University of Virginia Library

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR.

ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF OUR FIRST BLACK REGIMENT.—HOW
IT WAS STARTED WITHOUT AUTHORITY
OR ORDER.

1. CHAPTER I.

Black troops are now an established success,
and hereafter—while the race can furnish enough
able-bodied males—the probability would seem
that one-half the permanent naval and military
forces of the United States will be drawn from this
material, under the guidance and control of white
officers. To-day there is much competition among
the field and staff officers of our white volunteers
—more especially in those regiments about being
disbanded—to obtain commissions of like or even
lower grade in the colored regiments of Uncle
Sam. General Casey's board of examination cannot
keep in session long enough, nor dismiss incompetent
aspirants quick enough, to keep down
the vast throngs of veterans, with and without
shoulder-straps, who are now seeking various
grades of command in the colored brigades of the
Union.

Over this result all intelligent men will rejoice

—the privilege of being either killed or wounded
in battle, or stricken down by the disease, toils,
and privations incident to the life of a marching
soldier, not belonging to that class of prerogatives
for the exclusive enjoyment of which men of
sense, and with higher careers open to them, will
long contend.

Looking back, however, but a few years to the
organization of the first regiment of black troops
in the department of the South—what a change
in public opinion are we compelled to recognise!
In sober verity, War is not only the sternest, but
the quickest, of all teachers; and contrasting the
Then and Now of our negro regiments, as we
propose to do in this sketch, the contrast will forcibly
recall Galileo's obdurate assertion that “the
world still moves.”

Be it known, then, that the first regiment of
black troops raised in our recent war, was raised
in the spring of 1862 by the commanding general
of the department of the South, of his own
motion, and without any direct authority of law,
order, or even sanction from the President, the
Secretary of War, or our Houses of Congress. It
was done by General Hunter as “a military
necessity” under very peculiar circumstances, to
be detailed hereafter; and, although repudiated
at first by the Government—as were so many
other measures originated in the same quarter—

it was finally adopted as the settled policy of the
country and of our military system; as have likewise
since been adopted all the other original
measures for which this officer, at the time of
their first announcement, was made to suffer both
official rebuke and the violently vituperative
denunciation of more than one-half the Northern
press.

In the spring of 1862, General Hunter, finding
himself with less than eleven thousand men under
his command, and charged with the duty of holding
the whole tortuous and broken sea-coast of
Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, had applied
often, and in vain, to the authorities at Washington
for reinforcements. All the troops that could
be gathered in the North were less than sufficient
for the continuous drain of General McClellan's
great operations against the enemy's capital; and
the reiterated answer of the War Department
was: “You must get along as best you can. Not
a man from the North can be spared.”

On the mainland of the three States nominally
forming the Department of the South, the flag of
the Union had no permanent foothold, save at
Fernandina, St. Augustine, and some few unimportant
points along the Florida coast. It was on
the Sea-islands of Georgia and South Carolina
that our troops were stationed, and continually
engaged in fortifying—the enemy being everywhere

visible, and in force, across the narrow
creeks dividing us from the mainland; and
mutual raids—they across to our islands, and we
back to their mainland, and up their creeks, with
a few gunboats to help us—being the order of the
day: yea, and yet oftener, of the night.

No reinforcements to be had from the North;
vast fatigue duties in throwing up earthworks
imposed on our insufficient garrisons; the enemy
continually increasing both in insolence and numbers;
our only success the capture of Fort
Pulaski, sealing up Savannah; and this victory
off-set, if not fully counterbalanced, by many
minor gains of the enemy;—this was about the
condition of affairs as seen from the headquarters
fronting Port Royal bay, when General Hunter
one fine morning, with twirling glasses, puckered
lips, and dilated nostrils—(he had just received
another “don't-bother-us-for-reinforcements” dispatch
from Washington)—announced his intention
of “forming negro regiments,” and compelling
“every able-bodied black man in the department
to fight for the freedom which could not but
be the issue of our war.”

