Chapter 8: Good Deal of Trouble
Supplement to Endnotes
Endnote 1) “We did not take prisoners,” wrote one of the main witnesses of the skirmish. Officers and men, he admitted, were “perfectly enthusiastic in killing the ‘d[amned]d rascals’, as I heard many call them.” Another Rebel wrote to his mother that Ransom’s men had “killed a bout thirty negrows but took no prisners.” He further told his mother, with no apparent shame, that taking black prisoners was “something that our souldiers are apt not to do.”
See: Bruce Suderow, “‘We did Not Take any Prisoners': The Suffolk Slaughter," in Civil War Times Illustrated 23, no. 3 (1984), pp. 36-39; Weymouth T. Jordan Jr. and Gerald W. Thomas, “Massacre at Plymouth: April 20, 1864," North Carolina Historical Review 72, no. 2 (1995), pp. 152-53; Brian Steel Wills, The War Hits Home: The Civil War in Southeastern Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), pp. 213-19; Ervin L. Jordan, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), p. 279.
Black troops suffered various atrocities in Florida, Texas, Arkansas, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Virginia. Many of these atrocities involved troops who in the process of surrendering were murdered by rebel soldiers. These murders at times were generated by high command, or popular sentiment among the rebel troops (sometimes in disobedience to officers’ orders to take black soldiers as prisoners). Not surprisingly, there were more than a few accounts of black reprisals, often with black soldiers yelling out slogans of revenge. For an example of one northern, black correspondent admitting to a reprisal by colored troops in the Army of the James, see: “A Very Important Letter from Chaplain Turner,” July 9, 1864, The Christian Recorder. For a poignant account of white on black atrocities and ensuring revenge, see: Gregory J. W. Urwin, "'We Cannot Treat Negroes . . . as Prisoners of War': Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in Civil War Arkansas," Civil War History 42, no. 3 (1996), pp. 193-210.. The best work that examines the various atrocities is: Gregory J. W. Urwin, ed., Black Flag Over Dixie: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in the Civil War (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004).
Endnote 2) For the official reports by Butler, Cole and others where they emphasized the bravery of the black troops who were greatly outnumbered—and inflated losses to the enemy, see: various reports in, OR, Series 1, Volume 33, pp. 237-39. Cole was also reported to have killed the commanding officer on his horse. One southern paper reported that many of the soldiers who were killed were from Suffolk, dying “a few hundred” yards from their ex-masters’ homes. See: Western Democrat, March 15, 1864; Emmerton, A Record of the Twenty-Third Regiment Mass. Vol. Infantry in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865, p. 162. In what appears to have been a fraudulent pension claim for a supposed widow of an Eli Cross, the claimant -- from Norfolk -- describes with some detail (much of it accurate) how her husband was burned up in Suffolk in April of 1864. Because the pension appears to be fraudulent, it gives an idea of the impression Suffolk left on those at the home front, and how such stories were known. See widow’s pension of wife of Eli Cross, #435.305, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC; For report in Syracuse paper, see: Syracuse Journal, March 16, 1864, (taken from clips in OHA).
Endnote 3) Some argued, rightly, that the Joint Committee’s evidence only told part of the story. Critics of the report maintained that after supposedly surrendering, Union soldiers started fighting again, leaving the Rebels no option but to fight until death. But, as pro-Union accounts claimed, Yankees were forced to take up arms again once they had witnessed the butchering of their surrendering comrades. As for accounts of burying soldiers alive, some Confederates claimed that they had tossed “dead” black soldiers (that is, soldiers pretending to be dead) into trenches in order to “resurrect” them once the dirt blocked their airways. See: Albert Castel, “The Fort Pillow Massacre: An Examination of the Evidence,” in Black Flag Over Dixie, pp. 89-103.
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Endnote 4) On the Plymouth Massacre: In a fine investigation of the Plymouth Massacre, Weymouth T. Jordan Jr., and Gerald W. Thomas estimate that probably fifty or so innocents were murdered after the surrender. This is considerably less than the estimates from historians and contemporaries of nearly 500 or so deaths. The authors concede, though, that because of the inconclusive nature of the evidence, the contradictory record keeping, disputed testimonies, and the presence of black refugees, there can be little certainty about the specifics. Until a new, trustworthy source comes to light, they write, “the Roanoke River swamps will retain their secrets.”
