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
him, General Grant urged him to modify his stance, but to no effect. Southern
state legislatures refused to ratify the amendment. In turn, Congress passed the
first of several Reconstruction Acts. It assigned ten Southern states to five military
districts, within each of which an Army general would oversee the administration
of justice until the constitutions of the occupied states were judged to conform to
the federal constitution. On 2 March 1867, Johnson vetoed the bill and Congress
once again overrode his veto. 88
The Reconstruction Act and the events that occurred after it do not figure
in the history of the U.S. Colored Troops. The day before the act became law,
the last black regiment on Reconstruction duty, the 80th USCI, mustered out
in Louisiana. Still in service were the 117th USCI, the last regiment of the
long-since disbanded XXV Corps on the lower Rio Grande, and the 125th
USCI at posts in New Mexico. The 117th mustered out in August and headed
for Louisville for final payment and discharge. In the fall, companies of the
125th gathered in northern New Mexico and Colorado and followed the Santa
Fe Trail east to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where the regiment mustered out
on 20 December 1867. The last regiments of Civil War volunteers were out of
service. About three thousand enlisted men, with representatives from most U.S.
Colored Troops organizations, tried the life of the peacetime Army in one of the
new black regiments of cavalry or infantry, as did roughly one hundred of the
officers. The vast majority—more than 95 percent—returned to civilian life. For
the tens of thousands who had served in the ranks, their discharges released them
into a new world in which most of them were free for the first time; a world that,
whatever its imperfections, their own efforts had helped to shape. 89
88 Foner, Reconstruction, pp. 251–80; Simpson, Reconstruction Presidents, pp. 109–15;
Trefousse, Andrew Johnson, p. 274. A complaint of increasing violence in Florida is Maj Gen J. G.
Foster to Maj Gen G. L. Hartsuff, n.d. [early Oct 1866] (F–28–DG–1866) (quotation), Entry 1756, pt.
1, RG 393, NA; in South Carolina, Col G. W. Gile to Lt Col H. W. Smith, 1 Jul 1866, NA M869, roll
34; in Arkansas, Maj Gen J. W. Sprague to Maj Gen O. O. Howard, 1 Sep 1866, NA M979, roll 23.
89 125th USCI, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA; William A. Dobak and Thomas D. Phillips,
The Black Regulars, 1866–1898 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), pp. 24, 293; Dyer,
Compendium, p. 1739.