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
perveniet (“freedom attained by the sword”), and may have distributed as many
as two hundred of them. Yet geographical as well as racial factors were at work in
the distribution of decorations. Soldiers in Virginia received the vast majority of
medals. Not one went to a soldier who took part in the disastrous Red River Expedition,
or the defeat at Brice’s Crossroads, Mississippi, or the victory at Tupelo, all
in 1864. The crushing Union victory at Nashville in December of that year resulted
in the issuance of fourteen medals the following February. The successful assault
on Fort Blakely, at Mobile, in April 1865, brought only six medals two months
afterward, although eight more were recommended and awarded in later years. 93
General Grant himself had come from City Point, across the James River, to
watch the attack on 29 September. Although he was impressed by the strength of
the Confederate positions that Union troops captured, he concluded by midday
that the Union advance was not sufficiently rapid to reach Richmond before dark
or numerous enough to hold the city. “If our troops do not reach Richmond this
afternoon,” he told Butler, it might be best to withdraw those farthest in advance,
and to select a defensible line “now.” With the attack stalled in front of Fort Gilmer,
Butler’s men began to dig in opposite the Confederate trenches. Sporadic counterattacks,
which seldom involved the black regiments, ceased by mid-October.
Another episode of the great siege began. 94
Throughout October, daytime temperatures, which had reached the mideighties
during the battle of 29 September, gradually cooled. The second week of
the month brought the first perceptible frost. And on 18 October, a new regiment
of Colored Troops, the 117th USCI, arrived at City Point. It was the first regiment
of black soldiers to report from a reservoir of manpower that the Lincoln
administration had long been reluctant to tap: the slaveholding but unseceded
state of Kentucky. 95
93 Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benj. F.
Butler (Boston: A. M. Thayer, 1892), pp. 742–43; Department of the Army, Medal of Honor, pp.
166–68, 181–82, 202–03.
94 OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, p. 20, and pt. 2, pp. 1090–92, 1110 (quotation); Sommers, Richmond
Redeemed, pp. 418–19.
95 OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 3, p. 269; Lt Col S. B. Lawrence to Brig Gen H. H. Lockwood, 15 Oct
1864, 117th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA; Krick, Civil War Weather, pp. 140–41.