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
and methods of the Gideonites were at odds with those of the overbearing cotton
agents, and the two groups soon came into conflict. On one occasion, Nobles
punched Pierce “and knocking me down, continued to beat me,” Pierce told
Secretary Chase. Resignations by Pierce and Reynolds in the spring of 1862
removed conflicting personalities, but this contest between two appointed agents
of the Treasury Department portended the troubles the Army would soon have
as recruiters for the U.S. Colored Troops vied with Army staff officers for the
South’s limited supply of black manpower. That summer, the Army’s commissary
of subsistence at Hilton Head had to request authority to raise the wages of the Sea
Islanders in his workforce by 50 percent, from eight dollars a month to twelve.
This was necessary, he wrote, because some of his most able hands had already left
for other, better-paying jobs. 7
Superintendent Pierce left South Carolina, but the Gideonites remained. Due
partly to their inexperienced planning and supervision, the next cotton crop failed,
yielding less than 25 percent of that produced the previous year. The Sea Islands’
black residents, about eight thousand in all, came to rely more and more on employment
with Northern occupiers, military and naval, or on handouts from the
Army. Meanwhile, at least as great a number of escaped slaves from the mainland
thronged the contraband camps on the islands. The Army’s commissary of subsistence
at Beaufort soon complained that he was unable to keep up with the work of
feeding indigent civilians. 8
Unlike the Gideonites, Northern soldiers had not come south to free slaves but
to crush secession. During the war’s first year, the means toward this end included
reassurances aimed at white residents to encourage their cooperation. When Union
troops landed at Hilton Head in November 1861, Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Sherman,
joint commander of the expedition, issued a proclamation addressed “To the
People of South Carolina” in which he disavowed any intention to “interfere with
. . . social and local institutions.” Sherman’s orders from the War Department allowed
him to employ “the services of any persons, whether fugitives from labor or
not,” but he did not concern himself much with fugitive slaves, other than to find
fault with them. 9
After a month ashore, Sherman wrote to Quartermaster General Montgomery
C. Meigs:
Thus far the negroes have rendered us but little assistance. Many come in and
run off. They have not yet been organized to the extent we desire. The large
families they bring with them make a great many useless mouths. Before long—
after they have consumed all they have on the plantations—they will come in
7 Capt G. Scull to Capt M. R. Morgan, 25 Jun 1862, Entry 4109, Dept of the South, Letters
Received (LR), pt. 1, Geographical Divs and Depts, Record Group (RG) 393, Rcds of U.S. Army
Continental Cmds, National Archives (NA); John Niven et al., eds., The Salmon P. Chase Papers, 5
vols. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1993–1998), 3: 188 (“and knocking”) (hereafter cited
as Chase Papers); Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction, pp. 24–25, 67–69; WGFL: LS, pp. 92–96.
8 Capt L. A. Warfield to Capt L. J. Lambert, 26 Jul 1862, Entry 4109, pt. 1, RG 393, NA; Niven,
Salmon P. Chase: A Biography, p. 326; Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction, pp. 69–70, 128, 204–
05, 302; WGFL: LS, pp. 88–89.
9 OR, ser. 1, 6: 5, 176.