by Noel Rae
Fort Wagner also demonstrated the attitude of many white officers toward black soldiers. In testimony before a War Department commission, the journalist Nathaniel Paige reported that when planning the attack General Gilmore, “who ridiculed negro troops,” asked his subordinate, General Seymour, how he intended to organize his command. “Gen. Seymour answered, ‘Well, I guess we will let [Brigadier] Strong lead and put those d—d niggers from Massachusetts in the advance; we may as well get rid of them one time as another.’ General Gilmore laughed, but ordered the movement to take place.”
Brigadier Strong was among those killed in the battle. However, according to Paige, “Gen. Seymour was not in the advance at Fort Wagner, but early in the action received a very slight wound in his heel, not drawing blood, immediately after which he retired to the south end of Morris Island, and remained there all night. Next morning … he charged the failure of the assault upon the d—d negroes from Massachusetts.” In the Florida campaign that followed Fort Wagner, Seymour more than once withdrew white troops from the line without informing the 54th, leaving it dangerously exposed. He was also known for ordering the summary execution—later commuted—of black soldiers for such offenses as stealing a chicken or accidentally firing a musket.
Another such officer was General Dwight, whose “antecedents with regard to the rights of the Negro and his ability to fight were not of the most favorable character.” In spite of this, Dwight was put in command of the colored brigade for the battle at Port Hudson, a Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi. It was fought on May 26, 1863, a day that was as hot “as an overheated oven.” One of the regiments was the First Louisiana, formerly known as the Native Guard, a long-established militia unit based in New Orleans with officers drawn from that city’s free black elite. As was expected of such a unit, their colonel “petitioned their commander to allow them to occupy the post of danger in the battle,” a request General Dwight was only too willing to grant.
“At last the welcome word was given, and our men started. The enemy opened a blistering fire of shell, canister, grape and musketry. The first shell thrown by the enemy killed and wounded a number of the blacks; but on they went. ‘Charge!’ was the word. At every pace the column was thinned by the falling dead and wounded. The blacks closed up steadily as their comrades fell, and advanced within fifty paces of where the rebels were working a masked battery, situated on a bluff where the guns could sweep the whole field over which the troops must charge … No matter how gallantly the men behaved, no matter how bravely they were led, it was not in the course of things that this gallant brigade should take these works by charge. Yet charge after charge was ordered and carried out under all these disasters with Spartan firmness. Six charges in all were made. Col. Nelson reported to Gen. Dwight the fearful odds he had to contend with. Says Gen. Dwight in reply, ‘Tell Col. Nelson I shall consider that he has accomplished nothing unless he takes those guns.’ Humanity will never forgive Gen. Dwight for this last order; for he certainly saw that he was only throwing away the lives of his men. But what were his men? ‘Only niggers.’” (Throughout the battle, Dwight remained well to the rear, drinking heavily.)
According to the New York Herald, “The First Regiment Louisiana Native Guard, Col. Nelson, were in this charge. They went on the advance, and, when they came out, six hundred out of nine hundred men could not be accounted for. It is said on every side that they fought with the desperation of tigers. One negro was observed with a rebel soldier in his grasp, tearing the flesh from his face with his teeth, other weapons having failed him. There are other incidents connected with the conduct of this regiment that have raised them very much in my opinion as soldiers. After firing one volley they did not deign to load again, but went in with bayonets; and wherever they had a chance, it was all up with the rebels.”
And there was this from the New-York Tribune: “Nobly done, First Regiment of Louisiana Native Guards! Though you failed to carry the rebel works against overwhelming numbers, you did not charge and fight and fall in vain. That heap of six hundred corpses lying there stark and grim and silent before and within the rebel works is a better proclamation of freedom than even President Lincoln’s. A race ready to die thus was never yet retained in bondage, and never can be.”
A final word from William Wells Brown, who wrote much of the above account: “At the surrender of Port Hudson, not a single colored man could be found alive, although thirty-five were known to have been taken prisoners during the siege. All had been murdered.”
Throughout the war there were many other incidents of black prisoners being murdered after they had surrendered. In July, 1864, Sergeant Samuel Johnson, of the 2nd U.S. Colored Cavalry, had been on a recruiting mission to Plymouth, N. C. when it was suddenly attacked and captured by rebel forces. “When I found that the city was being surrendered I pulled off my uniform and found a suit of citizen’s clothes which I put on, and when captured I was supposed and believed by the Rebels to be a citizen.” This subterfuge saved his life. “All the Negroes found in blue uniform or with any outward marks of a Union soldier upon him was killed. I saw some taken into the woods and hung. Others I saw stripped of all their clothing, and they stood upon the bank of the river with their faces riverwards and then they were shot. Still others were killed by having their brains beaten out by the butt end of the muskets in the hands of the Rebels. All were not killed the day of the capture. Those that were not were placed in a room with their officers, they (the officers) having previously been dragged through the town with ropes around their necks, where they were kept confined until the following morning when the remainder of the black soldiers were killed.”
The most notorious of such incidents took place at Fort Pillow, an earthwork fortification on a bluff above the Mississippi, fifty miles north of Memphis. Its garrison was composed of some 300 white troops and the same number of black soldiers, most of them former slaves. A Union gunboat was moored in the river at the foot of the bluff, and at the time of the attack other gunboats were on their way bringing reinforcements.
Early in April, 1864, Fort Pillow became the target of the Confederate cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest, former slave trader and future founder of the Ku Klux Klan. After surrounding the fort with a force that outnumbered the garrison by more than two to one, Forrest summoned it to surrender. While Major Bradford, the fort’s commander, decided on his response, there was a truce during which troops were supposed to hold their fire and keep their positions; instead, the rebels crept forward on all sides until they were at the foot of the fort’s embankments. As soon as Major Bradford rejected the summons, “the rebels made a rush from the positions they had so treacherously gained, and obtained possession of the fort, raising the cry ‘No quarter!’ But little opportunity was allowed for resistance. Our troops, white and black, threw down their arms and sought to escape by running down the steep bluff near the fort and secreting themselves behind trees and logs, in the bushes, and under the brush; some even jumping into the river, leaving only their heads above the water as they crouched down under the bank. Then followed a scene of cruelty and murder without parallel in civilized warfare…” (This text is from the report of a sub-committee of the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, which held an inquiry at the site shortly after the massacre.)
“Numbers of our men were collected together in lines or groups, and deliberately shot. Some were shot while in the river, while others on the bank were shot and their bodies kicked into the water, many of them still living but unable to make exertions to save themselves from drowning. Some of the rebels stood on the top of the hill, or a short distance from its side, and called to our soldiers to come up to them, and, as they approached, shot them down in cold blood; and if their guns or pistols missed fire, forced them to stand there until they were again prepared to fire. All around were heard cries of ‘No quarter! No quarter! Kill the damned niggers! Shoot them down!’
“The huts and tents in which many of the w
ounded sought shelter were set on fire … One man was deliberately fastened down to the floor of a tent, face upwards, by means of nail driven through his clothing and into the boards under him, so that he could not possibly escape; and then the tent was set on fire. Another was nailed to the side of a building outside of the fort, and then the building was set on fire and burned. The charred remains of five or six bodies were afterwards found, all but one so disfigured and consumed by the flames that they could not be identified. These deeds of murder and cruelty closed when night came on, only to be renewed the next morning, when the demons carefully sought among the dead lying about in all directions for any other wounded yet alive, and those they found were deliberately shot.
“The rebels themselves had made a pretense of burying a great many of their victims; but they had merely thrown them, without the least regard to care or decency in the trenches and ditches about the fort, or the little hollows and ravines on the hillside, covering them but partially with earth.” When the Congressional sub-committee visited Fort Pillow, “we could still see the faces, hands and feet of men, white and black, protruding out of the ground.”
Another massacre occurred in October, 1864, when a Union force largely composed of black troops moved into a mountainous part of western Virginia with the aim of attacking Saltville and destroying the salt works there. These were defended by a Confederate force which, though smaller, had a strong tactical position up in the surrounding hills, where they were also protected by “rifle pits made of logs and stones to the height of three feet.” (This is from the official report by Union Colonel James Brisbin.) “All being in readiness the Brigade moved to the attack. The Rebels opened upon them a terrific fire but the line pressed steadily forward up the steep side of the mountain until they found themselves within fifty yards of the enemy. Here Col. Wade ordered his force to charge, and the Negroes rushed upon the works with a yell, and after a desperate charge carried the entire line, killing and wounding a large number of the enemy and capturing some prisoners. There were four hundred black soldiers engaged in the battle” and “out of the four hundred engaged, one hundred and fourteen men and four officers fell killed or wounded. Of this fight I can only say that men could not have behaved more bravely. I have seen white troops fight in twenty-seven battles and I never saw any fight better.” At the end of the day, however, the Union troops were in a weak position and had to be withdrawn.
Colonel Brisbin also mentioned in his report that on their march up to the front “the colored soldiers as well as their white officers were made the subject of much ridicule and many insulting remarks by the white troops, and in some instances petty outrages such as the pulling off the caps of the colored soldiers, stealing their horses, etc, was practiced by the white soldiers. These insults, as well as the jeers and taunts that they would not fight, were borne by the colored soldiers patiently—in no instance did I hear colored soldiers make any reply to insulting language.” After the battle, “on the return of the forces, those who had scoffed at the colored troops on the march out were silent.”
The colonel also included this terse sentence: “Such of the colored troops as fell into the hands of the enemy during the battle were brutally murdered.” So too were the wounded who had been left behind on the battlefield. In his memoirs, Kentucky Cavaliers in Dixie, George Mosgrove, who served with a Confederate cavalry regiment, told what happened: “I awoke at the first faint light of the dawn and saw that, as usual, a dense fog enveloped mountain and valley. All was quiet and impenetrably dark in front. Presently I heard a shot, then another and another … It seemed to indicate that the enemy were still near our front.” Mosgrove mounted his horse and rode forward through the fog to the site of the battle, and there “the desultory firing was at once explained—the Tennesseans were killing Negroes. Dead Federals, whites and Negroes, were lying all about me. Of course, many of the Negroes had been killed in battle, but many of them had been killed after the battle, that morning. Hearing more firing in front, I cautiously rode forward and came upon a squad of Tennesseans, mad and excited to the highest degree. They were shooting every wounded Negro they could find. Hearing firing on other parts of the field, I knew that the same awful work was going on all about me. It was horrible, most horrible,” wrote Mosgrove, who “pitied them from the bottom of my heart, and would have interposed in their behalf had I not known that any effort on my part to save them would be futile.” Soon after, “Entering a little log cabin, I paused at the threshold when I saw seven or eight slightly wounded Negroes standing with their backs against the walls. I had scarcely been there a minute when a pistol-shot from the door caused me to turn and observe a boy, not more than sixteen years old, with a pistol in each hand. I stepped back, telling him to hold on until I could get out of the way. In less time than I can write it, the boy had shot every Negro in the room.”
Killing black prisoners was a matter of official policy as well as battlefield ferocity. In November, 1862, Colonel Tattnall, commander of an Alabama regiment, reported that a number of black Union troops had been taken prisoner after fighting “shoulder to shoulder with the [white] abolition soldiers.” The latter were being held prisoner, but “I have given orders to shoot, wherever & whenever captured, all Negroes found armed & acting in concert with the abolition troops.” Acknowledging this report, General Forney ordered that in future Colonel Tattnall should “hang instead of shooting any Negroes caught bearing arms”—hanging being generally considered a more ignominious way of being put to death. That same month James Seddon, the Confederate Secretary of War, after consulting with Jefferson Davis, ruled that slaves taken “in flagrant rebellion are subject to death by the laws of every slave-holding State,” and “cannot be recognized in any way as soldiers subject to the rules of war.” In some cases, instead of being executed, black prisoners were sold into slavery.
