What This Cruel War Was Over

by Chandra Manning

  21. Pvt. Benjamin Jones, Twenty-first Ky., to brother, March 9, 1864, Chattanooga, Tenn., Union Soldiers’ Letters, FC. For a border state soldier who felt differently, see Robert Winn of the Third Ky. Cavalry, who was pleased to learn of a border slave state emancipation convention in Louisville, and hoped it would mean a prompt end to slavery in Kentucky. See Pvt. Robert Winn to sister, February 21, 1864, near Edgefield, Tenn., Winn-Cook Papers, FC.

  22. Pvt. Jacob Behm, Thirty-eighth Ill., to sister and brother-in-law, February 1, 1864, Scottsboro, Ala., Jacob Behm Correspondence, CWTIC.

  23. Pvt. Charles Henthorn, Seventy-seventh Ill., to sister, March 7, 1864, recuperating in hospital in Quincy, Ill., Charles Henthorn Letters, Schoff. See also Pvt. Joseph Lester, Sixth Wis. Battery, to father and sisters, August 16, 1864, near Cartersville, Ga., Joseph Lester Collection, PAW, Coll. 160, Reel 58.

  24. Assistant Surgeon John Moore, Twenty-second U.S. Colored Troops, to wife, May 12, 1864, Wilson Landing, Va., James Moore Papers, DU.

  25. Lt. Nelson Newton Glazier, Eleventh Vt., to parents, August 31, 1864, in hospital in Annapolis, Md., recovering from arm amputation, Nelson Newton Glazier Letters, VTHS.

  26. Pvt. Wilbur Fisk, Second Vt., to Green Mountain Freeman, April 7, 1864, Brandy Station, Va., in Rosenblatt and Rosenblatt, Hard Marching Every Day, 206–07.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Pvt. John English, Ohio soldier in Ninety-second Veteran Reserve Corps, to wife, August 28, 1864, hospital in Evansville, Ind., John English Letters, EU. See also Sgt. Horatio Barrington, Fourteenth Ill., to Bloomington Pantagraph, July, 1864, near Resaca, Ga., Bloomington Pantagraph, August 4, 1864, p. 1. See also Capt. Henry Crydenwise, Seventy-third Colored Infantry, to parents, June 2, 1864, Port Hudson, La., Henry Crydenwise Letters, EU.

  29. Cpl. Abial Edwards, Twenty-ninth Maine Veterans, to Anna, February 23, 1864, Teche, La., in Beverly Hayes Kallgren and James L. Crouthamel, eds., Dear Friend Anna: The Civil War Letters of a Common Soldier from Maine (Orono: University of Maine Press, 1992), 80. On the Massachusetts Forty-second’s band at black soldier Andre Cailloux’s funeral, see Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 72.

  30. Pvt. Andrew Harris, Eighth Kans., to parents, July 22, 1864, eight miles from Atlanta, Isaiah Morris Harris Journal and Correspondence, KU. Compare this letter to Harris’s letter of August 1863.

  31. Sgt. Charles Musser, Twenty-ninth Iowa, to father, September 12, 1864, Little Rock, Ark., in Popchock, Soldier Boy, 150. Compare this letter to Musser’s letter of February 1863, in which he hardly shone forth as a radical egalitarian, but in which he at least admitted that slaves “needed pity,” p. 26.

  32. Sgt. Ondley Andrus, Ninety-fifth Ill., to home, April 1864, Vicksburg, Miss., in Fred Albert Shannon, ed., “The Civil War Letters of Sergeant Ondley Andrus,” Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences 28:4 (1947), 75.

  33. Pvt. (acts as Ass’t Sgn.) Robert Winn, Third Ky. Cavalry, to sister, May 3, 1864, Ringold, Ga., Winn-Cook Papers, FC. Compare this letter to Winn’s letters of October 2, October 28, November 20, and December 11, 1863.

  34. Sgt. Maj. Stephen Fleharty, 102d Ill., to Rock Island Union, February 6, 1864, Lavergne, Tenn., in Reyburn and Wilson, “Jottings from Dixie,” 157.

