by Noel Rae
—Beaufort (S. C.) Tribune.
Only towards the end of the war were the black troops fairly paid. In the meantime, to add to the injustice, many worried about the effect on their families. “How our families are to live and pay house-rent I know not,” wrote one soldier of the 55th. And money was only one of their worries. “My dear husband,” wrote one wife from Missouri, one of the states exempt from the Emancipation Proclamation. “I rec’d your letter dated Jan’y 9th also one dated Jan’y 1st but have got no one till now to write for me. You do not know how bad I am treated. They are treating me worse and worse every day. Our child cries for you. Send me some money as soon as you can for me and my child are almost naked .…. Your affectionate wife, Ann. P. S. Send our little girl a string of beads in your next letter to remember you by.”
Many other black soldiers must have been tormented by news from home telling of hardships they could do nothing to alleviate. Here, for example, is another letter from Missouri, this one dated December 30, 1863:
My Dear Husband,
I have received your last kind letter a few days ago and was much pleased to hear from you once more. It seems like a long time since you left me. I have had nothing but trouble since you left. You recollect what I told you how they would do after you was gone. They abuse me because you went & they say you will not take care of our children & do nothing but quarrel with me all the time and beat me scandalously the day before yesterday—Oh I never thought you would give me so much trouble as I have got to bear now. You ought not to left me in the fix I am in & all these little helpless children to take care of … The children talk about you all the time. I wish you could get a furlough & come to see us once more. We want to see you worse than we ever did before. Remember all I told you about how they would do me after you left—for they do worse than they ever did & I do not know what will become of me & my poor little children. Oh I wish you had staid with me & not gone till I could go with you for I do nothing but grieve all the time about you … Write to me & do not forget me & my children—farewell my dear husband from your wife.
Martha
And here, datelined Camp Nelson, Kentucky, March 25, 1865, is the affidavit made before a notary public by Patsey Leach, “is a woman of color, who being duly sworn according to law doth depose and say:
“I am a widow and belonged to Warren Wiley of Woodford County, Ky. My husband Julius Leach was a member of Co. D. 5th U. S. Colored Cavalry and was killed at the Salt Works, Va., about six months ago. He had only been about a month in the service when he was killed. I was living with aforesaid Wiley when he died. He knew of my husband’s enlisting before I did, but never said anything to me about it. From that time he treated me more cruelly than ever, whipping me frequently without any cause and insulting me on every occasion. About three weeks after my husband enlisted a company of colored soldiers passed our house, and I was there in the garden and looked at them as they passed. My master had been watching me, and when the soldiers had gone I went into the kitchen. My master followed and knocked me to the floor senseless, saying as he did so, ‘You have been looking at them darned nigger soldiers.’ When I recovered my senses he beat me with a cowhide. When my husband was killed my master whipped me severely, saying my husband had gone into the army to fight against white folks and he, my master, would let me know that I was foolish to let my husband go, he would ‘take it out on my back,’ he would ‘kill me by piecemeal,’ and he hoped ‘that the last one of the nigger soldiers would be killed.’ He whipped me twice after that using similar expressions. The last whipping he gave me he took me into the kitchen, tied my hands, tore all my clothes off until I was entirely naked, bent me down, placed my head between his knees, then whipped me most unmercifully until my back was lacerated all over, the blood oozing out in several places so that I could not wear my underclothes without their becoming saturated with blood. The marks are still visible on my back. On this and other occasions my master whipped me for no other cause than my husband having enlisted.”
To preserve them from such treatment many soldiers were allowed to bring their families with them to camp; but this was no favor if the officer in charge was high-handed or prejudiced, or both. This was the case at Camp Nelson, Ky., where some four hundred members of soldiers’ families were living in tents and makeshift huts. On the grounds that this was bad for military discipline, the commandant suddenly decided to expel them. In a sworn affidavit, Private Joseph Miller, of the 124th U. S. Colored Infantry, told what happened to his family on November 22, 1864, when, without forewarning, “a mounted guard gave my wife notice that she and her children must leave Camp before morning. This was about six o’clock at night. My little boy about seven years of age had been very sick and was slowly recovering. My wife had no place to go and so remained until morning. About eight o’clock Wednesday morning November 23rd a mounted guard came to my tent and ordered my wife and children out of Camp. The morning was bitter cold. It was freezing hard. I was certain it would kill my sick child to take him out in the cold. I told the man in charge that it would be the death of my boy. I told him that my wife and children had no place to go and I told him that I was a soldier of the United States. He told me that it did not make any difference, he had orders to take all out of the Camp. He told my wife and family that if they did not get up into the wagon which he had he would shoot the last one of them. On being thus threatened my wife and children went into the wagon. My wife carried her sick child in her arms. When they left the tent the wind was blowing hard and cold, and having had to leave much of our clothing when we left our master, my wife with her little one was poorly clad. I followed them as far as the lines. I had no knowledge where they were taking them. At night I went in search of my family. I found them at Nicholasville about six miles from Camp. They were in an old meeting house belonging to the colored people. The building was very cold, having only one fire. My wife and children could not get near the fire, because of the number of colored people huddled together by the soldiers. I found my wife and children shivering with cold and famished with hunger. They had not received a morsel of food during the whole day. My boy was dead. He died directly after getting down from the wagon. I know he was killed by exposure to the inclement weather. I had to return to Camp that night so I left my family in the meeting house and walked back. I had walked there. I traveled in all twelve miles. Next morning I walked to Nicholasville. I dug a grave myself and buried my own child. I left my family in the meeting house, where they still remain.”
