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
eighteen counties that constituted the district, 4,110 officers and men were
responsible for policing more than fifteen thousand square miles. Less than
one-third of the district was farmland, concentrated at the western edge of the
state in the rich alluvial soil of the plantation country along the Mississippi
River. The rest of the district consisted of sandy soil and pine forest that extended
east through the Florida panhandle, the same forest that Brig. Gen. John
P. Hawkins’ division of Colored Troops had marched through earlier that year
on its way from Pensacola to the siege of Mobile. The thick piney woods of
the region were inviting to those fleeing from authority and difficult for pursuers
to penetrate. In the southern district, only 359 soldiers were mounted, and
they were scattered at five posts that ranged in size from 149 troopers at Port
Gibson to 12 at Fayette. They belonged to a white regiment from New Jersey
that mustered out on 1 November, leaving the district with no trained cavalry.
All a local commander could do was to mount his infantry on horses or mules
that belonged to the quartermaster and hope for the best. 35
Throughout the summer, as the War Department continued to disband volunteer
mounted regiments, pleas for cavalry reached state headquarters of the
Army and the Freedmen’s Bureau. An inspector in South Carolina reported that
infantry troops on duty in the state “show a very creditable efficiency but they
frequently have to march long distances to quell disturbances and often arrive
too late to do good. A small force of cavalry would be of infinite service.” A
captain of the 6th USCA, serving as Bureau agent at Woodville, Mississippi,
welcomed the arrival of some cavalry. “I got along quietly without them,” he
told the assistant commissioner, “but I could not do much business.” At Mississippi
City, a major of the 66th USCI sent “a scout” of mounted infantry
to arrest a gang of returned Confederates who were murdering and abusing
freedpeople; the Bureau agent, another officer of the regiment, recommended
assignment of “a small squad of Cavalry” to the post. In Arkansas, “many acts
of brutality are perpetrated upon the unfortunate and unprotected negroes,” a
captain of the 83d USCI reported. As a Bureau agent, he added that the white
population in the southwestern part of the state was “most bitter, and hostile
in the extreme, nothing deters them from . . . the foulest crimes, but the dread
of our soldiers, for whom they entertain feelings of ‘holy horror.’ . . . The importance
of . . . small forces of Cavalry can not be fully realized until one has
had to do with these half whiped barbarians.” The recommendations of agents
did not matter. By September, the inexorable process of mustering out left only
one mounted regiment in all of Arkansas. Throughout the fall, the War Department
continued to muster out volunteer cavalry regiments across the South. Of
thirteen mounted regiments serving in North Carolina during April, all were
35 Station List of Troops, 1 Sep 1865, NA M1907, roll 33; U.S. Census Bureau, Agriculture of
the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1864), p. 84; William
Thorndike and William Dollarhide, Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses, 1790–1920 (Baltimore:
Genealogical Publishing, 1987), p. 187; Rand McNally Commercial Atlas and Marketing Guide,
2008, 2 vols. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 2008), 2: 147. For instances of local commanders raising
companies of mounted infantry, see Osterhaus to Miller, 19 Aug 1865; Brig Gen C. H. Morgan to
Capt C. E. Howe, 16 Sep 1865 (M–129 [Sup] DA–1865), Entry 269, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. On the march
of General Hawkins’ division, see Chapter 5, above.