Chapter 11: Mutiny
Supplement to Endnotes
Endnote 5) I relied heavily on two works that drill deeply into the shoddy treatment of black soldiers: Margaret Humphreys, Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), especially the chapter on surgeons; Jim Downs, Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Endnote 6) Some reports and papers maintained that black soldiers were well provisioned. Assuming we can believe some of these reports, they underscore the ways in which black soldiers’ experiences were dictated by the vagaries and whims of officers, bureaucratic snafus, and the constant transfers of commanders. Whites in the Army of the James reported similar deprivations and conditions that invited sickness. They too felt the hunger that resulted from weak supply lines to the front. In other words, white soldiers suffered a great deal due to ineptitude and the exigencies of war. This casts light on possible motives behind why white officers stole the food of their black subordinates. See: Longacre,“The Army of the James, 1863-1865: A Military, Political, and Social History," pp. 154-55.
Endnote 7) Marcus Manley, a regimental surgeon under Cole, seemed to take seriously his responsibility over black soldiers. During the trial, though, prosecutors ridiculed him for being a stone-cutter rather than a skilled physician. For more on second-rate care, see: Margaret Humphreys, Intensely Human; Richard M. Reid, ed., Practicing Medicine in a Black Regiment: The Civil War Diary of Burt G. Wilder, 55th Massachusetts (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010). Wilder (in Reid's book) trained in anatomy and exhibited genuine concern about his lack of training. Yet, though he spent considerable time reading medical texts, he spent much of his time collecting animal specimens and trying to invent a way to harvest the webs of spiders.
Endnote 8) At least one other physician thoroughly documented similar deteriorating conditions in the camps and hospitals. All official reports should be taken with a grain of salt as they often reflected what an officer wanted superiors to think of his leadership and execution of orders; yet it is striking how reports about the condition of black troops vary from depictions of harmony and health to wholesale aggravation and suffering. In April of 1865, Surgeon Heichhold from the 25th Corps reported that the regimental surgeons were discharging their duties faithfully, and the command was then in “good sanitary condition.” Also, soldiers in his particular division endured a long campaign from Chaffin’s Farm to Richmond; in his three years of experience, the surgeon claimed, “I never witnessed greater powers of endurance. There is no straggling, and the men were constantly in the best of spirits.” See: OR., Series 1, Vol. 46, Part 1, pp. 1230-1231, also see a similar optimism on p. 143.
Endnote 9) What was happening to the men under and around Cole was not unique to his regiment or brigade. Over the last year of the war, the average black soldier was four times as likely to contract pneumonia than his white counterpart. He was significantly more likely to suffer from diarrhea and dysentery. And he was more likely to die from his ailments. See: Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, p. 411-414.
It appears that sometimes depression, low morale, and lack of self-care added to sickness. In the Thirtieth U.S. Colored Infantry, the arresting of certain soldiers who did not meet grooming standards led to a tense stand-off between officers and the ranks. There were threats of killing the officers who dished out the penalties. Warner, “Crossed Sabres: A History of the Fifth Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry, an African-American Regiment in the Civil War,” (PhD dissertation, Boston College, 1997), p. 412-416; Miller, The Black Civil War Soldiers of Illinois, p. 154.
Endnotes 10 & 11) See more on the controversial fall of Richmond in 11.11, here.
In short, just when Union soldiers first stepped foot into Richmond was and is a point of contention and confusion. For accounts that black troops were forced to yield at the last instant to their white counterparts, see Dallas D. Irvine, “Evacuation and Occupation,” in Journal of American Military Institute 2, no.3 (1939): pp. 76–77; Godfrey Weitzel, Richmond Occupied (Richmond: Richmond Civil War Centennial Committee, 1965), p. 10. In his work that emphasizes camaraderie and alliance between black soldiers and their white officers, Joseph Glatthaar claims that blacks entered Richmond first. Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), p. 208; For a similar account, see: Ervin L. Jordan, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), p. 292.