Another hardship for black soldiers was the poor quality of many of their officers, all of whom, until near the end of the war, were white. In elite regiments such as the Massachusetts 54th, great care was taken to appoint only well-qualified officers who were sympathetic to abolition—though even then their colonel, Robert Gould Shaw, routinely wrote of his soldiers as “niggers.” Thanks largely to Colonel Higginson, the First South-Carolina Volunteers was also well officered. But this was not always the case. For many whites, to take a commission in a black regiment was to lose caste. Also, many of the black contraband regiments were assigned to labor rather than to combat, a prospect not likely to attract officers of high quality. Hence some of what follows:
From a letter approved by forty-five members of a labor battalion at Bermuda Hundreds, Va, September, 1864: “No one knows the injustice practiced on the Negroes at Roanoke. Our gardens are plundered by the white soldiers. What we raise is stolen from us, and if we say anything about it we are sent to the guard house. Rations that the government allows the contrabands are sold to the white secesh citizens, and got out the way at night. It’s no uncommon thing to see women and children crying for something to eat. Old clothes sent to the Island from the North for contrabands are sold to the white secesh citizens.”
From an anonymous letter to the Secretary of War, datelined Lexington, Ky, October 22, 1865, when the fighting was over: “We haven’t had six days furlough to see our wives and we have been in the army fourteen
months … When our wives come to the camp to see us they are not allowed to come in camp and we are not allowed to go and see them. They are drummed off and the officers say, Go, you damned bitches … If we say anything we are put in jail and two or three months pay docked from us … Shame, shame, shame how we are treated.”
Black troops suffered from many other forms of discrimination. If they were quartered with a white regiment, most of the fatigue duty fell to them. Even after Fort Wagner the Massachusetts 54th was not exempt. “For four months,” wrote an anonymous soldier, “we have been steadily working night and day under fire. And such work! Up to our knees in mud half the time, causing the tearing and wearing out of more than the volunteers’ yearly allowance of clothing, denied time to repair and wash, denied time to drill and perfect ourselves in soldierly qualities, denied the privilege of burying our dead decently. All this we’ve born patiently …”
And there was this unsigned letter, dated August, 1864, addressed to President Lincoln and sent from Camp Parpit in Louisiana: “My Dear Friend and x Pre. I take up my Pen to Address you a few simpels And facts. We so-called the 20th U.S. Colored troops, we was got up in the state of New York so said by a grant of the President. We … are treated in a Different manner to what other Rigiments is, both Northern men or southern raised Rigiment. Instead of the musket it is the spad and the Wheelbarrow and the Axe, cutting in one of the most horable swamps in Louisiana, stinking and misery … The Colored man is like a lost sheep. Many of them old and young was Brave and Active, but has been hurrided by and ignominious Death into Eternity. But I hope God will presearve the rest now in existence to get Justice and Rights. We have to do our Duty or Die and no help for us.” Also “We haven’t received a cent of Pay since we bin in the field,” and “we are cut short of our Ration in A most shocking maner … sum times No meat for 2 days. It is a hard thing to be Keept in such a state of misery Continuly. Remember we are men standing in Readiness to face thous vile traitors and Rebels who are trying to Bring your Peaceable homes to Destruction. And how can we stand them in A weak and starving Condition?” And here the letter ends, unsigned and most likely unacknowledged.
There was also the matter of medical care. For all soldiers this was rudimentary, but it was worse for blacks than for whites. About one in twelve white soldiers died of sickness or disease, but blacks died at the rate of one in five. In part this was due to the effects of slavery, in part to the poor food, harsh conditions and overwork in the labor battalions in which so many served, and in part to medical neglect, as described in this report from Lorenzo Thomas, the Adjutant General of the Army, to the Assistant Surgeon General, datelined Nashville, Tenn. January 16, 1865.
“Sir: A complaint having been made by a Captain of Colored Troops that the wounded soldiers of his company in Hospital were neglected, I made an inspection of Hospital No. 16., containing a large number of sick and wounded of the Colored Troops.
“I have inspected many Hospitals but have never seen one that was not in good order, except this one. The building was unsuitable, but that, I judge, was unavoidable… What I complained of were the filthy conditions of the wounded, and the bedding. Words of mine cannot describe the utter filthiness of what I saw. I will instance one or two cases:—A soldier wounded Dec. 15, with leg amputated, was on a bed the clothing of which had not been changed up to yesterday, and he was still in the dress in which he was carried from the battlefield, everything saturated with blood—and he complained that the lice were eating him up. Another was shirtless, having discarded his shirt ten days previous on account of its filthy condition. Other instances could be given, but let this suffice.
