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
women who lived there. The younger of the two victims was only thirteen years
old. Colonel Draper, one of the brigade commanders who had received a warning
letter, learned of the crime within hours and took only a few days to identify the
culprits, partly by stolen goods in their possession and partly by their own remarks
to other soldiers. A general court-martial made up of seven officers who belonged
to regiments in the division convened to try three of the men on charges of rape,
assault, and “plundering and pillaging.” By the first week in May, the court had
condemned them to hang and the president had approved the sentences. The fourth
man was tried only on the last charge. He finished his enlistment at hard labor,
wearing a ball and chain, and received a dishonorable discharge. 96
Black soldiers, individually and in small groups, had committed felonies in
Virginia and other parts of the South, but never before had they committed such a
sensational crime almost under the noses of the Union’s senior generals. Halleck,
who had succeeded Ord in command of the Department of Virginia on 16 April,
told Grant that Ord thought “want of discipline and good officers in the Twentyfifth
Corps renders it a very improper force for the preservation of order in this
department. A number of cases of atrocious rape by these men have already occurred.
Their influence on the colored population is also reported to be bad.” Halleck
concurred with his predecessor’s opinion. From the camp of the 117th USCI
near Petersburg, Major Bacon wrote:
I think the suspension of hostilities is going to rid the service of many incapable
officers. . . . I wish very much that our Colored Service could be put through a
sieve. The atrocities which disgraced the Corps at Richmond (not so numerous,
happily, as to amount to a rule) were due chiefly to the fact that our officers are
as a rule not officer like enough to teach their men . . . or discipline them into a
proper respect for those entitled to it or worthy of it.
As if to prove these allegations, the Department of Virginia announced the dismissal
of three officers of the 38th USCI: the regiment’s lieutenant colonel for “borrowing
money from enlisted men and suppressing the order prohibiting the same”
and two lieutenants for “peddling candy, tobacco and trinkets to enlisted men.” The
dismissals came on the same day Bacon committed his thoughts to paper and three
days before Halleck wrote to Grant. 97
Although knowledge of the rapes was widespread among troops in eastern
Virginia, not even a crime so sensational could find space in the black-bordered
columns of newspapers during the week after the president’s assassination. Grant
was in Washington during the confused days just after the event, while armed parties
sought the assassin and conspirators and administrators arranged the procession
that would take Lincoln’s body to the railroad station to begin its journey to
96 Cases of Sgt Dandridge Brooks (MM–1972), Sgt William Jackson (MM–1984), Cpl John
Shepard (MM–2006), and Pvt John Adams (OO–753), Entry 15A, General Court Martial Case Files,
RG 153, Rcds of the Judge Advocate General’s Office, NA. AGO, General Court Martial Order 268,
7 Jun 1865, which includes presidential approval of the death sentences, is in the regimental order
book, 38th USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA.
97 OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 3, pp. 788, 1005 (quotation); Dept of Virginia, GO 48, 26 Apr 1865, 38th
USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA; Bacon to Dear Kate, 26 Apr 1865.