Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

North Carolina and Virginia, 1861–1864 333
27th, from Ohio; the 43d, from Pennsylvania; and the 30th Connecticut—reported
to corps headquarters at Annapolis, then moved through Washington to camp near
Manassas, Virginia. Regiments from Illinois, Indiana, and New York were en route
to join them. 75
Late in April, after months of debate, the U.S. Senate approved an Army appropriation
for the coming fiscal year. The act included a section that awarded
black soldiers military pay, rather than an unskilled laborer’s wage. It did not move
forward to House approval and presidential signature until 15 June, but soldiers
felt relieved in late April that it had gotten through the Senate. In the 5th USCI,
Lieutenant Scroggs had thought about resigning if an “inexcusably dilatory” Congress
did not provide for equal pay. He noted the news with satisfaction. Lieutenant
Verplanck was also elated. “The Government has at last determined to give us our
rights,” he wrote home, “and I am as happy as a clam at high water.” 76
On 22 April, Brig. Gen. Edward A. Hinks arrived at Fort Monroe to take command
of the newly formed 3d Division, XVIII Corps, which was to include the
black regiments in Butler’s command. Duncan’s brigade at Yorktown struck its
tents and moved down the peninsula in what Lieutenant Scroggs called, after the
constant activity of previous months, “an easy march of twenty miles.” Besides
the 4th, 5th, and 6th USCIs, Hinks’ division included the 1st, 10th, and 22d in a
brigade commanded by General Wild, as well as Battery B, 2d U.S. Colored Artillery.
All busied themselves in preparation for the spring campaign. For Assistant
Surgeon Merrill, this meant combing out the unfit men. “There are plenty of them
in this regiment,” he told his father, “men who ought not to have been enlisted and
who will have to be discharged, after . . . helping fill the [draft] quotas of towns
& cities in Penn[sylvani]a.” Merrill was not the only surgeon to complain about
recruits who joined their regiments without having undergone a physical examination
at their place of enlistment. 77
Word of the Union defeat at Fort Pillow and the massacre of black soldiers
there reached Fort Monroe four days before General Hinks took command of his
new division on 22 April. Newspapers were still detailing those events the next
week, when reports arrived that black soldiers and white Unionists had been “taken
out and shot” after the surrender of the federal garrison at Plymouth, North Carolina.
Soldiers at Fort Monroe making final campaign preparations bore this news in
mind when writing to their next of kin. One of Hinks’ staff officers told his wife:
Everything is in readiness. . . . The next ten days are to witness a fearful struggle.
If we succeed, it will be the beginning of better things. We must succeed,
failure for us is death or worse. This Division will never surrender, for officers
and men expect no mercy from the foe. . . . [A]lthough we know that some of us
75 OR, ser. 1, 33: 1046; Verplanck to Dear Mother, 2 Apr 1864.
76 OR, ser. 3, 4: 448; Scroggs Diary, 30 Mar (quotation) and 25 Apr 1864; R. N. Verplanck to
Dear Mother, 22 Apr 1864, Verplanck Papers; Edwin S. Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men:
Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), pp. 229–48.
77 OR, ser. 1, 33: 1055; Scroggs Diary, 20 Apr 1864 (“an easy”); C. G. G. Merrill to Dear Father,
2 May 1864 (“There are”), Merrill Papers. For another complaint about unexamined recruits, see J.
Fee to Capt C. C. Pom[e]roy, 24 Mar 1864, 29th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA.