
spring of 1864
reported Brig. Gen. Isaac J. Wistar, commanding at Yorktown. The attackers suffered
five wounded, whom they brought back to the place where the 6th USCI guarded
the wagons. Again, Wistar wrote that the “colored infantry did what was required of
them, . . . very severe duty (weather and roads considered). . . . Their position . . . , in
readiness to receive and guard prisoners and horses, issue rations, attend to wounded,
and do picket duty, on the return of the other exhausted troops, was found [to be] of
extreme advantage.” The gradual introduction to active service that the 4th and 6th
USCIs received was more effective and cost fewer casualties than the abrupt and
catastrophic immersion suffered earlier that year by other new black regiments in the
fights at Fort Wagner and Milliken’s Bend. 55
The next operation undertaken by black soldiers stationed on the peninsula
grew out of General Butler’s other responsibility, besides commanding the department:
acting as special agent for the exchange of prisoners of war. The agreement
for paroling and exchanging prisoners that had operated during the first two
years of the war entailed release of prisoners within weeks, or at least months,
of capture, with the understanding that they would not return to the fighting until
formal exchange for prisoners of equal rank held by the other side. This understanding
broke down when the Confederate government refused to acknowledge
the legitimacy of the Union’s black soldiers and announced its intention to punish
them under state laws that governed slave rebellions and their white officers
under laws that punished inciting rebellions. In each case, the penalty was death.
55 OR, ser. 1, vol. 29, pt. 1, pp. 974–77 (“a severe,” p. 975; “colored infantry,” p. 976).