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
When they were not shoring up the trenches, the men dug wells, for no appreciable
rain fell between early June, before the beginning of the siege, and 19
July. Sergeant Major Fleetwood’s diary recorded that he “washed and changed
[clothes]” on 20 June, 7 July, and 29 July. With water and clean clothing in such
short supply, it was no wonder that the Prussian-born Captain Rogall complained
of “lices.” Men inevitably grew bored and took chances, so that one diarist wrote
that the “usual amount of sharpshooting” afforded “an occasional casualty to relieve
the monotony.” Captain Carter of Hinks’ divisional staff found that the men
became inured to cannon fire, “and it is really surprising how little attention any
one pays to an artillery fight alone.” Mortars were a different matter. Men liked
to watch rounds fired by their own side. “The bomb presents a fine appearance
in the night,” Assistant Surgeon Merrill told his sister, “going up half a mile in
the air—a red line of fire—then gradually falling & exploding after it reaches
the ground.” Men held the mortars in awe, and a round from the enemy would
have troops diving for their “gopher holes.” The reason for the name, Lieutenant
Scroggs explained, was that “when a shell comes over, officers and men without
distinction or ‘standing upon the order,’ incontinently ‘go for’ them.” Lieutenant
Verplanck took a day from his staff duties to visit his regiment, the 6th USCI, and
found his old comrades “quite comfortable in their pits & holes. Everybody was
as close to the ground as they could get.” 36
Since the first week of May, officers and enlisted men of the U.S. Colored
Troops in the Army of the James had scanned the newspapers for items about
Ferrero’s division of the IX Corps, which had been guarding the wagons during
Grant’s overland march. Soldiers in Butler’s army, some of them veterans of ten
months’ campaigning in North Carolina and Virginia, were anxious lest their unseasoned
comrades bring discredit on black troops everywhere. “The Colored Division
in Burnside’s Corps has not yet taken active part in a single engagement,”
Lieutenant Grabill observed in June. 37
Not only were Ferrero’s men untested in battle; three months of continual activity—first
during the march from the Rapidan to the James, then in the trenches
around Petersburg—had left them no time to master the basic elements of soldiering.
The 39th USCI had received rifles only when passing through Washington,
D.C., in April. “Target practice, except for the five days at Manassas Junction, has
been out of the question,” the commanding officer wrote, “and this for men who
have never been allowed the handling . . . of fire arms, has proved to be to[o] short
to enable many to determine . . . whether the explosive part of the cartridge is the
powder or the ball, many believing that because it is the ball that kills [it] should
be put into the gun first. A few put in two or more loads at a time.” Others merely
fired from the shoulder without aiming. Many, like some rural white recruits, did
36 S. A. Carter to My own darling Em, 3 Jul 1864, Carter Papers; Fleetwood Diary, 20 Jun
(quotation), 7 and 29 Jul 1864; E. F. Grabill to My Own Little Puss, 24 Jun 1864, Grabill Papers; C.
G. G. Merrill to Dear Annie, 4 Jul 1864, Merrill Papers; J. H. Rickard to Dear Brother, 21 Jul 1864,
Rickard Papers; Rogall Diary, 25 Jun and 4 Jul 1864 (“lices”); Scroggs Diary, 7 (“an occasional”),
19, 20 (“when a shell”), and 26 (“usual amount”) Jul 1864; R. N. Verplanck to Dear Mother, 26
Jun and 27 Jul 1864 (quotation), both in Verplanck Letters; Robert K. Krick, Civil War Weather in
Virginia (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007), pp. 130–33.
37 E. F. Grabill to My Own Darling, 9 June 1864, Grabill Papers.