One of the most detailed and thorough historical accounts of the troops that entered Richmond shows that soldiers and officers from various regiments believed that their regiment had been the first. See: Trudeau, Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998), pp. 417-424.
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Endnote 12) For those who were paying close attention to the words and sentiments of the men, at the close of the war, entrusted with Butler's 25th Corps, the tragic disaster that ensues (in the coming chapters) would not have been surprising. See, 11.12, here.
Endnote 13) On retaining black soldiers in uniform: Black soldiers would soon make up half of all retained soldiers. Had remaining contractual duty been the only, or even central, logic to keeping on black soldiers, the War Department could have, perhaps, held firm on terms that would have kept nearly a half million soldiers (mostly white) into the winter of 1866-67. It was reported in the Ohio paper, The Spirit of Democracy, June 28, 1865, that: “Under the proposed arrangement, the total strength of the army will be nearly as follows: Regular infantry, 45,000; regular cavalry, 14,400: regular artillery, 12,000; colored troops, 50,000; Hancock’s corps, 30,000; Veteran Reserve Corps, 20,000. Total 177,000 men."
In other words, black soldiers in the summer of 1865 made up nearly one-third of post-war soldiers. This percentage only increased as white soldiers were mustered out at great rates by the end of 1865. Gregory Downs writes that by November, some 180,000 soldiers remained in the South, with 85,000 of them black. He also claims that most blacks were put on shorelines, and forts, away from possible trouble-- though he does show that blacks still occupied various towns. By the end of 1866, Army occupations almost totally shifted to Regular soldiers. By November 1866, the 1 million volunteer soldiers (at the end of the war) had been pared down to 11,000 volunteers, mostly black soldiers. The best work on the drawing down of the post-war Army is Greg Downs, After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015). See, especially, pp. 108-109, 152-53; Edward A. Miller, Jr., The Black Civil War Soldiers of Illinois: The Story of the Twenty-ninth U.S. Colored Infantry (Columbia, University of South Carolina Press: 1998), pp. 152-53.
Endnote 16) Reasons for shipping the black men to Texas: Cole's men ostensibly boarded ships to subdue warring Comanches in Texas, hunt down Rebel guerrillas and desperadoes who took refuge there, and to ensure that unrepentant masters freed their slaves. They would also check the spread of European imperialism by guarding the Rio Grande, from its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico to some 200 miles upriver. They were there to monitor and, if needed, crush the operations of the French-backed, Austrian Emperor, Maximilian. In other words, they were forced to Texas to ensure that the Yankee empire was extended westward.
The vision of the Republican Party -- of free soil, private property, and freedom for men to hammer out their own destinies -- would be established in the American West and protected from Maximilian's imperial ambitions, and from Indians and Rebel holdouts.
As I try to show in chapter 12, the men were destined to languish along the Mexican border, serving under General Sheridan, in his “Army of Observation.” Duty in Texas brought appalling misery, not glory. There were few engagements against Indians. Few slave-owning Rebels lived nearby. The French imperial threat soon whimpered out. And as it did, the grand assignment to defend freedom from European empire seemed to be little more than a pretext to keep black soldiers from returning to their homes in the defeated confederacy. See: Gregory Downs, After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015) pp. 25-28, 99-100; Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, pp. 440-441.
Endnote 17) On the munity and related uprisings: On one ship a regiment of ex-slaves from Maryland grew unruly. They murmured to one another that white officers had “covenanted” together to take black soldiers to Cuba and sell them into slavery. Some of them threatened to kill various black officers from another regiment on board, which was made up of mostly free blacks who were supposed accomplices from the North. But the ringleaders were quickly arrested for their threats, drunkenness, and general insubordination.
