Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

South Texas, 1864–1867 443
a set of green dinner plates, the edge of one grown fast to the next. . . . The pears
grow round the edge of the plates, about the size and shape of pears, covered with
thorns and of a beautiful purple color when ripe, and full of seeds like a fig. Most
of the men devoured them greedily, but I did not fancy their insipid taste.” Enlisted
men with a nutritional craving were not as fastidious as their better-fed officers. 47
Two weeks later, a letter went from XXV Corps headquarters to generals commanding
divisions, extolling the properties of “the ‘Agave Americana’ or American
Aloe, which is found in groves of greater or less sizes [and] will cure scurvy
or prevent it.” After giving instructions for rendering the juice, Weitzel ordered his
generals to “send out detachments from each post or brigade . . . to collect this tree
and make this drink, called by common people ‘Pulque.’ . . . Ascertain where the
trees can be found before starting the expedition, it is worth while even to send
even a hundred miles off for it.” By mid-August, regiments were sending entire
companies fifty or sixty miles in search of aloes, otherwise known as maguey. The
incidence of scurvy decreased the next month, although some officers attributed
this to the recent arrival of potatoes in quantity. Still the disease persisted; in early
October, the surgeon of the 43d USCI reported that of 539 men in the regiment,
163 were excused from duty, “nearly all being cases of scurvy.” 48
The surgeon was concerned about the effect on scurvy patients of a few weeks’
shipboard diet, for the regiment was due to muster out and return to Philadelphia,
where it had been raised and where its officers and men would receive their discharges
and final pay. Orders had arrived recently for the muster-out of all black
regiments from the free states. This was part of the program dismantling the Union
Army and cutting government expenses. 49
That June, a month after the last Confederate surrender, the War Department
had discontinued the Army of Georgia and the Army of the Potomac, two of the
Union’s premier fighting forces, mustering out most of the regiments in each. In
the same month, across the South, mustering out began of volunteer artillery batteries
and cavalry regiments, the two most costly arms of the service. With nearly
all of the soldiers who had marched with Sherman discharged and paid off, the War
Department discontinued the Army of the Tennessee and nearly all of the wartime
corps organizations on 1 August. The next step was to begin reducing the number
of infantry regiments that had not been part of the major field armies but were
subordinate to regional commands or organized as corps, divisions, or brigades. 50
Although even the most senior of the black regiments was not due for muster-out
until early 1866, War Department administrators decided to begin with those that had
been raised in the free states, from Massachusetts and Rhode Island to Illinois and
47 Surgeon D. Mackay to Capt R. C. Shannon, 13 Aug 1865, Entry 533, pt. 2, RG 393, NA;
Norton, Army Letters, p. 271.
48 Maj Gen G. Weitzel to Maj Gen G. A. Smith et al., 26 Jul 1865 (“send out”), Entry 512, XXV
Corps, LS, pt. 2, RG 393, NA. Asst Surgeon J. L. Chipman to 1st Lt E. S. Dean, 2 Oct 1865, 43d
USCI, and Capt H. G. Marshall to Col T. D. Sedgwick, 25 Aug 1865, 114th USCI, both in Entry
57C, RG 94, NA; W. Goodale to Dear Children, 22 Aug 1865 (“nearly all”), Goodale Papers; T. S.
Johnson to My Dear People, 5 Jul 1865, Johnson Papers; E. W. Bacon to Dear Kate, 9 Sep 1865, E.
W. Bacon Papers, AAS.
49 OR, ser. 3, 5: 516–17; Mark R. Wilson, The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and
the State, 1861–1865 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), pp. 191–96.
50 OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 3, pp. 1301, 1315; vol. 47, pt. 3, p. 649.