  35. Pvt. Morris Chalmers, 132d N.Y., to sister, September 26, 1864, Bachelor Creek, Va., Morris Chalmers Letters, CWMC, Ser. 2. For the particular antipathy of working-class immigrants, including Irish immigrants, to African Americans, see David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Verso, 1991).

  36. Pvt. Alonzo Rich, Thirty-sixth Mass., to father, July 31, 1864, in front of Petersburg, Va., Alonzo G. Rich Papers, CWMC, Ser. 2. In Atlanta a little more than a week later, Sgt. Charles Bates heard “about the affair at Petersburg,” and showed even more eagerness to blame the disaster on black soldiers and to view the incident as reason for racial backtracking. “If Sherman does try to blow up anything I hope he will have sense enough to keep the nigger troops out of the way,” he remarked. See Sgt. Charles Bates, Fourth U.S. Cavalry, to parents, August 9, 1864, near Atlanta, Charles Edward Bates Papers, VHS.

  37. Arthur Van Horn, Seventy-eighth Ohio, to wife, February 3, 1864, Camp near Memphis, Tenn., Arthur Van Horn Family Papers, LC.

  38. Pvt. Joseph Fardell, Invalid Corps, to parents, February 6, 1864, Benton Barracks, Mo., Joseph A. Fardell Papers, MOHS.

  39. Sgt. William Stevens, Fourth Vt., to sister, March 26, 1864, “Camp Parole,” Annapolis, Md., in Marshall, A War of the People, 219. Stevens wrote this letter immediately after his release from a Richmond prison, as he awaited the opportunity to go home. For more on prisoner exchange stoppages in light of Confederate policy toward black soldiers, which ironically ended up damaging the Confederate Army more than the Union Army because the Confederacy needed its exchanged soldiers more desperately, see Michael Fellman, The Making of Robert E. Lee (New York: Random House, 2000), 205–209.

  40. Sgt. J. G. Nind, 127th Ill., 1863 post-Vicksburg reflections, November 1863, Vicksburg, Miss., in Post, Soldiers’ Letters from Camp, Battle-field and Prison, 291.

  41. Pvt. (acts as Ass’t Sgn.) Robert Winn, Third Ky. Cavalry, to sister, July 13, 1864, Connestaula River, near Resaca, Ga., Winn-Cook Papers, FC.

  42. Pvt. Robert Fitzgerald, Fifth Mass. Cavalry, diary, June 8, 1864, near Petersburg, Va., Fitzgerald Family Papers, SHC. Another volunteer added that ending slavery would help defend the Union because “the war for slavery and secession could be vigorously met only by war for the Union against slavery.” See G.E.S., Fifty-fourth Mass., to Editor, May 26, 1864, Folly Island, S.C., A-A, June 18, 1864, p. 1.

  43. The Black Warrior, May 17, 1864, Camp Parapet, Louisiana, p. 2, SHSW.

  44. Cpl. John H. B. Payne, Fifty-fifth Mass., to Editor, May 24, 1864, Morris Island, S.C., CR, June 11, 1864, reprinted in Trudeau, Voices of the 55th, 147; L. S. Langley, Thirty-third U.S. Colored Troops, to Editor, July 1864, Folly Island, S.C., A-A, August 6, 1864, p. 2.

  45. Sgt. Andrew King, First U.S. Colored Troops, to Editor, June 15, 1864, City Point, Va., CR, July 16, 1864, p. 3.

  46. G.E.S., Fifty-fourth Mass., to Editor, March 6, 1864, Jacksonville, Fla., A-A, April 2, 1864, p. 4.

  47. David D. Frances, Seventh Corps d’Afrique, to Editor, March 11, 1864, Port Hudson, La., A-A, April 9, 1864, p. 1.

  48. Sgt. John Brock, Forty-third U.S. Colored Troops, to Editor, June 5, 1864, near Hanover, Va., CR, June 18, 1864, p. 3.

