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
Virginia where they had served earlier—gave them, at last, a chance to exact
retribution. 72
Col. Giles W. Shurtleff, an Ohio abolitionist, tried to keep order in the 5th
USCI. “The plundering and pillaging have been fearful,” he told his wife.
The country is full of “foragers.” They have stripped everything from the people.
. . . Now I am not at all sure but the people merit this and it is perhaps the just
retribution of the Almighty. Still I believe it is cruel and wicked on the part of our
army. I have prevented this sort of action in my own regiment, and have gained the
ill will of many officers and men in doing so. While on the march, the men in the
regiments next to ours would break from the ranks and rush into houses and strip
them of every particle of provision. . . . I detailed men—placed them under an officer
and sent them to plantations away from the road with instructions to leave all
that was necessary for the subsistence of families. In this way I obtained all that
was necessary for my men and injured no one while I maintained the discipline
of my regiment.
Shurtleff was proud of his attempt to keep foraging from degenerating into robbery
and arson. 73
Late on 21 March, Paine’s division reached the Neuse River at Cox’s Bridge,
some ten miles west of Goldsborough. One brigade crossed the river that night and
entrenched; a second followed the next day. The XIV and XX Corps, half of Sherman’s
army, came up the road from Fayetteville and crossed on the pontoon bridge
that Paine’s division had brought from Wilmington. Paine’s men had caught sight
of Sherman’s cavalry and foragers before, but not so large a body of infantry. It was
“a sight equally novel to both” forces, Turner wrote.
We all desired to see Sherman’s men, and they were anxious to see colored
soldiers. . . . [T]hey were not passing long before our boys thronged each side
of the road. There they had a full view of Sherman’s celebrated army. Soldiers
without shoes, ragged and dirty, came by thousands. Bronzed faces and tangled
hair were so common, that it was hard to tell if some were white. . . . Some of
their generals looked worse than our second lieutenants. 74
During the previous three days, Sherman’s men had driven General Joseph E.
Johnston’s Confederates back from Bentonville. The road to Goldsborough and
the railroad finally lay open. On 23 March, Sherman issued a congratulatory order
to his army, promising “rest and all the supplies that can be brought from the rich
granaries and store-houses of our magnificent country.” Active military operations
72 OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 2, pp. 625, 966 (Terry quotation); Christian Recorder, 15 April 1865.
For opinions of Sherman’s army, see Barrett, Civil War in North Carolina, pp. 293–300, 344–48;
Mark L. Bradley, This Astounding Close: The Road to Bennett Place (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2000), pp. 26–28. On members of free-state regiments who were born in
slavery, see Paradis, Strike the Blow for Freedom, p. 112.
73 G. W. Shurtleff to My darling little Wife, 29 Mar 1864, G. W. Shurtleff Papers, OC.
74 OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 1, p. 925. NA M594, roll 205, 1st USCI; roll 206, 6th USCI; roll 208,
30th USCI; roll 209, 37th USCI; roll 215, 107th USCI. Christian Recorder, 15 April 1865.