Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

South Texas, 1864–1867 453
were to be “composed of colored men.” Sheridan was to organize one regiment of
each branch in the Division of the Gulf, both of them headquartered at or near New
Orleans. A War Department order offered immediate discharges to men of volunteer
regiments who intended to join the regulars, and one hundred thirty men of the 116th
availed themselves of it. The vast majority of them went directly into the 39th U.S.
Infantry. In cities from New Orleans to Boston, about twenty-five hundred veterans
of the U.S. Colored Troops joined the six black regular regiments in 1866 and 1867,
contributing more than 40 percent of the total number of recruits and providing most
of the noncommissioned officers. Two companies of the 9th U.S. Cavalry arrived at
Brownsville in April 1867, just four months before the 117th USCI, the last regiment
of the U.S. Colored Troops in Texas, mustered out. In July, companies of the 41st
U.S. Infantry, another of the new black regular regiments, relieved companies of the
117th at Fort McIntosh and Ringgold Barracks. 74
Throughout the first few months of 1867, the Imperialist cause in Mexico continued
to collapse. Sheridan thought that Maximilian might embark for Europe as
his foreign troops withdrew from Mexico, but the emperor decided to make a stand
at Querétaro, some one hundred thirty miles northwest of Mexico City. Besieged
there for more than two months, he surrendered in mid-May. A firing squad shot
him on 19 June. A few days later, the garrison of Brownsville was able to see fireworks
and hear the sounds of celebration in Matamoros. 75
Within six weeks, the 117th USCI mustered out and its officers and men took
ship for Kentucky to receive final payment and discharges. Since that spring, the
117th had been the last volunteer regiment in Texas. Its duties on the Rio Grande
seemed far removed from the cause for which its officers and men had joined the
Army, but Sheridan was convinced that the successful suppression of the Confederacy
and the Liberal victory in Mexico ran parallel to each other. “While we were
struggling for a republican existence against organized rebellion,” he wrote in his
report of November 1866,
the Emperor of the French undertook the bold expedition to subvert the Republic
of Mexico. . . . The effect of the presence of our troops in Texas and on the
Rio Grande . . . on the destiny of imperialism was great . . . , so much so, that
. . . had a demand been made for the withdrawal of the Imperial troops, on the
ground that the invasion of Mexico was part of the rebellion, it would have been
granted and the miseries of that country for the last year avoided.
While officers and men of the black regiments openly favored the Liberal party
in the struggle for control of Mexico, they managed to avoid direct involvement
in all but a few episodes. Nevertheless, their presence on the north bank of the
Rio Grande influenced the calculations of Napoleon III when he announced the
74 116th USCI, Entry 57, Muster Rolls of Volunteer Organizations, RG 94, NA. NA M617,
roll 155, Post of Brownsville, April 1867; roll 681, Fort McIntosh, Jul 1867; roll 1020, Ringgold
Barracks, Jul 1867. William A. Dobak and Thomas D. Phillips, The Black Regulars, 1866–1898
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), pp. xii–xv, 1–2, 13, 24.
75 Maj Gen P. H. Sheridan to Maj Gen J. A. Rawlins, 4 Jan 1867 (G–7–AUS–1867), NA M1635,
roll 98; Thompson, Cortina, pp. 189–92.