  49. E.W.D., Fifty-fourth Mass., to Editor, June 9, 1864, Morris Island, S.C., CR, June 25, 1864, p. 1.

  50. J. H. Hall, Fifty-fourth Mass., to Editor, August 3, 1864, Morris Island, S.C., CR, August 27, 1864, p. 1.

  51. “Barquet,” Fifty-fourth Mass., to Editor, November 18, 1863, Morris Island, S.C., A-A, January 2, 1864, p. 1.

  52. Sgt. John Cajay, Eighth U.S. Heavy Artillery, to Editor, June 25, 1864, New Orleans, A-A, July 16, 1864, pp. 1–2. Cajay claimed that the celebration, held on June 11, honored “the day Gen. Benjamin F. Butler emancipated the slaves in Louisiana,” but the precise event or order to which he was referring remains unclear. Butler’s record on slavery in Louisiana was decidedly mixed. Convinced that nonslaveholders were already loyal to the Union, Butler wooed the loyalty of slaveholders with soft policies on slavery for much of 1862, though his actions were not consistent; sometimes he aided the replacement of slavery with free labor. Butler’s successor, Nathaniel Banks (who was in charge of New Orleans by June 1864, and according to Cajay, even put in a brief appearance at the festivities in Congo Square), proved even more sympathetic to slaveholders, so possibly Butler had started to look appealing to antislavery Northerners in retrospect by June 1864. For more on Butler and Banks in New Orleans, see Ira Berlin, Thavolia Glymph, Steven Miller, Joseph Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland, and Julie Saville, eds., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation 1861–1867, series 1, vol. 3, The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Lower South (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 345–7
7.

  53. James Jones, Fourteenth R.I. Heavy Artillery, to Editor, May 8, 1864, Camp Parapet, La., CR, May 28, 1864, p. 2.

  54. A. H. Newton, Twenty-ninth Conn., to Editor, June 8, 1864, Beaufort, S.C., CR, June 25, 1864, p. 1.

  55. Joseph Walker, Fifty-fifth Mass., to Editor, March 26, 1864, Yellow Bluff, Fla., A-A, April 16, 1864, p. 1.

  56. The black suffrage in question would be limited mainly to freeborn blacks. For more on the Louisiana state constitutional convention, see Cox, Lincoln and Black Freedom, 97–102; McCrary, Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction, 237–70; and Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 60–61.

  57. Cpl. George Delavan, Fifty-fourth Mass., to Mrs. Esther Hawks, November 29, 1863, Beaufort, S.C.; and Pvt. Andrew Johnson, First N.C., to Mrs. Esther Hill Hawks, January 4, 1864, Beaufort, S.C., Esther Hill Hawks Papers, PAW, Coll. 18, Reel 46. Because reading, like soldiering, had been out of the reach of many black Americans before the war, many troops regarded it as a route by which the entire race could advance. In his history of black soldiers in American military history, The Black Phalanx, Joseph T. Wilson, a former soldier in the Second La. Native Guards and the Fifty-fourth Mass., devoted part 3, ch. 1, to “The Phalanx at School.” Articles that address the importance of the Union Army in teaching blacks to read include Dudley Taylor Cornish, “The Union Army as a School for Negroes,” Journal of Negro History 37:4 (October 1952), 368–82; and John W. Blassingame, “The Union Army as an Education Institution for Negroes,” Journal of Negro Education 34:2 (spring 1965), 152–59. For the links that African Americans traditionally perceived among literacy, power, and independence, see Janet Duitsman Cornelius, “When I Can Read My Title Clear”: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Ante-bellum South (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), esp. chs. 1 and 6. Cornish and Blassingame detail the logistics of regimental policies on black education, while Cornelius discusses what literacy meant to African Americans.

  58. Sgt. Richard H. Black, Third U.S. Colored Troops, to Editor, January 4, 1864, Morris Island, S.C., A-A, January 30, 1864, p. 2.

  59. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 633.

  60. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 656–67.

