Part 11 (1/2)

The taste with which the negro soldiers arranged their quarters often prompted officers of white regiments to borrow a detail to clean and beautify the quarters of their commands. An occurrence of this kind came very near causing trouble on Morris Island, S.C. The matter was brought to the commanding General's attention and he immediately issued this order:

DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH, HEADQUARTERS IN THE FIELD.

GENERAL ORDERS, _Morris Island, S.C._, Sept. 17th, 1863.

No. 77.

1. It has come to the knowledge of the Brig. Gen. Commanding that detachments of colored troops, detailed for fatigue duty, have been employed in one instance at least, to prepare camps and perform menial duty for white troops. Such use of these details is unauthorized and improper, and is hereafter expressly prohibited. Commanding Officers of colored regiments are directed to report promptly, to the Headquarters, any violations of this order which may come to their knowledge.

BY ORDER OF GEN. Q. A. GILLMORE,

OFFICIAL: ED. W. SMITH, _a.s.st. Adjt. Gen'l._

_ISRAEL Z. SEALEY, Capt. 47th N.Y. Vols., Act. a.s.st. Adjt. General._

The Southern troops generally made no objection to cleaning the quarters of their white allies, but when a detail from the 54th Ma.s.s. Reg't., on its way to the front, was re-detailed for that purpose, they refused to obey. The detail was placed under arrest. When this information reached the regiment it was only by releasing the prisoners that a turbulent spirit was quieted. There were about ten thousand negro troops in and about Morris Island at that time, and they quickly sneezed at the 54th's snuff. The negro barbers in this department had been refusing to shave and to cut the hair of negro soldiers in common with the whites.

Corporal Kelley of the 54th Ma.s.s. Regiment, who had been refused a shave at a shop located near one of the brigade Headquarters, went there one evening accompanied by a number of the members of Company C. The men gathered around the barber's place of business, which rested upon posts a little up from the ground; the negro barbers were seated in their chairs resting from their labors and listening to the concert, which it was customary for a band to give each evening. As the last strains of music were being delivered, one side of the barber shop was lifted high and then suddenly dropped; it came down with a crash making a wreck of the building and its contents, except the barbers, who escaped unhurt, but who never made their appearance again. The episode resulted in the issuing of an order forbidding discrimination on account of color.

The Was.h.i.+ngton authorities established recruiting stations throughout the South. Of the difficulties under which recruiting officers labored some idea may be formed by reading the following, written by the historian of the 7th Regiment:

”The position of recruiting officer for colored troops was by no means a sinecure; on the contrary, it was attended with hards.h.i.+ps, annoyances and difficulties without number.

Moving about from place to place; often on scant rations, and always without transportation, save what could be pressed into service; sleeping in barns, out-houses, public buildings,--wherever shelter could be found, and meeting from the people everywhere opposition and dislike. To have been an officer of colored troops was of itself sufficient to ostracize, and when, in addition, one had to take from them their slaves, dislike became absolute hatred. There were, of course, exceptions, and doubtless every officer engaged on this disagreeable duty can bear testimony to receiving at times a hospitality as generous as it was unexpected, even from people whom duty compelled them to despoil. But this was always from ”_union men_,” for it must be confessed that a large proportion of the property-holders on both the eastern and western sh.o.r.es of the Chesapeake were as deeply in sympathy with the rebellion as their brethren over the Virginia border.

”Perhaps the most disagreeable feature of this recruiting duty was that Gen. Birney (Supt. of recruiting of negro troops in Maryland) seldom saw fit to give his subordinates anything but _verbal_ instructions. Officers were ordered to open recruiting stations; to raid through the country, carrying off slaves from under the eyes of their masters; to press horses for their own use and that of their men, and teams and vehicles for purposes of transportation; to take forage when needed; to occupy buildings and appropriate fuel; in short, to do a hundred things they had really no legal right to do, and had they been called upon, as was likely to happen at any time, for the authority under which they were acting, they would have had nothing to show but their commissions; and if, in carrying out these verbal instructions from their chief, they had become involved in serious difficulty, they had little reason to suppose that they would be sustained by him.

”When it is remembered that slavery was at that time still a recognized inst.i.tution, and that the duty of a recruiting officer often required him to literally strip a plantation of its field hands, and that, too, at a time of the year when the crops were being gathered, it is perhaps to be wondered that the bitter feelings of the slave-owners did not often find vent in open resistence and actual violence.

That this delicate and disagreeable duty was performed in a manner to avoid serious difficulty certainly speaks well for the prudence and good judgment of the officers and men engaged in it.