Before their capture some of the Buffaloes assumed the identities of fallen northern Union comrades in hopes of escaping imminent execution. Some successfully passed themselves off as northern men -- perhaps with some planning and coaching from their Yankee comrades. Of these, some took their secret identities to their graves in southern war prisons where many of the captives ultimately perished. Many black refugees were remanded back into bondage or immediately put to work for the Confederacy. Still, many witnesses claimed to have seen or known about senseless murders of black soldiers and refugees, or of having seen the cadavers that littered the swamps. See: Weymouth T. Jordan Jr., and Gerald W. Thomas, “Massacre at Plymouth: April 20, 1864,” in The North Carolina Historical Review, Volume LXXII (number 2), April, 1995, pp. 125-197.
Endnote 6) For more on my conclusion of why I believe Benjamin Butler created Samuel Johnson, see, 8.6 here.
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Endnote 8) On alcohol in the army: Indeed, in just a few weeks after Dollard’s court martial, on a boiling day in June, his fellow captain, William Perrin, supervised the building of a fort near Point of Rocks, Virginia. After draining one canteen of whiskey during a rough morning, he filled out a second order for the commissary and signed another officer’s name to it. (Perrin would argue that he and his lieutenant had an understanding that they could sign one another’s names.) By afternoon Perrin’s boisterous manner worried some of his fellow officers. But Cole was likely out of sorts, tethered close to his bed, still hobbled by his wounds. His subordinate, Major Dennison, claimed that before evening there had already been “several complaints” brought to Cole’s quarters with regard to Captain Perrin. Cole heard the complaints earlier in the day, but apparently did nothing to address them until Major Dennison returned to headquarters in the evening. Cole ordered his Major to go and see about the trouble. Dennison soon returned, convinced that Perrin was unfit for duty. See: Court Martial of William H. Perrin, Record Group 153, NN2543, NARA, Washington DC
Endnote 11) Dollard experienced a somewhat similar geographic exposure, as did Charles Francis Adams, Jr.—who also imbibed whiskey and quinine to abate the pangs of malarial fever. Both of the army corps making up the Army of the James (X and XVIII) had been particularly plagued with respiratory illnesses, malaria and typhoid fever. See: Longacre, “Army of Amateurs: General Benjamin F. Butler and the Army of the James, 1863-1865", 46-9; Michael DeGruccio, “Manhood, Race, Failure, and Reconciliation: Charles Francis Adams Jr. and the American Civil War.” The New England Quarterly 81 (2008): 636-675.
Endnote 16) Company muster rolls state that during the month of June Sylvester Ray was in the custody of the Provost Guard. But soon after he was assigned to ambulance duty and only three months later received a promotion to corporal. That Ray could speak murderously and foment a protest, and only months later receive a promotion, offers a glimpse of how even the most dutiful soldiers were just a few removes from mutiny. See compiled service record of Sylvester Ray, National Archives. A part of Ray’s court martial is found along with his muster reports. Ray’s records suggest a rather dutiful soldier, besides occasionally owing for a lost horse brush or some piece of cavalry gear. His records also state that Ray was free before the beginning of the war.
In mid June, Congress passed an act establishing equal pay, starting retroactively on the first day of 1864. And to those soldiers who could prove that they were free before the war, Congress promised to make up the pay from the day of their enlistment. That is, men who had obtained freedom during the chaos of war, would not be retroactively given a soldier’s pay for their previous soldiering. For black soldiers recruited throughout the South, this was yet another assault on their pride. Bold soldiers like Ray -- who was deemed to have been free before the war -- had won an important victory, if only in principle. But not until the final weeks of the war did Congress extend arrears in pay to ex-slaves. In Cole’s cavalry, black soldiers continued to live off crumbs from the Army’s table. See: Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers, pp. 169-76; Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy and Leslie S. Rowland, The Black Military Experience, Vol. ser. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 20-1, 24.
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Endnote 18) After much consideration, I chose to not include a recollection from Robert Dollard in the main narrative. Dollard told a story, long after the war, about how in the summer of 1864, around the time of Sylvester Ray’s troubles, he had attempted to break up a heated quarrel between two black privates about a fallen horse. When one soldier responded to Captain Dollard boldly, the captain ordered a company sergeant and two others (all black) to arrest the soldier who then responded that “no damned nigger could arrest” him.
