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
you can’t get her. I expected you Yanks would want to steal her so I sent her off
yesterday. You are too late.’” Rogers tried to explain the effects of the Emancipation
Proclamation to the woman. “‘Well, you’ll have to fight your way out there before
you can get that wench,’ she said. ‘Is this your child?’ I said as a flaxen haired
boy came toward me. ‘Yes, he is, and what of it?’” Rogers told one of his soldiers
to take the boy to the guardhouse and keep him there until the girl returned.
[The soldier] looked at me with a half frightened, half questioning expression
on his black face, but when he saw I was in earnest his look changed to one of
triumph, and grasping the little fellow by the arm he started off for the guard
house before either mother or child could recover from their surprise. Then the
“lady” gave me a volley of abuse which I will not repeat, nor did I stop to hear
the end of the tirade. Finding she could get no satisfaction from the colonel she
was advised to hunt up the provost marshal and get a pass [to go beyond Union
lines]. Imagine her chagrin and disgust when she found I was the man she was
seeking. She asked for the pass. I did not ask her what for, nor did I pretend to
know her. She got it and also an escort of four of my best looking “nasty niggers”
dressed in their best.
The next day the woman returned, bringing with her the soldier’s daughter.
“The soldier’s heart was made glad, the white child was exchanged for the
black one, and with another blast at the nasty Yankees the haughty ‘lady’ returned
to her home.” 45
While the black soldiers’ presence annoyed white Southerners, it alarmed
Confederate authorities. Brig. Gen. Joseph Finegan, commanding the Confederate
District of East Florida, thought that there might be as many as four thousand
armed blacks arrayed against him. He predicted that Union troops would “hold the
town of Jacksonville and then . . . advance up the Saint John’s in their gunboats and
establish another secure position higher up the river, whence they may entice the
slaves. That the entire negro population of East Florida will be lost and the country
ruined there cannot be a doubt, unless the means of holding the Saint John’s
River are immediately supplied.” Finegan asked for reinforcements and four heavy
cannon with which to engage the Union gunboats: “The entire planting interest of
East Florida lies within easy communication of the river; . . . intercourse will immediately
commence between negroes on the plantations and those in the enemy’s
service; . . . this intercourse will be conducted through swamps and under cover of
the night, and cannot be prevented. A few weeks will suffice to corrupt the entire
slave population of East Florida.” Aside from Finegan’s use of the verb corrupt to
describe the effect of black soldiers on slaves, which expressed a typical Southern
attitude, his account of the aims and methods of the U.S. Colored Troops could
have issued from the most fervid abolitionist in the United States service. 46
As it turned out, Finegan need not have worried. On 23 March, two white
infantry regiments, the 6th Connecticut and the 8th Maine, arrived at Jacksonville
to secure the town so that Colonel Higginson could move his black troops up the
45 Looby, Complete Civil War Journal, p. 109; J. S. Rogers typescript, pp. 50–51 (quotation).
46 OR, ser. 1, 14: 228.