This resolution being taken, was immediately
acted upon with vigor, the General causing all the
necessary orders to be issued, and taking upon
himself, as his private burden, the responsibility
for all the irregular issues of arms, clothing,

equipments, and rations involved in collecting and
organizing the first experimental negro regiment.
The men he intended to pay, at first, by placing
them as laborers on the pay-rolls of the chief
quartermaster; but it was his hope that the
obvious necessity and wisdom of the measure he
had thus presumed to adopt without authority,
would secure for it the immediate approval of the
higher authorities, and the necessary orders to
cover the required pay and supply-issues of the
force he had in contemplation. If his course
should be indorsed by the War Department, well
and good; if it were not so indorsed, why he had
enough property of his own to pay back to the
Government all he was irregularly expending in
this experiment.

But now, on the very threshold of this novel
enterprise, came the first—and it was not a trivial
—difficulty. Where could experienced officers be
found for such an organization? “What! command
niggers!” was the reply—if possible more
amazed than scornful—of nearly every competent
young lieutenant or captain of volunteers to whom
the suggestion of commanding this class of
troops was made. “Never mind,” said Hunter,
when this trouble was brought to his notice; “the
fools or bigots who refuse are enough punished by
their refusal. Before two years they will be competing
eagerly for the commissions they now reject.”

Straightway there was issued a circular to all
commanding officers in the department, directing
them to announce to the non-commissioned officers
and men of their respective commands that commissions
in the “South Carolina Regiments of
Colored Infantry,” would be given to all deserving
and reputable sergeants, corporals, and men
who would appear at department headquarters,
and prove able to pass an examination in the
manual and tacties before a Board of Examiners,
which was organized in a general order of concurrent
date. Capt. Arthur M. Kinzie, of Chicago,
aide-de-camp—now of Hancock's Veteran
Reserve Corps—was detailed as Colonel of the
regiment, giving place, subsequently, in consequence
of injured health, to the present Brig.
Gen. James D. Fessenden, then a captain in the
Berdan Sharpshooters, though detailed as acting
aide-de-camp on Gen. Hunter's staff. Captain
Kinzie, we may add, was General Hunter's
nephew, and his appointment as Colonel was made
partly on the grounds of superior fitness; and
partly to prove—so violent was then the prejudice
against negro troops—that the Commanding General
asked nothing of others which he was not
willing that one of his own flesh and blood should
be engaged in.

The work was now fairly in progress, but the
barriers of prejudice were not to be lightly overthrown.

Non-commissioned officers and men of
the right stamp, and able to pass the examination
requisite, were scarce articles. Few had the hardihood
or moral courage to face the screaming, riotous
ridicule of their late associates in the white
regiments. We remember one very striking
instance in point, which we shall give as a sample
of the whole.

Our friend Mr. Charles F. Briggs, of this city,
so well known in literary circles, had a nephew
enlisted in that excellent regiment the 48th New
York, then garrisoning Fort Pulaski and the
works on Tybee Island. This youngster had
raised himself by gallantry and good conduct to
be a non-commissioned officer; and Mr. Briggs
was anxious that he should be commissioned,
according to his capacities, in the colored troops
then being raised. The lad was sent for, passed
his examination with credit, and was immediately
offered a first-lieutenancy, with the promise of
being made captain when his company should be
filled up to the required standard—probably within
ten days. The inchoate first-lieutenant was in
ecstasies; a gentleman by birth and education, he
longed for the shoulder-straps. He appeared joyously
grateful; and only wanted leave to run up
to Fort Pulaski for the purpose of collecting his
traps, taking leave of his former comrades, and
procuring his discharge-papers from Col. Barton.

Two days after that came a note to department
headquarters respectfully declining the commission!
He had been laughed and jeered out of
accepting a captaincy by his comrades; and this—
though we remember it more accurately from our
correspondence with Mr. Briggs—was but one of
many score of precisely similar cases.

At length, however, officers were found; the
ranks were filled; the men learned with uncommon
quickness, having the imitativeness of so
many monkeys apparently, and such excellent
ears for music that all evolutions seemed to come
to them by nature. At once, despite all hostile
influences, the negro regiment became one of the
lions of the South; and strangers visiting the
department, crowded out eagerly to see its evening
parades and Sunday-morning inspections. By a
strange coincidence, its camp was pitched on the
lawn and around the mansion of General Drayton,
who commanded the rebel works guarding
Hilton Head, Port Royal, and Beaufort, when the
same were first captured by the joint naval and
military operations under Admiral Du Pont and
General Timothy W. Sherman—General Drayton's
brother, Captain Drayton of our navy, having
command of one of the best vessels in the
attacking squadron; as he subsequently took part
in the first iron-clad attack on Fort Sumter.