”The usual method of proceeding was, upon reaching a designated point, to occupy the most desirable public building, dwelling-house, warehouse, or barn found vacant, and with this as a rendezvous, small parties were sent into the surrounding country, visiting each plantation within a radius of twenty or thirty miles. The parties, sometimes under charge of an officer, usually consisted of a non-commissioned officer and ten or twelve men.

”In these journeys through the country the recruiting officer often met with strange experiences. Recruits were taken wherever found, and as their earthly possessions usually consisted of but what they wore upon their backs, they required no time to settle their affairs. The laborer in the field would throw down his hoe or quit his plow and march away with the guard, leaving his late owner looking after him in speechless amazement. On one occasion the writer met a planter on the road, followed by two of his slaves, each driving a loaded wagon. The usual questions were asked and the whilom slaves joined the recruiting party, leaving their teams and late master standing in the highway. At another time a negro was met with a horse and wagon. Having expressed his desire to ”'list,” he turned his horse's head toward home, and marched away in the opposite direction.

”On one occasion the writer visited a large plantation near Capeville, Va., and calling upon the proprietor asked him to call in his slaves. He complied without a word, and when they came and were asked if they wished to enlist, replied that they did, and fell into the ranks with the guard. As they started away the old man turned to me, and with tears in his eyes, said, ”Will you take them all? Here I am, an old man; I cannot work; my crops are ungathered; my negroes have all enlisted or run away, and what am I to do?” A hard question, truly. Another officer was called upon by a gentleman with this question, ”You have taken all my able-bodied men for soldiers, the others have run away, and only the women and children are left;--what do you propose to do with them?” Another hard question.

”At another time, when the _Balloon_ was lying at the mouth of the Pocomoke, accompanied by Lieut. Brown and with a boat's crew, we pulled up the river to the plantation of a Mrs. D., a noted rebel sympathizer. We were met, as we expected, with the most violent abuse from the fair proprietoress, which was redoubled when three of her best slaves, each of whom had probably been worth a couple of thousand dollars in _ante-bellum_ days, took their bundles and marched off to the boat. We bade the lady farewell, and pushed off amid the shouts and screams of a score of negro women and children, and the tears and execrations of the widow.

”To ill.u.s.trate the unreasonable orders Gen. Birney was sometimes in the habit of giving to officers engaged under him on recruiting service, the writer well remembers being placed by him, at Pungoteague, Va., in charge of some 200 recruits he had forcibly taken from an officer recruiting under Col. Nelson's orders, and receiving from him (Gen.

Birney) the most positive orders under no circ.u.mstances to allow Col. Nelson to get possession of them,--Col. Nelson's steamer was hourly expected--and that I should be held personally responsible that they were put on board his own steamer, and this when I had neither men nor muskets to enforce the order. Fortunately (for myself) Gen. Birney's steamer arrived first and the men were safely put on board.

Some days later, Lieut. Brown, who was then in charge of the same station, had a squad of recruits taken from him by Col.

Nelson, in retaliation.

”Many a hap-hazard journey was undertaken in search of recruits and recruiting stations. On one occasion an officer was ordered by Gen. Birney to take station at a town(?) not many miles from Port Tobacco, on the Potomac. After two days' careful search he discovered that the town he was in search of had been a post-office twenty years before, but then consisted of one house, uninhabited and uninhabitable, with not another within the circuit of five miles.”

When the Government decided to arm the negroes and ordered the organization of a hundred regiments, it was with great difficulty the equipment department met the requisitions. It necessitated a departure from the accustomed uniform material for volunteers, and helped to arouse the animosity of the white troops. Instead of the coa.r.s.e material issued at first, the Phalanx was clothed in a fine blue-black dress coat for the infantry, and a superb dark blue jacket for the artillery and cavalry, all neatly trimmed with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and white, red and yellow cord, representing the arm of service; heavy sky blue pantaloons, and a flannel cap, or high crown black felt hat or _chapeau_ with a black feather looped upon the right side and fastened with a bra.s.s eagle. For the infantry and for the cavalry two swords crossed; for the artillery two cannons on the front of the _chapeau_ crossed, with the letters of the company, and number of the regiment to which the soldier belonged.

On the caps these insignias were worn on the top of the crown. The uniform of the Phalanx put the threadbare clothes of the white veterans in sad contrast, and was the cause of many a black soldier being badly treated by his white comrades.[18]

At the outbreak of the Rebellion, the pay of soldiers (volunteers) was the same as soldiers of the regular army, by law, $13 per month. The soldiers of the Phalanx enlisted under the same law and regulations as did the white volunteers, as to pay and term of service, but the Secretary of War, after a few regiments were in the field, decided, and so ordered, that negro troops should be paid ten dollars per month. The instructions given to General Saxton on the 25th day of August, 1862, had stated that the pay would be the same as that of the other troops: