Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

The South Atlantic Coast, 1861–1863 29
greater numbers, and no doubt will give us many laborers; but where we get
one good, able-bodied man, we have five or six women and children. They are
a most prolific race.
Here Sherman broached two topics that would vex Southern black people and
Union administrators, military and civil, for the duration of the war and long into
the peace that followed: organization of the black workforce, which involved difficult
economic and political choices, and the welfare of black families. 10
A few days later, Sherman wrote to Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas in an
even more pessimistic vein. “The negro labor expected to be obtained here is so far
almost a failure,” he complained. “They are disinclined to labor, and will evidently
not work to our satisfaction without those aids to which they have ever been accustomed,
viz., the driver and the lash. A sudden change of condition from servitude
to apparent freedom is more than their intellects can stand, and this circumstance
alone renders it a very serious question what is to be done with the negroes who
will hereafter be found on conquered soil.” The next day, for “the information of
the proper authorities,” Sherman sent Thomas a note with some statistics: three
hundred twenty former slaves had come within the Union lines; of these, only sixty
were “able-bodied male hands, the rest being decrepit, and women and children.”
He then repeated his remarks about laziness and “the lash; an aid we do not make
use of.” A West Point graduate of 1836, Sherman had been an officer for twentyfive
years before Congress banned flogging in the Army during the first summer
of the war. 11
Whatever their usefulness as laborers, Sea Island residents at once became an
important source of military intelligence. “From what I can gather from negroes,”
the expedition’s chief engineer wrote on the day of the landing, “there are no rebel
troops on any of the northern portions of Hilton Head Island.” Most of the former
slaves viewed the invaders with caution, if not outright suspicion. Their absconding
masters had told them that the Yankees would turn a dollar by kidnapping them
and selling them in Cuba. Nevertheless, within a month of the troops’ landing,
black Sea Islanders were coming forward to volunteer information. Some of it
was mere hearsay about troop movements, but some was expert advice about the
country in which the soldiers would live and fight. 12
Capt. Quincy A. Gillmore, the chief engineer, became acquainted with a recent
arrival named Brutus, “the most intelligent slave I have met here, . . . quite
familiar with the rivers & creeks, between Savannah city and Tybee Island.
He made his escape . . . last week in a canoe.” Brutus told Gillmore that boats
drawing ten feet or less could pass at high tide from one part of the Savannah
estuary to another, avoiding Confederate guns that commanded a narrow
stretch of river. “I place great reliance on Brutus’ statement,” Gillmore told
General Sherman, “for everything he said of Big Tybee inlet was verified with
10 Ibid., p. 202.
11 Ibid., pp. 204–05; ser. 3, 1: 401.
12 OR, ser. 1, 6: 31 (“From what”), 240; Maj O. T. Beard to Brig Gen T. W. Sherman, 20 Nov
1861; Capt Q. A. Gillmore to Brig Gen T. W. Sherman, 7 Jan 1862; both in Entry 2254, South
Carolina Expeditionary Corps, LR, pt. 2, Polyonymous Successions of Cmds, RG 393, NA.