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
ganza, Louisiana, the opposing sides arranged an armistice in the spring of 1865
“to enable the rebs to catch and hang a band of outlaws who infest the woods near
our lines, fire into steamboats, [and] plunder citizens,” 2d Lt. Duren F. Kelley of
the 67th USCI wrote to his wife. “The rebs caught four of them day before yesterday
and hung them on a tree. They got ten yesterday and I don’t know how many
they have got today. They are hanged as fast as captured.” After surrenders across
the South, disbanded soldiers on their way home added to the confusion. When
Confederate troops in North Carolina laid down their arms that April, “most of
[the] cavalry refused to surrender,” the Union general commanding the Department
of the South reported. He predicted that “they will scatter themselves over South
Carolina and Georgia & commit all sorts of depredations, particularly upon the
colored people.” 25
Union occupation authorities inclined at first to blame disbanded Confederate
soldiers for the unrest that roiled the South. The commanding officer of the 75th
USCI, for one, noted “large numbers of armed men of the late rebel army roaming
about” near Washington, Louisiana. Fifty miles to the east, a captain of the 65th
USCI serving as provost marshal at Port Hudson drew up charges for the military
trial of a Confederate veteran who had been robbing and killing freedmen nearby.
Maj. Gen. Peter J. Osterhaus at Jackson, Mississippi, thought that the marauders’
abundant stock of military arms proved conclusively that they were “Rebel
soldiers.” 26
It was not long, though, before the occupiers began to detect other influences
at work. Maj. Gen. Rufus Saxton, whose dealings with freedmen and their affairs
went back to the spring of 1862, reported in June that “guerrillas” around Augusta,
Georgia, included “young men of the first families in the State, . . . bound together
by an oath to take the life of every able bodied negro man found off his plantation.”
Two months later, a lieutenant of the 4th United States Colored Cavalry (USCC)
told the officer commanding at Morganza, Louisiana, about “a secret society” of
Confederate veterans in a nearby parish “organized . . . to drive out or kill all persons
whom they term Yankees.” Americans’ well-known fascination with secret
societies suited perfectly the requirements of resistance to Reconstruction. Many
terrorists did not disguise themselves with masks or white sheets. A few simply
blackened their faces, donned cast-off Union uniforms, and told their victims that
they were U.S. Colored Troops. It was impossible for civil authorities to try them,
a district judge told the assistant commissioner, for the offenders “are unknown to
25 OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 3, p. 64 (“guerrillas”); Richard S. Offenberg and Robert R. Parsonage,
eds., The War Letters of Duren F. Kelley, 1862–1865 (New York: Pageant Press, 1967), p. 153. For
official correspondence about outlaws and guerrillas in North Carolina, see OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt.
3, pp. 502, 543–45, 587; in Kansas, Mississippi, and Missouri, vol. 48, pt. 2, pp. 46, 346, 355–56,
571–72; in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee, vol. 49, pt. 2, pp. 418–19, 504, 1256–57.
Maj Gen Q. A. Gillmore to Adj Gen, 7 May 1865 (S–1077–AGO–1865), NA Microfilm Pub M619,
LR by the Adjutant General’s Office, 1861–1870, roll 410. A good, brief synopsis of lawlessness
throughout the South in 1865 is Stephen V. Ash, When the Yankees Came: Conflict and Chaos in the
Occupied South, 1861–1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 203–11.
26 Lt Col J. L. Rice to Capt B. B. Campbell, 7 Jun 1865, 75th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94, NA; Capt
A. D. Bailie to T. Conway, 30 Jul 1865 (B–36), and Charges and Specifications, 1 Aug 1865 (B–39),
both in NA Microfilm Pub M1027, Rcds of the Asst Commissioner for the State of Louisiana,
BRFAL, roll 7; Maj Gen P. J. Osterhaus to Capt J. W. Miller, 19 Aug 1865 (M–345–DM–1865),
Entry 2433, Dept of Mississippi, LR, pt. 1, RG 393, NA.