Meantime, however, the War Department gave

no sign, and the oracles of the Adjutant-General's
office were dumb as the statue of the Sphynx.
Reports of the organization of the First South
Carolina infantry were duly forwarded to army
headquarters; but evoked no comment, either of
approval or rebuke. Letters detailing what had
been done, and the reason for doing it; asking
instructions, and to have commissions duly issued
to the officers selected; appeals that the department
paymasters should be instructed to pay these
negro troops like other soldiers; demands that the
government should either shoulder the responsibility
of sustaining the organization, or give such
orders as would absolve Gen. Hunter from the
responsibility of backing out from an experiment
which he believed to be essential to the salvation
of the country—all these appeals to Washington
proved in vain; for the oracles still remained profoundly
silent, probably waiting to see how public
opinion and the politicians would receive this daring
innovation.

At length one evening a special dispatch-steamer
ploughed her way over the bar, and a
perspiring messenger delivered into General
Hunter's hands a special despatch from the War
Department, “requiring immediate answer.” The
General was just about mounting his horse for
his usual evening ride along the picket-line, when
this portentous missive was brought under his

notice. Hastily opening it, he first looked grave,
then began to smile, and finally burst into peals
of irrepressible laughter—such as were rarely
heard from “Black David,” his old army-name.
Never was the General seen, before or since, in
such good spirits; he literally was unable to speak
from constant interruptions of laughter; and all
his Adjutant-General could gather from him was:
“That he would not part with the document in his
hand for fifty thousand dollars.”

At length he passed over the dispatch to his
Chief of Staff, who, on reading it, and re-reading
it, could find in its text but little apparent
cause for merriment. It was a grave demand
from the War Department for information in
regard to our negro regiment—the demand being
based on certain resolutions introduced by the
Hon. Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, asking for
specific information on the point in a tone clearly
not friendly. These resolutions had been adopted
by Congress; and as Hunter was without authority
for any of his actions in the case, it seemed
to his then not cheerful Adjutant-General that the
documents in his hands were the reverse of hilarious.

Still Hunter was in extravagant spirits as he
rode along, his laughter startling the squirrels in
the dense pine-woods, and every attempt that he
made to explain himself being again and again

interrupted by renewed peals of inextinguishable
mirth. “The fool,” he at length managed to say;
“that old fool has just given me the very chance
I was growing sick for! The War Department
has refused to notice my black regiment; but now,
in reply to this resolution, I can lay the matter
before the country, and force the authorities either
to adopt my negroes or to disband them.”

He then rapidly sketched out the kind of reply
he wished to have prepared; and, with the first
ten words of his explanation, the full force of the
cause he had for laughter became apparent. Never
did General and his Chief-of-staff, in a more unseemly
state of cachinnation, ride along a picket-line.
At every new phase of the subject it presented
new features of the ludicrous; and though
the reply, at this late date, may have lost much
of the drollery which then it wore, it is a seriocomic
document of as much vital importance in
the moral history of our late contest as any that
can be found in the archives under the care of
General E. D. Townsend. It was received late
Sunday evening, and was answered very late that
night, in order to be in time for the steamer Arago,
which sailed at daylight next morning—the
dispatch-steamer which brought the request for
“immediate information” having sustained some
injuries which prevented an immediate return. It
was written after midnight, we may add, in a tornado

of thunder and tempest such as has rarely
been known even on that tornado-stricken coast;
but loud as were the peals and vivid the flashes
of heaven's artillery, there were at least two persons
within the lines on Hilton Head who were
laughing far too noisily themselves to pay any
heed to external clamors. The reply thus concocted
and sent, from an uncorrected manuscript
copy now in our possession, ran as follows:

This missive was duly sent, with many misgivings
that it would not get through the routine of
the War Department in time to be laid before
Congress previous to the adjournment of that
honorable body, which was then imminent. There
were fears, too, that the Secretary of War might
think it not sufficiently respectful, or serious in
its tone; but such apprehensions proved unfounded.
The moment it was received and read in the
War Department, it was hurried down to the
House, and delivered, ore rotundo, from the Clerk's
desk.

