Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

North Carolina and Virginia, 1861–1864 329
fords. With the element of surprise gone and the dash on Richmond forestalled, Wistar
thought that an attempt to force a crossing would be pointless and began a return
march. Duncan’s command was back at Yorktown by Tuesday, 9 February, “entirely
disgusted,” Fleetwood recorded. The brigade had marched well over one hundred
miles—one officer reckoned 125 miles—in less than five days. Several officers found
the men’s endurance noteworthy. “We performed the hardest marching that I have
ever known a regiment to perform,” wrote Colonel Shurtleff, who had campaigned in
the mountains of West Virginia. “During the long march on Sat[urday] our regiment
did not lose a straggler, while the white brigade left five hundred. Some of our boys
threw away knapsacks, clothing and all, but they would not fall out.” 63
Butler learned quickly that the Confederates had known about the plan for days.
A soldier in one of Wistar’s mounted regiments, imprisoned on a murder charge, had
escaped and fled to the nearest Confederate outpost, which passed him on to higher
authorities. By 4 February, Jefferson Davis felt secure enough in his preparations
for the raid to tell General Lee that he saw “no present necessity for your sending
troops here.” Even though the entire strength of the Richmond garrison was less than
that of Wistar’s force, all that was necessary to stop the expedition was to dismantle
the bridge over the Chickahominy and let the raiders know that they were expected.
More successful in freeing the prisoners was a tunnel dug by the inmates at Libby
Prison, by which 109 of them were able to escape on 9 February, the day Wistar’s
force returned to Yorktown. Fifty-nine eventually reached Union lines. 64
Late that month, Union troops mounted another raid on the Richmond prisons,
this one led by a division commander in the Army of the Potomac, Brig. Gen. Judson
Kilpatrick. By this time, Duncan’s brigade had acquired a fourth regiment, one that
Duncan and Col. John W. Ames of the 6th USCI had asked for. The 22d USCI was
organizing at Camp William Penn under the command of Col. Joseph B. Kiddoo,
former major of the 6th, “an officer of great merit and wide experience, and one
whom we would be proud to have . . . with us in the Brigade,” Ames and Duncan told
General Butler. Kiddoo himself was eager to come to Butler’s department, the two
colonels said; he felt “that in no other Dept . . . will the experiment of colored troops
be carried out on so grand a scale.” There was a large element of truth in this flattery,
for at this point in the war Butler had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the U.S.
Colored Troops project. General Wistar approved the colonels’ request, and the 22d
USCI reached Yorktown on 13 February. 65
The new regiment took up the routine of guard duty and fatigues at once,
before the men had time to build adequate quarters. “Have lost five men here,”
Assistant Surgeon Charles G. G. Merrill told his father. “It has been very cold &
Grabill’s letter attests to the men’s morale, as does a letter signed “Hard Cracker” that appeared in
the Anglo-African, 20 February 1864, quoted in Noah A. Trudeau, Like Men of War: Black Troops
in the Civil War, 1862–1865 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998), p. 203. “Hard Cracker” wrote that the
column reached New Kent Court House at 1:30 a.m.; Fleetwood, at 2:30; Grabill, at 3:30.
63 OR, ser. 1, 33: 145–48; NA M594, roll 206, 6th USCI; Fleetwood Diary, 7 Feb 1864 (“entirely
disgusted”); G. W. Shurtleff to My dear little girl, 11 Feb 1864 (“We performed”), G. W. Shurtleff
Papers, OC.
64 OR, ser. 1, 33: 144, 1076, 1148, 1157–58; vol. 51, pt. 2, p. 818 (“no present”). Frank E. Moran,
“Colonel Rose’s Tunnel at Libby Prison,” Century Magazine 35 (1888): 770–90.
65 OR, ser. 1, 33: 170–74; Col S. A. Duncan et al. to Maj Gen B. F. Butler, 3 Feb 1864, 22d USCI,
Entry 57C, RG 94, NA; NA M594, roll 208, 22d USCI; William G. Robertson, “From the Crater to