  61. Davis’s proclamation of December 23, 1862, appears in Wilson, The Black Phalanx, 317.

  62. See Wilson, The Black Phalanx, 316–19. For one example of this policy at work see Brig. Gen. L. S. Ross to Brig. Gen. W. H. Jackson, March 5, 1864, HQ of Tenn. Brigade near Yazoo City, Miss. Ross explained that when he demanded the surrender of the last redoubt held by Union troops in Yazoo City and learned that some black troops were among the units holding the redoubt, he and the Union commander “squabbled about the terms of the capitulation as I would not recognise Negroes as Soldiers.” Ross would not offer protection to them or their officers. In this case, the protracted bickering gave other black Union troops time to regroup and return to drive the Confederates from the redoubt, leading to a much happier ending than usual for black soldiers in time of surrender. Ross’s correspondence to Jackson is in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 438–39.

  63. Pvt. Robert Fitzgerald, Fifth Mass. Cavalry, diary, May 16, 1864, City Point, Va., Fitzgerald Family Papers, SHC. References to the massacre at Fort Pillow abound throughout black soldiers’ writings. For instance, see The Black Warrior, 1:1, May 17, 1864, Camp Parapet, La., p. 3, SHSW. According to the Fourteenth R.I. Heavy Artillery soldiers who wrote the Warrior, it was not surprising that Confederates, “whose whole lives have been spent in inventing atrocious and exquisite tortures for the punishment of their slaves,” would stoop to cold-blooded murder. After all, they already had on their hands “the blood of hundreds of thousands sent to their graves without provocation, for their sport.” Tragic as Fort Pillow was, it was “but the unmasking of the principles of slavery.” For Fort Pillow from the Confederate perspective, see below.

  64. Theodore Hodgkins to Hon. E. M. Stanton, April 18, 1864, in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 587.

  65. For growing dissent among blacks about enlistment, see McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War, 173–79.

  66. David Frances, Seventh Corps D’Afrique, to Editor, March 11, 1864, Port Hudson, La., A-A, April 9, 1864, p. 1.

  67. G.E.S., Fifty-fourth Mass., to Editor, March 4, 1864, Jacksonville, Fla., A-A, April 2, 1864, p. 4.

  68. G.E.S., Fifty-fourth Mass., to Editor, May 26, 1864, Folly Island, S.C., A-A, June 18, 1864, p. 1.

  69. Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 80–81.

  70. Sgt. Joseph Walker, Fifty-fifth Mass., to Editor, March 26, 1864, Yellow Bluff, Fla., A-A, April 16, 1864, p. 1.

  71. Anon. Soldier, Twentieth U.S. Colored Troops, to “My Dear Friend” President Lincoln, August 1864, Camp Parapet, La., in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 501–02.

  72. See, for example, the letter of R. H. Isabelle, formerly of the La. Native Guards, to Editor, June 22, 1863, New Orleans, A-A, August 18, 1863, p. 4. Isabelle later reentered the Army, joining the Seventh La. For accounts of the La. Native Guards and their officers, see Mary F. Berry, “Negro Troops in Blue and Gray: The Louisiana Native Guards, 1861–1863,” Louisiana History 8:2 (1967), 165–90; and James G. Hollandsworth, Jr., The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience During the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1995).

  73. Sgt. James Trotter, Fifty-fifth Mass., to friend Franky Garrison, August 21, 1864, Folly Island, S.C., in Trudeau, Voices of the 55th, 141–42.

  74. “The Colored Mass Meeting,” New Orleans Tribune, August 25, 1864, p. 2. For discussion of the black officers issue, see Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, ch. 9; Wilson, The Black Phalanx, ch. 4; and John W. Blassingame, “The Selection of Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers of Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1863–1865,” Negro History Bulletin 30:1 (January 1967), 8–11.

  75. Strong relationships between black enlisted men and white officers, and the ways in which shared goals and common experiences knit black and white together, form a major theme of Glatthaar’s Forged in Battle.

  76. D.I.I., Thirty-second U.S. Colored Troops, to Editor, July 18, 1864, Morris Island, S.C., CR, August 6, 1864, p. 1. In Forged in Battle, Joseph Glatthaar shows a wide spectrum of attitudes among white officers of black troops, ranging from hostility to respect and comradeship; see esp. ch. 5 and also chs. 3 and 9.