Here its effect was magical. The Clerk could
scarcely read it with decorum; nor could half his
words be heard amidst the universal peals of
laughter in which both Democrats and Republicans
appeared to vie as to which should be the more
noisy. Mr. Wickliffe, who only entered during
the reading of the latter half of the document,
rose to his feet in a frenzy of indignation, complaining
that the reply, of which he had only
heard some portion, was an insult to the dignity
of the House, and should be severely noticed.

The more he raved and gesticulated, the more
irrepressibly did his colleagues, on both sides of
the slavery question, scream and laugh; until,
finally, the merriment reached its climax on a
motion made by some member—Schuyler Colfax,
if we remember rightly—that “as the document
appeared to please the honorable gentleman from
Kentucky so much, and as he had not heard the
whole of it, the Clerk be now requested to read
the whole again”—a motion which was instantaneously
carried amid such an uproar of universal
merriment and applause as the frescoed walls
of the chamber have seldom heard, either before
or since. It was the great joke of the day, and
coming at a moment of universal gloom in the
public mind, was seized upon by the whole loyal
press of the country as a kind of politico-military
champagne-cocktail.

This set that question at rest for ever; and not
long after, the proper authorities saw fit to authorize
the employment of “fifty thousand able-bodied
blacks for labor in the Quartermaster's
Department,” and the arming and drilling as soldiers
of five thousand of these—but for the sole
purpose of “protecting the women and children
of their fellow-laborers who might be absent from
home in the public service.”

Here we have another instance of the reluctance
with which the National Government took up this

idea of employing negroes as soldiers—a resolution,
we may add, to which they were only finally
compelled by General Hunter's disbandment of
his original regiment, and the storm of public
indignation which followed that act.

OUTLAWRY OF HUNTER AND HIS OFFICERS BY
THE REBEL GOVERNMENT—HUNTER'S SUPPRESSED
LETTER TO JEFFERSON DAVIS.

2. CHAPTER II.

Nothing could have been happier in its effect
upon the public mind than General Hunter's reply
to Mr. Wickliffe of Kentucky, given in our last.
It produced a general broad grin throughout the
country, and the advocate who can set his jury
laughing rarely loses his cause. It also strengthened
the spinal column of the Government in a
very marked degree; although not yet up to the
point of fully endorsing and accepting this daring
experiment.

Meantime the civil authorities of course got
wind of what was going on—Mr. Henry J. Windsor,
special correspondent of the New York Times
in the Department of the South, having devoted
several very graphic and widely-copied letters to
a picture of that new thing under the sun—
“Hunter's negro regiment.”

Of course the chivalry of the rebellion were

incensed beyond measure at this last Yankee outrage
upon Southern rights. Their papers teemed
with vindictive articles against the commanding
general who had dared to initiate such a novelty
—the Savannah Republican, in particular, denouncing
Hunter as “The cold-blooded abolition
miscreant who, from his headquarters at Hilton
Head, is engaged in executing the bloody and
savage behests of the imperial gorilla who, from
his throne of human bones at Washington, rules,
reigns, and riots over the destinies of the brutish
and degraded North.”

Mere newspaper abuse, however, by no means
gave content to the outraged feelings of the chivalry.
They therefore sent a formal demand to
our Government for information as to whether
General Hunter, in organizing his regiment of
emancipated slaves, had acted under the authority
of our War Department; or whether the villany
was of his own conception? If he had acted
under orders, why then terrible measures of fierce
retaliation against the whole Yankee nation were
to be adopted; but if, per contra, the iniquity
were of his own motion and without the sanction
of our Government, then the foreshadowed retribution
should be made to fall only on Hunter and
his officers.

To this demand, with its alternative of threats,
President Lincoln was in no mood to make any

definitive reply. In fact no reply at all was sent
—for, as yet, the most far-seeing political augurs
could not determine whether the bird seen in the
sky of the Southern Department would prove an
eagle or a buzzard. Public opinion was not
formed upon the subject, though rapidly forming.
There were millions who agreed with Hunter in
believing that “the black man should be made
fight for the freedom which could not but be the
issue of our war;” and then there were other millions
whose conservative notions were outraged at
the prospect of allowing black men to be killed
or maimed in company with our nobler
whites.

