Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

394
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
of fire in front of their trenches, their own troops did the job. In mid-October, one white
division in the Army of the James was furnishing three hundred men a day for such
fatigues. 35
While it is clear that white troops undertook many onerous fatigues, the equitable
distribution of these tasks is much less so. Late in August, the X Corps issued an order
tapping its black division and one of its white divisions for three hundred men each to
go on fatigue duty. The X Corps, though, was in General Butler’s Army of the James.
Butler was a hearty proponent of the Lincoln administration’s Colored Troops policy.
Things looked somewhat different in the Army of the Potomac, where General Meade
deprecated the military ability of black soldiers. In Meade’s army that fall, the only
black division (Brig. Gen. Edward Ferrero’s 4th Division of the IX Corps) sometimes
furnished details of as many as twenty-two hundred men—half its strength—for work
on fortifications and roads. Daily drafts of five, six, or seven hundred men, which white
divisions also furnished routinely, were far more usual; even so, no division could hold
its trenches for long with half of its men on pick-and-shovel duty. The root of the problem
of unequal assignments, and its solution, lay in the practices that high authorities
at the scene would encourage or allow. 36
Fatigues were not the only form of labor that took men from their regiments. Black
and white divisions alike detailed men as hospital attendants and as teamsters in the
Quartermaster Department and elsewhere. That summer, Brig. Gen. Charles J. Paine
noticed that eighty black infantrymen from his division were absent as teamsters in the
XVIII Corps artillery brigade and that 192 men were with the corps ambulance train.
He wrote to corps headquarters, asking for the return of all “except the fair proportion
of this division. I make this application, not on account of particular need for the men
with their companies, but because I consider it of the greatest importance to the Colored
Regiments that they should be made to think themselves soldiers, and should not
feel that they are only to be soldiers when they are not wanted as teamsters.” 37
For Union troops on both banks of the James River, October was a month of routine
siege duty. “Dig, dig, dig is again the order of the day and night,” remarked Capt.
Elliott F. Grabill of the 5th USCI. The 4th USCI stood to arms at 4:00 a.m. daily, Sgt.
Maj. Christian A. Fleetwood recorded in his diary. Capt. Solon A. Carter, a staff officer
in the all-black 3d Division of the XVIII Corps, went nineteen days without “an opportunity
to take a bath all over, or change my underclothing,” he told his wife. On the
same divisional staff, 2d Lt. Robert N. Verplanck kept an eye on the weather, which
turned “real cold & windy” on 8 October after a week of rain. “There is one consola-
35 Maj Gen D. B. Birney to Maj R. S. Davis, 8 Aug 1864, Entry 345, X Corps, LS, pt. 2, RG 393,
NA. Capt C. A. Carleton to Col J. C. Abbott, 11 Oct 1864; to Brig Gen J. R. Hawley, 17 and 19 Oct
1864; to Col F. B. Pond, 18 and 20 Oct 1864; to Col H. M. Plaisted, 23 Oct 1864; all in Entry 376, 1st
Div, X Corps, LS, pt. 2, RG 393, NA.
36 X Corps, Special Orders (SO) 108, 28 Aug 1864, Entry 359, X Corps, Special Orders, pt. 2,
RG 393, NA. Capt G. A. Hicks, daily Ltrs to Col O. P. Stearns and Col C. S. Russell, 5–11 Oct 1864,
and Capt G. A. Hicks to Col O. P. Stearns, 12 and 13 Oct 1864, all in Entry 5122, 4th Div, IX Corps,
LS, pt. 2, RG 393, NA. For fatigue details in white divisions, see Capt W. R. Driver to Lt Col W.
Wilson, 6 and 7 Oct 1864, and to Lt Col J. E. McGee, 6 and 7 Oct 1864, all in Entry 86, 1st Div, II
Corps, LS, pt. 2, RG 393, NA. 3d Div, V Corps, SO 91, 23 Oct 1864, and Circular 24, 26 Oct 1864,
both in Entry 4357, 3d Div, V Corps, Orders and Circulars, pt. 2, RG 393, NA.
37 Brig Gen C. J. Paine to Maj W. Russell Jr., 11 Aug 1864, Entry 1659, 3d Div, XVIII Corps,
LS, pt. 2, RG 393, NA. For such assignments in a white division, see 3d Div, V Corps, SO 74, 4 Oct
1864, Entry 4357, pt. 2, RG 393, NA.