Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia, 1864–1865 423
duct was to remove them from his department. On 18 May, after consultation with
Halleck, Grant ordered Weitzel to prepare his command to take ship for Texas. 103
By that time, hundreds of thousands of soldiers of every rank, black and white,
were eager to get out of uniform. Some officers, who found themselves better off
in the Army than they had ever been in civilian life, wanted to remain. “You had
better approve applications to resign when there is no great advantage in retaining
the officer,” Ord told Weitzel in early May, “as we can get first rate men now from
the white troops being mustered out. I have already had applications of officers . . .
highly recommended to transfer to Colored Corps—and there is nothing gained by
retaining discontented officers.” 104
Unlike an officer, an enlisted men could not submit a resignation on the
chance that it would be accepted. Sixty-three officers managed to resign from
regiments of the XXV Corps between 9 April, when Lee surrendered, and 25
May, when the first transports sailed for Texas, but all enlisted men except those
declared unfit by a surgeon were obliged to wait for their discharges until their
regiments mustered out of service. In 1864, when thousands of white soldiers
who had volunteered in 1861 refused to reenlist for another three years, entire
regiments disappeared from the Union Army. The white volunteers of 1862
would be ready for discharge in the fall of 1865; but since nationwide recruiting
of black soldiers had only begun early in 1863, even the longest-serving
veteran among them had nearly a year of his enlistment left by the spring of
1865, if the government should decide to retain his regiment. Other black regiments,
raised in 1864, might continue to serve well into 1867. That the troops’
obligation was completely legal did nothing to improve their mood. 105
Black soldiers worried especially about their families. The white regiments
of 1861 and 1862 had recruited and organized locally, and local committees
made arrangements to help sustain their dependents. West of the Appalachians
and in Union beachheads along the Atlantic coast, many black soldiers’ families
lived in contraband camps maintained by the federal government. About
half of the soldiers in the XXV Corps, though, came either from the free states
or from unseceded Maryland, where such institutions did not exist. Even the
equalization of pay for black and white soldiers in 1864 was only of small help,
for six or eight months might pass between paymasters’ visits. The 114th USCI
saw no pay from 1 September 1864 until 20 April 1865. Irregular pay damaged
the morale of black and white soldiers alike, in all parts of the South. General
Ord suggested that soldiers’ wives could be appointed laundresses in their husbands’
companies, for each company in the Army was entitled to several laundresses,
paid by deductions from the men’s pay. Laundresses could accompany
their husbands to Texas, the government bearing the expense of their travel,
103 OR, ser. 1, 8: 370; vol. 46, pt. 1, pp. 1005–06, 1168–69, 1172–73.
104 Maj Gen E. O. C. Ord to Maj Gen G. Weitzel, Entry 5046, Dept of Virginia and Army of the
James, LS, pt. 1, RG 393, NA.
105 The number of resignations was calculated by consulting records of the 1st and 2d USCCs;
7th, 8th, 9th, 19th, 22d, 23d, 29th, 31st, 36th, 38th, 41st, 43d, 45th, 109th, 114th, 115th, 116th, 117th,
118th, and 127th USCIs; 5th Massachusetts Cavalry; and 29th Connecticut Infantry in Official Army
Register of the Volunteer Force of the United States Army, 8 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Adjutant
General’s Office, 1867), vol. 8.