Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

390
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
USCI. His divisional commander, Brig. Gen. William Birney, “promise[d] that I
shall not be put into the field until I have had time to organize & drill somewhat,”
Weld told his mother, “several weeks at least.” Two more companies of the 41st
joined later in the year, but the last two did not arrive until February. Only then was
the regiment up to strength. 25
Butler was not alone in wanting his men prepared for battle. The 127th USCI
also reached Virginia in October and at once took up fatigue duty at Deep Bottom.
General Birney, to whose division the regiment belonged, asked for it to be
relieved from this duty and sent to him. “The regiment is new, and the men have
not yet been drilled in the ‘loadings and firings,’” he wrote. “If it is the intention
to have them take an active part in the present campaign, it is absolutely necessary
that opportunity be afforded for drilling and disciplining them. . . . I would prefer
not to put this regiment under fire, until the men are taught how to load and fire,
and have attained some proficiency in drill.” Both the 127th USCI and Weld’s
41st came from Camp William Penn, and the officers and men probably had heard
of the disaster that resulted when another untried Philadelphia regiment, the 8th
USCI, went into action at Olustee, Florida, that February. 26
When General Butler told his aide that Weld’s newly arrived troops should be
“put . . . on no duty that can be helped,” he was probably referring to the Dutch
Gap Canal, an excavation that occupied labor details from at least seven black
regiments in the Army of the James during the late summer and fall of 1864. Five
hundred feet long, the canal cut across a neck of land formed by one of the many
bends in the river. Its purpose was to afford passage for U.S. Navy gunboats past
a stretch where the water at low tide was only eight feet deep, half as much as the
draft of the vessels required, and where the fire of Confederate batteries could
reach them. Such a canal, Union generals hoped, would also allow them to move
troops more quickly by water than the Confederates could by land. 27
Butler tried to begin his project with a call on 6 August for twelve hundred
volunteers “to do laborious digging[,] to work 7 1/2 hours a day for not more than
twenty days.” Two shifts would labor all the daylight hours. Volunteers would receive
eight cents an hour, an amount that would nearly double a private’s monthly
pay, and an eight-ounce ration of whiskey daily or its cash equivalent. Company
commanders were to read the order to their men at two consecutive daily parades,
25 OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 2, p. 1044. Lt Col L. Wagner to Maj C. W. Foster, 10 Oct 1864
(W–811–CT–1864); 21 Oct 1864 (W–848–CT–1864); 7 Dec 1864 (W–950–CT–1864); all in Entry
360, Colored Troops Div, Letters Received (LR), RG 94, NA. NA M594, roll 209, 41st USCI; L.
L. Weld to My dearest Mother, 17 Oct 1864 (quotations), L. L. Weld Papers, Yale University, New
Haven, Conn.
26 Brig Gen W. Birney to 1st Lt W. P. Shreve, 8 Oct 1864, Entry 7035, 3d Div, X Corps, Letters
Sent (LS), pt. 2, Polyonymous Successions of Cmds, RG 393, Rcds of U.S. Army Continental Cmds,
NA.
27 OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, p. 657. NA M594, roll 206, 4th and 6th USCIs; roll 208, 22d
USCI; roll 216, 118th USCI; roll 217, 127th USCI. Weld to My dearest Mother, 17 Oct 1864
(quotation); Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, 30
vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894–1922), ser. 1, 10: 345 (hereafter cited
as ORN); Dyer, Compendium, pp. 1724, 1727, 1730, 1739; Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography
and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benj. F. Butler (Boston: A. M. Thayer, 1892), pp.
743–44; John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 30 vols. to date (Carbondale and
Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967– ), 12: 446.