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
finally got them to firing, and they recovered their senses somewhat. But . . . they
did not know how to shoot with effect.
Seymour mismanaged the troops, Norton went on: “Coming up in the rear, . . . as
they arrived, they were put in, one regiment at a time, and whipped by detail. . . . If
there is a second lieutenant in our regiment who couldn’t plan and execute a better
battle, I would vote to dismiss him for incompetency.” 31
The defeat at Olustee put out of action one-third of the fifty-five hundred Union
troops who were present at the battle. Their losses amounted to 203 killed, 1,152
wounded, and 506 missing. The federal force in northeastern Florida kept to a defensive
posture for most of the remainder of the war, but the reasons for this lay outside
the state and even outside the Department of the South. The Union’s major offensives
of 1864 were in preparation, and the District of Florida would be reduced to a coastal
toehold. 32
Preparations for those offensives began even before Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant received
orders in March 1864 to report to Washington, D.C., to assume command of
all the Union’s field armies and to begin planning campaigns for the coming spring.
In February, Grant’s predecessor in Washington, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, had
asked whether General Gillmore planned any major operations against Charleston for
the coming year and how many troops the Department of the South could release for
coastal operations elsewhere, perhaps at Mobile or somewhere in North Carolina. Gillmore
thought that he might spare between seven and eleven thousand men and still be
able to maintain a “safe quiescent defense.” 33
At that time, the Department of the South made the nomenclature of its black regiments
conform to the pattern that was being adopted across the country. Colonel Higginson’s
1st South Carolina became the 33d USCI; Colonel Montgomery’s 2d South
Carolina became the 34th USCI; and Col. James C. Beecher’s 1st North Carolina became
the 35th USCI. The next month, word reached the department that it would lose
a number of veteran regiments. The three-year white regiments that had first enlisted
in 1861 and had recently reenlisted in sufficient numbers to retain their designations
and go home on furlough together would not return to the Department of the South but
would report to Washington at the end of their furloughs. 34
Early in April 1864, when General Grant had decided on troop dispositions,
Gillmore received orders to send as many troops “as in your judgment can be safely
spared” from the department to Fort Monroe, Virginia, to join Maj. Gen. Benjamin F.
Butler’s command there. Gillmore himself would go as commander of the X Corps, the
field organization to which the regiments would belong. Having received a command
he wanted, Gillmore immediately increased the number of troops he thought his old
department could spare and took with him more than 40 percent of its total strength
31 Norton, Army Letters, pp. 201–03.
32 OR, ser. 1, vol. 35, pt. 1, p. 298. On 31 January 1864, the number of troops present in the
Department of the South was 33,297 and on 31 October 1864, 14,070, a decline of 57.7 percent. In
Florida, troops on those dates numbered 14,024 (including “Seymour’s command”) and 2,969, a
decline of 85.9 percent. OR, ser. 1, vol. 35, pt. 1, p. 463, and pt. 2, p. 320.
33 OR, ser. 1, vol. 35, pt. 1, p. 494, and pt. 2, p. 23 (quotation).
34 OR, ser. 1, vol. 35, pt. 2, p. 23; Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion
(New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1959 [1909]), p. 1729.