  77. Sgt. John Cajay, Eighth U.S. Heavy Artillery, to Editor, June 25, 1864, New Orleans, A-A, July 16, 1864, pp. 1–2.

  78. “Important to Colored Men,” A-A, December 12, 1863, p. 4. The poster takes up the whole back page. For a thorough discussion of the evolution of black pay policy, see Herman Belz, “Law, Politics, and Race in the Struggle for Equal Pay During the Civil War,” Civil War History 22:3 (1976), 197–213.

  79. Official Records, ser. 3, vol. 5, pp. 632–33.

  80. For an overview of the reaction of Mass. and S.C. regiments, see Belz, “Law, Politics, and Race in the Struggle for Equal Pay,” 199–200.

  81. Court-martial statement by Sgt. William Walker, Third S.C. Volunteers, on trial for mutiny for protesting unequal pay, January 12, 1864, Hilton Head, S.C., in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 393. Walker was executed for mutiny.

  82. Pvt. Loudon S. Langley, Fifty-fourth Mass., to Editor, January 23, 1864, A-A, January 30, 1864, p. 2.

  83. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, reminds readers that a few dollars was not an inconsequential concern to black soldiers’ families struggling to get by (656–57 and 680–84). Still, many soldiers insisted that the main point transcended economics.

  84. “Wolverine,” Fifty-fifth Mass., to Editor, December 1863, CR, January 2, 1864, p. 2. Samuel Robinson similarly stressed that the motive for declining the state’s offer to make up the difference in pay was “that we desire at this crisis, the recognition of our rights as men and as soldiers.” See Sgt. Samuel Robinson, Fifty-fifth Mass., to Li
berator, January 18, 1864, Folly Island, S.C., in Trudeau, Voices of the 55th, 61–62.

  85. “A Soldier of the Fifty-fifth Mass. Volunteers” to Editor, January 12, 1864, Folly Island, S.C., A-A, January 30, 1864, p. 1. In June 1864, Congress finally passed an appropriations act equalizing the pay of all black troops to that of white soldiers, retroactive to January 1, 1864, and equalizing the pay of black troops who had been free before the war to the time of enlistment. See Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 367–68. Soldiers would actually begin to receive equal pay in the fall and winter of 1864–65.

  86. Joseph Williams, formerly First N.C. Colored Volunteers, now recruiter, to Editor, September 7, 1863, Nashville, Tenn., CR, September 19, 1863, p. 1.

  87. “Barquet,” Fifty-fourth Mass., to Editor, November 18, 1863, Morris Island, S.C., A-A, January 2, 1864, p. 1. Similarly, Pvt. Daniel Walker, Fifty-fourth Mass., optimistically believed that once the threat of Civil War had passed, the U.S. government could not help but reward the contributions of black Americans, especially if they suppressed agitation until the crisis of the Union had passed. See Walker to Editor, January 15, 1864, Morris Island, S.C., CR, January 30, 1864, p. 1.

  88. Sgt., Fifty-fifth Mass., to Editor, May 29, 1864, Folly Island, S.C., CR, July 9, 1864, p. 1. A letter from a member of the Fifty-fourth Mass. similarly assured readers that “the respectable part of the colored race consider that their own kind would make the most affectionate companions,” and harbored no desire to intermarry with “Anglo Saxon” women. J. H. Hall to Editor, August 3, 1864, Morris Island, S.C., CR, August 27, 1864, p. 1.

  89. G.W.H., First U.S. Colored Troops, to Editor, May 10, 1864, Wilson’s Landing, Va., CR, May 28, 1864, p. 1.

  90. “Africano,” Fifth Mass. Cavalry, to Editor, June 11, 1864, City Point, Va., A-A, June 25, 1864, p. 1. In fact, added another soldier, Americans could only expect things to get worse “unless some plan is specially adopted to check [the] onward course” of prejudice, a “moral degradation and…one of the most fruitful sources of evil in our land.” See Cpl. John Payne, Fifty-fifth Mass., to Editor, May 24, 1864, Morris Island, S.C., in CR, June 11, 1864, reprinted in Trudeau, Voices of the 55th, 148.