Chapter 7: Tears for Uncle Tom

Supplement to Endnotes

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Endnote 5) Refugees built a village on the property owned by Henry A. Wise, the former governor of Virginia who signed the death warrant for John Brown. Butler also established “agricultural villages” and “mechanics’ villages,” where he hoped black men would assume the role of free laborers and future heads of houses.

 

Endnote 7) On Ebay, I found an auction for a pair of similar, finely embroidered gloves, worn by one of Cole’s white subordinates in the 3rd NY Cavalry, Corporal William C. Barber.. The gloves were auctioned off by a collector in Newbern, N.C. (Pictures and sale listing in author’s possession. I am looking for the copy of the Ebay auction to post here. Stay tuned.) The image below captures the contempt felt toward black Americans who tried to access the markers of middle-class refinement. Standing in a photography gallery, dressed in fine attire, leaning against a fluted column where his top hat rests -- with a prop table with books laid out -- the gentleman says: “Now, da las' man that took my Fortagraph, he took me too dark; now I wants you should be very 'kurful bout dat."​​

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Endnote 9) For many black soldiers, literacy was more crucial than ever. It gave them the ability to write and read letters to and from their family and kin, and report abuses to distant commanding officers by composing protest letters, including letters to the War Department. Literacy allowed them to scour newspapers and keep abreast of the army’s fortunes, understand for themselves the specifics of their furlough passes, and assess the legitimacy of the actions and claims of their superiors by comparing them to regimental orders and other published codes of conduct.

      In the Union army, many of the black soldiers received at least rudimentary lessons from officers or teachers from the U.S. Christian Commission. And thanks in part to Butler, the northern American Missionary Association directed much of its resources toward school building and education for refugees in the Hampton and Fort Monroe area. See: Robert Engs, Freedom's First Generation: Black Hampton, Virginia, 1861-1890 (Fordham University Press, 2004), pp. 28-29.

 

Endnote 11) In February of 1864, Congressman Cornelius Cole of California (George’s older brother) read a large portion of this letter during a speech encouraging the further arming of slaves. This was doubtless a treasured moment for George as his words were used by Cornelius to challenge Abraham Lincoln to move towards a more aggressive war. But Cornelius left out some of the more objectionable portions, like those about the soldiers’ spending habits and how they “all look the same.” The congressman also took the liberty of polishing the prose and rearranging some of the sentences. Cornelius made sure to emphasize the black soldiers’ ability to work on the cheap while, for some reason, leaving out the part about them reading voraciously. Perhaps the politician was playing to the dual fear that freedmen would not work or that they would eventually elevate themselves above drudge labor and compete for white men’s jobs through education. Compare the texts: Cornelius Cole, Speech of Hon. Cornelius Cole, of California, on Arming the Slaves, Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 18, 1864 (S.L.: , 1864), 11.; George W. Cole to Cornelius Cole, February 15 and 16, 1864, Cole Family Papers, Collection 217, Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

 

Endnote 12) He and his comrade tracked down the tent of the newly anointed colonel, Jeptha Garrard, a comrade who, according to Cole, had used “political assistance” from Treasury Secretary Chase to cut in line for promotions. (Chase, like Butler, had his own designs for taking the presidency.) Dollard and his war “chum” brought a recommendation in hand from their own Lieutenant Colonel, assuring Garrard that the two young officers were “deserving men.” Garrard snubbed them. See: Letter of recommendation from Lieutenant Chambers to Major Jeptha Garrard, November 22, 1863. Robert Dollard Papers, South Dakota State Archives; letter about Garrard, George Cole to Cornelius (undated), UCLA box 15, folder 3.

 

Endnote 17) On Robert Dollard's early war and various ugly scenes of racial animosity, see 7.17 here.

     

Endnote 20) One Indiana colonel complained about General Buell’s soldiers lacking scruples in taking property, and that “some of the regiments seem to have as many servants as soldiers.” This same officer, right before assuring his wife that he was well known in the ranks for “preaching and practicing abolition,” wrote, “I have the promise of a Negro that he will run off from his master tomorrow night and come and attend me as a servant. He is thirty one years old and will be a faithful servant.” See: A.T. Volwiler, ed., “Letters from a Civil War officer,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol. XIV, No. 4, March, 1928, pp. 508-09.     

 

Endnote 22) Perhaps out of pity, or defensive of what the pelting meant, Dollard allowed his “boy” to sleep beside him. In the middle of the night Dollard awoke with a “ponderous” leg thrown upon his body for which he promptly rebuked his bedfellow. If Uncle Tom’s Cabin did not prepare Dollard for this, Melville’s Moby Dick has a strangely similar scene, in which, Ishmael awakes in the same predicament with the “savage” Queequeg’s leg thrown over him. He claimed that his servant was infested with “graybacks” (lice), and soon pawned him off to his commander. See: Dollard, Recollections, pp.80-1.

 

Endnote 23) With only a handful of exceptions during the war Black Americans could not receive a commission for promotion. This means that no black soldier could obtain a promotion above sergeant. In the USCT (United States Colored Troops), the non-commissioned officers were black. Non-commissioned officers received the same pay as the rank and file. Therefore, when discussing the black army any mention of Corporal, Orderly, or Sergeant means the person in question was not considered white. By the same token, it should be assumed that any Lieutenant, Captain, Major and General was deemed white. Because of this hard-and-fast division between non-commissioned officers and all higher ranks -- along racial lines -- the actual border between blackness and whiteness was the as that between the ranks of Sergeant and Lieutenant. Penalized Corporals and Sergeants could be “reduced” to the ranks, but guilty white officers would be forced to leave the black army as they could not be reduced to the status of private or non-commissioned officer within a black regiment.       

 

Endnote 25) Stealing food and systematic violence were not unique to Cole’s regiment, to be sure. For other examples, see: Howard C. Westwood, “The Cause and Consequence of a Union Black Soldier's Mutiny and Execution," Civil War History 31, no. 3 (1985), 222-36.; Ira Berlin and Leslie S. Rowland, Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era (New York: New Press, 1997), 58.

 

Endnote 26) In his court martial, something I will address later in the narrative, Fox would claim that the black men in the regiment were largely free southern men, and thus prideful and impossible to command.