Failing to obtain any reply, therefore, from the
authorities of Washington, the Richmond people
determined to pour out all their vengeance on the
immediate perpetrators of this last Yankee atrocity;
and forthwith there was issued from the
rebel War Department a General Order—number
60, we believe, of the Series of 1862—reciting
that “as the government of the United States had
refused to answer whether it authorized the raising
of a black regiment by General Hunter or
not,” said General, his staff, and all officers under
his command who had directly or indirectly participated
in the unclean thing, should hereafter be
maranatha—outlaws not covered by the laws
of war; but to be executed as felons for the

crime of “inciting negro insurrections wherever
caught.”

This order reached the ears of the parties
mainly interested just as General Hunter was
called to Washington—ostensibly for consultation
on public business; but really on the motion of
certain prominent speculators in marine transportation,
with whose “big things” in Port Royal
harbor—and they were enormous—the General
had seen fit to interfere. These frauds, however,
will form a very fruitful and pregnant theme for
some future chapters. At present our business is
with the slow but certain growth in the public
mind of this idea of allowing some black men to
be killed in the late war, and not continuing to
arrogate death and mutilation by projectiles and
bayonets as an exclusive privilege for our own
beloved white race.

No sooner had Hunter been relieved from this
special duty at Washington, than he was ordered
back to the South—our Government still taking
no notice of the order of outlawry against him
issued by the rebel Secretary of War. He and
his officers were thus sent back to engage, with
extremely insufficient forces, in an enterprise of
no common difficulty, and with an agreeable sentence
of sus. per col., if captured, hanging over
their devoted heads!

“Why not suggest to Mr. Stanton, General, that

he should either demand the special revocation
of that order, or announce to the rebel War Department
that our Government has adopted your
negro-regiment policy as its own—which would
be the same thing?”

It was partly on this hint that Hunter wrote
the following letter to Jefferson Davis—a letter
subsequently suppressed and never sent, owing to
influences which the writer of this article does not
feel himself as yet at liberty to reveal—further
than to say that Mr. Stanton knew nothing of the
matter. Davis and Hunter, we may add, had
been very old and intimate friends, until divided,
some years previous to our late war, by differences
on the slavery question. Davis had for many
years been adjutant of the 1st U. S. Dragoons, of
which Hunter had been Captain Commanding;
and a relationship of very close friendship had
existed between their respective families. It was
this thorough knowledge of his man, perhaps,
which gave peculiar bitterness to Hunter's pen;
and the letter is otherwise remarkable as a prophecy,
or preördainment of that precise policy
which President Johnson has so frequently announced
and reiterated since Mr. Lincoln's death.
It ran—with some few omissions, no longer pertinent
or of public interest—as follows:

Not long after General Hunter's return to the
Department of the South, the first step towards
organizing and recognising negro troops was
taken by our Government, in a letter of instructions
directing Brigadier-General Rufus Saxton,—
then Military Governor of South Carolina, Georgia,
and Florida, within the limits of General Hunter's
command—to forthwith raise and organize fifty
thousand able-bodied blacks, for service as laborers
in the quartermaster's department; of whom
five thousand—only five thousand, mark you!—
might be armed and drilled as soldiers for the
purpose of “protecting the women and children

of their fellow-laborers who might be absent from
home in the public service.”

Here was authority given to General Saxton,
over Hunter's head, to pursue some steps farther
the experiment which Hunter—soon followed by
General Phelps, also included in the rebel order
of “outlawry”—had been the first to initiate.
The rebel order still remained in full force, and
with no protest against it on the part of our
Government; nor, to our knowledge, was any
demand from Washington ever made for its revocation
during the existence of the Confederacy.
If Hunter, therefore, or any of his officers, had
been captured in any of the campaigns of the
past two and a half years, they had the pleasant
knowledge for their comfort that every rebel
officer into whose hands they might fall, was
strictly enjoined to—not “shoot them on the
spot,” as was the order of General Dix—but to
hang them on the first tree, and hang them
quickly.

