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
told him of the impending arrival of more cavalry. In the end, the reinforcement
amounted to only 281 men. 60
As the plan stood on the eve of its execution, Wistar would move against Richmond
with two brigades of infantry, about four thousand men, and one of cavalry,
about twenty-two hundred, accompanied by two light batteries. One of the infantry
brigades, commanded by Colonel Duncan, included the 4th, 5th, and 6th USCIs;
the other, three white regiments. Companies from five cavalry regiments constituted
the mounted brigade. The force was to move toward Richmond, the infantry
securing a bridge across the Chickahominy River while the cavalry dashed the last
twelve miles into the city. There, the raiders would divide into bands of between
two hundred fifty and three hundred fifty men. The first of these was to attack the
Confederate navy yard on the James River; the second group was to empty Libby
Prison and, crossing the bridge to Belle Isle, free the prisoners there. This party
would also cut telegraph lines out of the city and destroy several rail bridges and
depots. The objective of the third party was Jefferson Davis’ residence, where it
was to arrest him. The fourth group, after cooperating with the second in freeing the
prisoners, was to destroy the Confederacy’s leading producer of heavy ordnance,
the Tredegar Iron Works. The rest of the cavalry would act as a reserve, waiting in
Capitol Square for the other groups to join it after they had done their work. They
were to complete the entire project within three hours, before Confederate troops
could arrive from their camp on the James River, about eight miles below the city. 61
The black regiments left their camp near Yorktown about 2:00 p.m. on Friday, 5
February, and reached Williamsburg, a twelve-mile march, after dark. The men carried
seventy rounds and six days’ rations. “Very tired and footsore from new shoes,”
Sergeant Major Fleetwood wrote. “Slept by a bush.” The next morning, an impromptu
tour of the 1862 battlefield by some of the officers delayed the expedition’s start.
“Fooling and fizzling,” Fleetwood complained in his diary, but he used the time to
swap shoes with another soldier. The men were still in high spirits, as they had been
since the day before, when they learned of the raid they were to carry out. The brigade
moved forward late in the morning and did not stop at sunset. It was the night
before the new moon and “very dark,” Lieutenant Grabill told his fiancée. “Once
when Colonel [James W.] Conine sent me forward with a message . . . I rode past
the whole brigade and was quite advanced in another brigade before I learned my
mistake. . . . I lay down a moment to wait for the column to get past some obstruction.
When I woke up I was alone in the silent darkness, and it was some time before I
caught up.” It was hours past midnight when the brigade finally ended its thirty-mile
march at New Kent Court House. “Completely broken down,” Fleetwood wrote. 62
While the infantry made camp, Wistar’s cavalry pressed on through the moonless
night. At the Chickahominy, they found the planks of the bridge removed. Daylight
revealed a Confederate force waiting on the opposite shore and blocking nearby
60 OR, ser. 1, 33: 429, 448, 482; vol. 51, pt. 1, p. 1285 (“public buildings”). Butler Correspondence,
3: 340 (“It will be”), 351 (“My sending”), 360. Butler gave the strength of the cavalry reinforcement
as 380 in OR, ser. 1, 33: 439, but as 281 in two different messages in Butler Correspondence, 3:
345–46; the latter figure seems more likely.
61 OR, ser. 1, 33: 146, 521–22.
62 Ibid., pp. 146; NA M594, roll 206, 4th, 5th, and 6th USCIs; Fleetwood Diary, 5 (“Very tired”)
and 6 (“Fooling,” “Completely”) Feb 1864; E. F. Grabill to Friend Anna, 11 Feb 1864, Grabill Papers.