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
54th Massachusetts came under fire for the first time. Seven months later in
northern Florida, none of Seymour’s superiors or subordinates was sure why he
pushed his force so far forward, resulting in the defeat at Olustee in February
1864. This time, his troops included three black regiments, the 8th and 35th
USCIs, as well as the 54th Massachusetts. He was relieved from command and
sent to Virginia, where he fell into Confederate hands during the spring offensive
there. “They are welcome to him,” wrote Capt. John W. M. Appleton of
the 54th Massachusetts when news of Seymour’s capture reached him. “Incompetence,
rashness and imbecility” were the traits Appleton saw in Seymour. 50
A letter that Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck sent to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant
in April 1864, when the two were considering possible commanders for the
Department of the South and the Union garrison at Memphis, exemplifies the
difficulty of finding suitable generals. “To defend [the Sea Islands] properly
we want a general there of experience and military education,” Halleck wrote:
My own opinion of [Maj. Gen. Stephen A.] Hurlbut has been favorable, but I
do not deem him equal to the command of the Department of the South. . . .
[Brig. Gen. John P.] Hatch is hardly the man for the place, but probably he is
the best that can now be spared from the field. . . . I think [Maj. Gen. David]
Hunter . . . is even worse than [Maj. Gen. John A.] McClernand in creating difficulties.
If you had him in the field under your immediate command perhaps
things would go smoothly. Before acting on General Hunter’s case it would
be well for you to see his correspondence while in command of a department.
Hurlbut was an Illinois politician who commanded the garrison of Memphis,
which included many locally recruited black soldiers; General Sherman was unwilling
to have him as a subordinate in the field. Hatch was a professional soldier
who had commanded a division in the Army of the Potomac and who, at the time
Halleck wrote, was commanding the District of Florida in the Department of the
South. Hunter was a lifelong soldier who had already commanded the Department
of the South twice and been relieved twice; his unauthorized enlistment of
black South Carolinians in 1862 had embarrassed the Lincoln administration. Mc-
Clernand was another political general from Illinois whose penchant for lying and
boasting had led Grant to relieve him during the Vicksburg Campaign. Such were
the senior officers available to command the geographical departments and districts
where many black soldiers served. Problems of administration, personnel,
and national politics exacerbated the trials the new black regiments faced. 51
Despite these difficulties, the U.S. Colored Troops managed to field more
than 101,000 officers and enlisted men on average during the spring of 1865—
nearly 15 percent of the Union’s total land force as the fighting drew to a close.
Far from performing only garrison duty, as the president and Congress first
imagined they would, black soldiers’ service included every kind of operation
that Union armies undertook during the war: offensive and defensive battles,
50 OR, ser. 1, vol. 35, pt. 1, pp. 277, 285–86, 290–91; J. W. M. Appleton Jnl photocopy, pp. 175, 225, MHI.
51 OR, ser. 1, vol. 35, pt. 2, pp. 46, 48 (“To defend”).