With the subsequent history of our black
troops the public is already familiar. General
Lorenzo Thomas, titular Adjutant-General of our
army, not being regarded as a very efficient
officer for that place, was permanently detailed
on various services—now exchanging prisoners,
now discussing points of military law, now organizing
black brigades down the Mississippi and

elsewhere. In fact, the main object seemed to be
to keep this General Thomas—who must not be
confounded with General George H. Thomas, one
of the true heroes of our army—away from the
Adjutant-General's office at Washington, in order
that Brigadier General E. D. Townsend—only a
Colonel until quite recently—might perform all
the laborious and crushing duties of Adjutant-General
of our army, while only signing himself
and ranking as First Assistant Adjutant-General.
If there be an officer who has done noble service
in the late war while receiving no public credit
for the same—no newspaper puffs nor public
ovations—that man is Brigadier-General E. D.
Townsend, who should long since have been made
a major-general, to rank from the first day of the
rebellion.

And now let us only add, as practical proof
that the rebels, even in their most rabid state,
were not insensible to the force of proper “reasons”—the
following anecdote:

Some officers of one of our black regiments—
Colonel Higginson's, we believe—indiscreetly rode
beyond our lines around St. Augustine in pursuit
of game—but whether feathered or female this
deponent sayeth not. Their guide proved to be
a spy, who had given notice of the intended expedition
to the enemy; and the whole party were
soon surprised and captured. The next we heard

of them, they were confined in the condemned
cells of one of the Florida State-prisons and were
to be “tried”—i.e. sentenced and executed—as
“having been engaged in inciting negro insurrections.”

We had then some wealthy young slaveholders
belonging to the first families of South Carolina
in the custody of Lieutenant-Colonel J. F.
Hall—now Brigadier-General—of this city, who
was our Provost-Marshal; and it was on this basis
General Hunter resolved to operate. “Release
my officers of black troops from your condemned
cells at once, and notify me of the fact. Until
so notified, your first family prisoners in my
hands”—the names then given—“will receive
precisely similar treatment. For each of my officers
hung, I will hang three of my prisoners who
are slaveholders.” This dose operated with
instantaneous effect, and the next letter received
from our captured officers set forth that they were
at large on parole, and treated as well as they
could wish to be in that miserable country.

We cannot better conclude this sketch, perhaps,
than by giving the brief but pregnant verses in
which our ex-orderly, Private Miles O'Reilly, late
of the Old Tenth Army Corps, gave his opinion
on this subject. They were first published in
connection with the banquet given by General
T. F. Meagher and the officers of the Irish Brigade

to the returned veterans of that organization
on the 13th of January, 1864, at Irving Hall.
Of this song it may, perhaps, be said, in verity
and without vanity, that—as General Hunter's
letter to Mr. Wickliffe had settled the negro-soldier
controversy in its official and Congressional
form—so did the publication and immediate popular
adoption of these verses conclude all argument
upon this matter in the mind of the general public.
Its common sense, with a dash of drollery,
at once won over the Irish, who had been the
bitterest opponents of the measure, to become its
friends; and from that hour to this, the attacks
upon the experiment of our negro soldiery have
been so few and far between that, indeed, they
may be said to have ceased altogether. It ran as
follows, and appeared in the Herald the morning
after the banquet, as portion of the report of the
speeches and festivities:

In regard to Hunter's reply to Mr. Wickliffe,
we shall only add this anecdote, told us one day

by that brilliant gentleman and scholar, the Hon.
Sun-Set Cox of Ohio:

“I tell you, that letter from Hunter spoiled the
prettiest speech I had ever thought of making. I
had been delighted with Wickliffe's motion, and
thought the reply to it would furnish us first-rate
Democratic thunder for the next election. I
made up my mind to sail in against Hunter's
answer—no matter what it was—the moment it
came; and to be even more humorously successful
in its delivery and reception than I was in my
speech against War-Horse Gurley, of Ohio, which
you have just been complimenting. Well, you
see, man proposes, but Providence orders otherwise.
When the Clerk announced the receipt of
the answer, and that he was about to read it, I
caught the Speaker's eye and was booked for the
first speech against your negro experiment. The
first sentence, being formal and official, was very
well; but at the second, the House began to grin;
and at the third, not a man on the floor—except
Father Wickliffe, of Kentucky, perhaps—who
was not convulsed with laughter. Even my own
risibles, I found to be affected; and before the
document was concluded, I motioned the Speaker
that he might give the floor to whom he pleased,
as my desire to distinguish myself in that particular
tilt was over.”