“Had these men been white soldiers, think you this would have been their condition? No! And yet the Black fell side by side of the White with their faces to the Foe …”
Finally, there was this question, posed by William Wells Brown, the prominent abolitionist speaker and former slave: “In the struggle between the Federal government and the rebels, the colored men asked the question, ‘Why should we fight?’ The question was a legitimate one, at least for those residing in the Northern States, and especially in those States where there were any considerable number of colored people. In every State north of Mason and Dixon’s Line, except Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which attempted to raise a regiment of colored men, the blacks are disfranchised, excluded from the jury-box, and in most of them from the public schools. The iron hand of prejudice in the Northern States is as circumscribing and unyielding upon him as the manacles that fettered the slave of the South.”
Consider, for example, the New York Riots of July, 1863, that followed passage of the Conscription Act. “The mob was composed of the lowest and most degraded of the foreign population (mainly Irish), raked from the filthy cellars and dens of the city, steeped in crimes of the deepest dye, and ready for any act, no matter how dark and damnable; together with the worst type of our native criminals … ever on the hunt for some deed of robbery or murder.”
While the police stood by, “murder, arson, robbery and cruelty reigned triumphant throughout the city, day and night, for more than a week. Breaking into stores, hotels and saloons, and helping themselves to strong drink ad libitum, they became inebriated, and marched through every part of the city. Calling at places where large bodies of men were at work, and pressing them in, their numbers rapidly increased to thousands, and their fiendish depredations had no bounds. Having been taught by the leaders of the Democratic party to hate the Negro, and having but a few weeks previous seen regiments of colored volunteers pass through New York on their way South, this infuriated band of drunken men, women and children paid special visits to all localities inhabited by the blacks, and murdered all they could lay their hands on, without regard to age or sex. Every place known to employ Negroes was searched. Steamboats leaving the city, and railroad depots, were watched lest some should escape their vengeance.”
The Orphan Asylum for Colored Children, located on Fifth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Street, was a particular target. Though none of the children was killed, the building was ransacked—including “even the little garments for the orphans, which were contributed by the benevolent ladies of the city.” The building was then set on fire and “there is now scarcely one brick left on another.” Meanwhile “blacks were chased to the docks, thrown into the river, and drowned; while some, after being murdered, were hung to lamp-posts. Between forty and fifty colored persons were killed, and nearly as many maimed for life.”
Others put the figure ten times higher—about as many as the black losses in the assault on Fort Wagner, which took place that same week.
But the obvious answer to Brown’s question, “Why should we fight?” was that black soldiers were fighting for freedom, a motive that led to many acts of bravery and sacrifice in battle after battle. One of these took place in November, 1864, at Honey Hill, S. C. where a large Confederate force was entrenched behind earthworks that overlooked a swamp crossed by a road. Four black regiments, including the 54th and 55th Massachusetts, composed the main attacking force. According to an account published in the Savannah Republican, “The Negroes as usual formed the advance, and had nearly reached the creek when our batteries opened upon them down the road with a terrible volley of spherical case [grapeshot]. This threw them into temporary confusion; but the entire force, estimated at five thousand, was quickly restored to order and thrown into a line of battle parallel with our own, up and down the margin of the swamp. Thus the battle raged from eleven in the morning until dark … The center and left of the enemy fought with a desperate earnestness. Several attempts were made to charge our batteries, and many of them got nearly across the swamp, but were in every instance forced back by the galling fire poured into them from our lines. We made a visit to the field the day following, and found the road literally strewn with their dead. Some eight or ten bodies were floating in the water where the road crosses; and in a ditch on the roadside, just beyond, we saw six Negroes piled one on to
p of the other … We counted some sixty or seventy bodies in the space of about an acre, many of which were horribly mutilated by shells; some with half their heads shot off, and others completely disemboweled. The artillery was served with great accuracy, and we doubt if any battle-field of the war presents such havoc …”
A supply depot on the Mississippi for Grant’s army besieging Vicksburg, Milliken’s Bend was defended by about a thousand troops, mostly black and recently recruited, when it was attacked on June 7, 1863. After vicious hand-to-hand fighting the Confederates were beaten back, though with very heavy Union losses, and the Vicksburg siege continued.
Another battle took place at Milliken’s Bend, a Union outpost on the Mississippi above Vicksburg. It began when about five hundred black and two hundred white troops were surprised in camp by a rebel force of about two thousand. At first, wrote an anonymous witness, “the rebels drove our forces towards the gun-boats, taking colored men prisoners and murdering them. This so enraged them that they rallied, and charged the enemy more heroically and desperately than has been recorded during the war. It was a genuine bayonet-charge, a hand-to-hand fight … Upon both sides men were killed with the butts of muskets. White and black men were lying side by side, pierced by bayonets, and in some instances transfixed to the earth. In one instance two men—one white and the other black—were found dead, side by side, each having the other’s bayonet through his body … Broken limbs, broken heads, the mangling of bodies, all prove that this was a contest between enraged men: on the one side from hatred to a race; and on the other desire for self-preservation, revenge for past grievances and the inhuman murder of their comrades.” Early in the battle, the rebels had cried, “No quarter!” and indeed “no Negro was ever found alive that was taken a prisoner by the rebels in this fight.”