In Cole’s regiment, these tensions among blacks seemed to fully emerge later, only as the war drew to an end. For example, some of the most violent threats during a future ship mutiny would come from angry common soldiers toward their black superiors, who were charged with enforcing the orders to force the men on board for Texas. At least one soldier from another regiment on the boats warned his officer that he better “lay low” and that he better not “stray off by himself on this boat tonight.” And several other privates threatened to hurt or kill their black superiors as the ships embarked. (See court martial of soldiers from other brigades: RG 153, OO1394. William Holmes, Moses Woods, 36 USCT.)
Still yearning after the war to find his loyal Uncle Tom, Dollard clung to a suspicious ending to the story that went like this: after he drew his revolver and ordered the private to drop his weapon, the two men ended up deadlocked in a fight for life, each trying to wrench a loaded gun from one another’s hands. Then -- as Dollard recalled -- like a deus ex machina, a “faithful” black Corporal, named Allen Pierce, sprung toward the confusion with loaded gun in his grip, and while shoving the muzzle into the black attacker’s guts, pulled his trigger. The gun merely clicked with no discharge. Again, as Dollard told it, just after the weapon misfired, another black sergeant -- who had originally refused to arrest the private -- also jumped into the chaos, firing his revolver twice at the man. Again, both shots misfired. That is, Dollard said that they did.
Dollard had an urge to kill the private but instead subjected him to some unnamed physical punishment that “did him some lasting good.” The story claimed that the camp began breaking out into a general mutiny, pitting some eighty soldiers against a few officers. The few were able to disarm most of the men by rallying the most obedient among them, and by Dollard ordering his loyal officers to arrest the rising mutiny’s ringleaders who were summarily subjected to the same unnamed punishment metered before.
Dollard claimed that these mysterious misfirings of guns could be explained by newly issued revolvers which had too much oil on the caps to ignite the powder. Whatever the explanation for the misfiring guns, or the taming of a group of soldiers who outnumbered their commanders better than thirty to one, Dollard clung -- for his entire life -- to this story to convey the thing he seemed to desire the most, “the intense loyalty of the colored soldier to his white commander.”
Dollard’s tale, even if a fabrication like the affidavit orchestrated by Butler, seemed to draw on some disturbing truths. I am reluctant to summarily dismiss this story. Maybe a little too much oil was the only thing between black soldiers killing each other over divided loyalties toward authority and commanders. Dollard’s story, in the end, may only tell us how desperately white officers wanted to believe that they were loved by their black soldiers. Still, some of the tale’s details ring true. White officers sought out trustworthy and dutiful black officers to instill order among the troops. This required giving former slaves power over their peers in exchange for a semblance of loyalty. There is proof in the regimental records that Cole’s rank-and-file soldiers resented fellow black men lording over them and enforcing officers’ wishes. Yet nothing in the surviving records, though spotty at best, corroborates Dollard’s spectacular narrative about loyalty. I doubt that two of his officers tried to kill a fellow black soldier. But as the rest of this story will show, there was profound confusion about what soldiers and officers could and couldn’t do in violent standoffs. ( See: Dollard, Recollections of the Civil War and Going West to Grow Up with the Country, pp. 111-12.)
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Endnote 21) Colonel Cole and members of the tribunal tried Dollard for various infractions at once: intoxication, stealing rations, abuse and nearly shooting a soldier. In all of these Dollard obtained a “not guilty” verdict. Except for a few exceptions where white officers came forth and gave damaging testimony, the court record reveals a near perfect split between black soldiers and white officers. Strangely, Colonel Cole was actually a witness and he more than any other officer gave damaging testimony about Dollard’s intoxication. But when Cole was asked to attest for Dollard’s character and gallantry he gave unqualified praise for Dollard. After admitting that while drunk Dollard was "sleepy, very stupid, and dull,” Cole then described his military character as: "Excellently good. I don't know a better officer in the service. I have not seen a better officer since I have been in the service -- except when under the influence…” It is also curious that the defense did not ask Cole anything about the misfired gun as some of the black soldiers claimed that Dollard confessed what happened to Cole in the latter’s quarters. See: Court Martial of Robert Dollard, NN2543, NARA, Washington, DC.