In September, 1863, not long after his regiment’s heroic assault on Fort Wagner, Corporal Gooding of the 54th Massachusetts wrote to the president:
“Your Excellency will pardon the presumption of an humble individual like myself in addressing you, but the earnest Solicitations of my Comrades in Arms beside the genuine interest felt by myself in the matter is my excuse for placing before the Executive head of the Nation our Common Grievance.
On the 6th of the last month, the Paymaster of the department informed us that, if we would receive the sum of $10 (ten dollars) per month, he would come and pay us that sum, but that on the sitting of Congress the Reg’t would, in his opinion, be allowed the other 3. He did not give us any guarantee that this would be as he hoped; certainly he had no authority for making any such guarantee.
Now the main question is, Are we Soldiers, or are we Labourers? We are fully armed and equipped, have done all the various Duties pertaining to a Soldier’s life, have conducted ourselves to the complete satisfaction of General Officers, who were, if anything, prejudiced against us but who now accord us all the encouragement and honour due us; have shared the perils and labour of Reducing the first stronghold that flaunted a Traitor Flag; and more, Mr. President. Today the Anglo-Saxon Mother, Wife, or Sister are not alone in tears for departed Sons, Husbands and Brothers. The patient, trusting Descendants of Afric’s Clime have dyed the ground with blood in defense of the Union and Democracy …
Now, your Excellency, we have done a Soldier’s Duty. Why can’t we have a Soldier’s pay?”
When he enlisted, Corporal Gooding had relied on the word of Governor Andrew of Massachusetts that the regiment would be paid at the same rate as white soldiers: $10 a month, plus a clothing allowance of $3. In promising this, Andrew had relied on the direct assurance of Secretary of War Stanton. However, Congress had passed two separate laws concerning soldiers’ pay. Under the 1862 Militia Act, so-called contrabands—slaves who had escaped to Union lines and been recruited as noncombat workers—were to be paid $10 a month, less $3 to be deducted for clothing. Under the 1863 Enrollment Act, black soldiers in combat regiments would be
paid the same as whites. This seems clear enough, but slothful bureaucrats and prejudiced lawyers managed to conclude that the 54th was covered by the first law, not the second. Considering this a humiliation, many soldiers refused to accept any pay at all. Governor Andrew tried to patch things up by getting the state legislature to vote the funds to make up the difference, but this offer was rejected with indignation. “We did not come to fight for money,” said one soldier of the 55th. “We came not only to make men of ourselves, but of our other colored brothers at home … It is the principle, the one that made us men when we enlisted.” (As to Corporal Gooding’s letter, it is not known if it ever reached the president; however, when Frederick Douglass brought the matter up with him, Lincoln replied that “the employment of colored troops at all was a great gain to the colored people—that the measure could not have been successfully adopted at the beginning of the war—that the fact that they were not to receive the same pay as white soldiers seemed a necessary concession to smooth the way to their employment at all as soldiers, but that ultimately they would receive the same.”)
Contrabands—fugitive slaves who had been recruited to serve the Union, either as soldiers or workers—posing for a photograph during the Peninsular Campaign of 1862. The picture was taken by James F. Gibson, for a while partner of the legendary Civil War photographer Matthew Brady.
In the meantime, the pay dispute led some soldiers to mutiny.
“Sgt. William Walker, of Company A, Third South-Carolina Colored troops was yesterday killed, in accordance with the sentence of a court-martial. He had declared he would no longer remain a soldier for seven dollars per month, and had brought his company to stack their arms before their captain’s tent, refusing to do duty until they should be paid thirteen dollars a month, as had been agreed when they were enlisted by Col. Saxton. He was a smart soldier and an able man … The execution took place at Jacksonville, Fla., in the presence of the regiments there in garrison. He met his death unflinchingly. Out of eleven shots first fired, but one struck him. A reserve firing party had been provided, and by these he was shot to death. The mutiny for which this man suffered death arose entirely out of the inconsistent and contradictory orders of the Paymaster and the Treasury Department at Washington.”