Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia, 1864–1865 421
Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., spring 1865
Springfield, Illinois. On 16 April, one of Grant’s aides sent a telegram to Ord in
Richmond: “Please send . . . immediately one of the best regiments of colored
troops you have, to attend the funeral ceremonies. . . . One that has seen service
should be selected.” Weitzel’s choice was the 22d USCI, a regiment raised in Philadelphia
that had taken part in the previous year’s fighting around Petersburg and
Richmond. “We felt highly complimented,” Assistant Surgeon James O. Moore
told his wife, “to be among the first organized troops to march thru Richmond &
now . . . to participate in the funeral obsequies of the President.” 98
The regiment embarked before dawn on 18 April and reached Washington at
about noon the next day. Marching north from the wharf as all the church bells in
the city tolled and cannon fired every sixty seconds, the 22d USCI met the funeral
procession at Seventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, making its way east from
the White House to the Capitol. “Halted[,] wheeled into col[umn],” one officer of
the regiment noted, “and became the head of [the] procession. After funeral [the]
men were quartered at Soldiers’ Rest. Officers at Hotels.” A Washington newspaper
commented that the troops “appeared to be under the very best discipline, and
displayed admirable skill in their various exercises.” 99
Three days later, they boarded a boat for Charles County, Maryland, to join
the hunt for the president’s assassin. Surgeon Moore surmised that they had been
sent because the men of the regiment “would be more likely [than white troops] to
get information from the colored population.” Officers and men spent the next four
days splashing through swamps until, on 26 April, news reached them of the assas-
98 OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 3, pp. 797 (quotation), 816; J. O. Moore to My Dearest Lizzie, 20 Apr
1865, J. O. Moore Papers, Duke University, Durham, N.C.
99 NA M594, roll 8, 22d USCI; (Washington) Daily National Intelligencer, 20 April 1865.