See: Isaac J. Hill, A Sketch of the 29th Regiment of Connecticut Colored Troops (Baltimore: Daughtery, Maguire & Co., 1867), esp. pp.28-29. Hill was a black orderly and reported widespread mutiny in his regiment—something be blamed on drink and gambling. He claimed that the mutineers despised him because they believed he was in on selling the men to Cuba as slaves; Also see: Alexander H. Newton, Out of the Briars: An Autobiography and Sketch of the Twenty-ninth Connecticut Volunteers (Philadelphia: AME Book Concern, 1910), pp. 69-70. Hill’s recollection was written during and right after the events occurred. Newton’s memoir, published over four decades later, draws heavily from Hill’s accounts, at times plagiarizing the original story; For an account of mere threats, and rumors that men of the 25th were going to mutiny, see: James Shaw, “Our Last Campaign and Subsequent Service in Texas,” in Personal Narratives of Events in the War of the Rebellion, Sixth Series, No. 9. (Published by the Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society of Rhode Island: Providence, 1905). Shaw bragged that his men would never mutiny (which they didn’t) and that they would help him hang any regiments who did: see especially, pp. 38-40.
Also see courts martial of soldiers from other brigades: RG 153, OO1394. William Holmes, Moses Woods, 36USCT. NARA, Washington, DC. Woods, who left on June 1st with the 36th U.S. Colored Infantry, threatened to kill his officers.
The most detailed newspaper account of the uprisings in Cole’s brigade was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer which admitted the editor’s reluctance to print the story because it did not reflect well on the general comportment of black troops. The trouble that unfolded at Hampton Roads was unusual, the paper assured its readers, and to report on it ran the danger of giving “food for the prejudice” against arming black soldiers. For a detailed report of the mutiny, see the report of the Philadelphia Inquirer, copied in the New York Times, June 16, 1865. The Times reported that the white officers felt indignant after the rebellion; but it also depicted the ships as unusually comfortable and roomy and, contrary to what is documented in other medical sources, that the soldiers were furnished with the “best and freshest rations for the use of the troops.” Other sources make such claims appear to be totally false. A week or so after the first publication, other papers, north and south, began reprinting the story.
Endnote 19) What fully transpired at and on the ships over the two-day period is impossible to know given the laconic nature of ensuing court martial testimonies. A handful of ringleaders were singled out and summarily convicted — most of them offering no final statement. See various courts-martial in Record Group 153: William Carter, Robert Allen, William Respers, MM 3144; John Carr, John Burkley, Henry Washington, Jacob Payne, Edward Spencer, James Linger, Henry Wilson, George Newton, William Holmes, Spencer Edwards, MM 1394; Cornelius Robertson OO 1395; James Linier, OO 1394, all at NARA. Washington DC.
Endnote 23) The correspondent from the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the Meteor remained at sea, and that it was the Delaware, a smaller boat, that arrived from City Point the next morning—when four companies of men were marched off and disarmed as they wept and groaned. Frederick Browne claims that we returned to the shore with the angry men on the Meteor. See: Frederick W. Browne, My Service in the U.S. Colored Cavalry: A Paper Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion, March 4, 1908 ([Cincinnati?]: n.p., 1908), p.11.
Officer Browne (who on the riverboat had been threatened at gunpoint by the soldiers) said that the troops were immediately marched back onto the ship. There is too much evidence, though, that they first met with family and kin.
A rabidly anti-black paper, The Spirit of Democracy, reported on June 28, 1865 that one of the regiments in Cole’s brigade “took possession” of one of the vessels and the next morning “went on shore armed” and rioted throughout the town. It’s unclear what really happened and when. But there is evidence in the national military archives that many of Cole’s men melted into the throngs on the wharf, many of them deserting.
There is also evidence that the non-commissioned black officers experienced the brunt of the anger as they were caught between executing white officers’ commands and loyalties to fellow black soldiers. The non-commissioned officers tended to be free blacks before the war started. In one instance, private Gordon Alexander threatened to cut his sergeant’s (Richard Johnson’s) guts out when the latter commanded Alexander to load rations onto the ship.