CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
The Seizure and Conscription of Southern Slaves
"Slave Property Subject To Be Appropriated"
Much has been made by modern revisionist historians of the fact that an estimated 186,000 Blacks fought under the United States flag against the South.(1) However, we are seldom, if ever, told the reason for this. According to the William Whiting, "All the property of rebels [is] forfeited to the treasury of the country,"(2) and "slave property [is] subject to the same liability as other property to be appropriated for war purposes."(3) Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, elaborated on this premise: "The population of African descent that cultivate the lands and perform the labor of the rebels constitute a large share of their military strength, and enable the white masters to fill the rebel armies and wage a cruel and murderous war against the people of the Northern States. By reducing the laboring strength of the rebels their military power will be reduced."(4) Consequently, the invading Northern army began to seize Southern slaves and conscript them into service to the United States, often against their will. General Orders No. 17, from the Department of the South headquarters at Hilton Head, South Carolina, stipulated:
[A]ll able-bodied male negroes between the ages of eighteen and fifty within the military lines of the Department of the South who are not, on the day of the date of this order, regularly and permanently employed in the quartermaster and commissary departments, or as the private servants of officers, within the allowance made by the Army Regulations, are hereby drafted into the military service of the United States, to serve as non-commissioned officers and soldiers in the various regiments and brigades now organized, and in process of being organized, by Brig. Gen. Rufus Saxton, specially authorized to raise such troops by orders of the War Department.(5)
After this order had failed to produce the desired results, the following amended order was issued:
In view of the necessities of the military service, the want of recruits to complete the unfilled regiments in this department, the great numbers of unemployed colored men and deserters hiding about to avoid labor or service, and in consideration of the large bounties now paid to volunteers by the Government, General Orders, No. 17, dated headquarters Department of the South, Hilton Head, S.C., March 6, 1863, is hereby amended to read as follows:
All able-bodied colored men between the ages of eighteen and fifty, within the military lines of the Department of the South, who have had an opportunity to enlist voluntarily and refused to do so, shall be drafted into the military service of the United States....
The owners or superintendents of plantations, and all other persons throughout the department not in the military service, are hereby authorized and required to arrest and deliver to the local provost-marshal of the nearest military post all deserters in their employ or loitering about their plantations, and if it be necessary for a guard to make the arrest, it shall be the duty of such person or persons knowing of the whereabouts of any deserter, or person by common reports called a deserter, to report the fact to the nearest military commander, and also to render him all assistance in his power to cause the arrest. Any person found guilty of violating this section shall be severely punished.(6)
These orders adequately account for a large majority of the Black men who bore arms against their former masters, without whom Lincoln declared that he would have to "abandon the war in three weeks."(7) In a 26 February 1864 dispatch from Huntsville, Alabama, General John A. Logan wrote that "a major of colored troops is here with his party capturing negroes, with or without their consent.... [T]hey are being conscripted."(8) On 1 September 1864, Captain Frederick Martin reported from New Berne, North Carolina, "The negroes will not go voluntarily, so I am obliged to force them.... I expect to get a large lot to-morrow."(9) To this report, General Innis N. Palmer added:
The matter of collecting the colored men for laborers has been one of some difficulty, but I hope to send up a respectable force. The matter has been fairly explained to the contrabands, and they have been treated with the utmost consideration, but they will not go willingly. Now, I take it that the state of the country needs their services, and that if they will not go willingly they must be forced to go, and I propose to take all I can find who are in no permanent employment and send them up. I am aware that this may be considered a harsh measure, but at such a time we must not stop at trifles.(10)
In the words of General Rufus A. Saxton, "Men have been seized and forced to enlist who had large families of young children dependent upon them for support and fine crops of cotton and corn nearly ready for harvest, without an opportunity of making provision for the one or securing the other." On at least one occasion, "three boys, one only fourteen years of age, were seized in a field where they were at work and sent to a regiment serving in a distant part of the department without the knowledge of their parents...."(11) It was also reported that, "On some plantations the wailing and screaming were loud and the women threw themselves in despair on the ground. On some plantations the people took to the woods and were hunted up by the soldiers.... I doubt if the recruiting service in this country has ever been attended with such scenes before."(12)
It was not uncommon for these Black regiments to be "forced to the front by a wall of bayonets, in white hands, behind them."(13) One Northern soldier is quoted as saying, "I used to be opposed to having black troops, but when I saw ten cart-loads of dead niggers carried off the field yesterday I thought it better they should be killed than I."(14) Another soldier commented that this treatment "has created a suspicion that the Government has not the interest in the negroes that it has professed, and many of them sighed yesterday for the 'old fetters' as being better than the new liberty."(15)
Some Black slaves, supposedly emancipated by Lincoln's Proclamation of 1 January 1863, even found themselves traded back to Southern planters by Northern officers in exchange for cotton. One Government document revealed:
A commission is now in session at the west with Maj. Gen. McDowell at its head, investigating the conduct of Maj. Gen. Curtis and other Republican officials, in conducting their military operations so as to secure the largest amount of cotton possible for their own private benefit. One of the richest revelations made is in reference to the trading off of negroes for cotton! The specification alleges that negro slaves had been taken from the plantations upon the pretense of giving them freedom under the President's "emancipation edict," and thus used as a substitute for coin. It has been fully proven before the investigating court. The officer charged with this lucrative speculation was Col. Hovey of Illinois, formerly the principal of the State Normal School at Bloomington.(16)
Northern Atrocities Against Southern Blacks
Because the invading Northern soldiers had been instructed to view the Southern slaves as "enemy property" to be confiscated and appropriated to the use of the United States Army, it was inevitable that the hatred these men carried in their hearts toward the people of the South would be projected upon their helpless servants. In his address to the Confederate Congress of 7 December 1863, Jefferson Davis stated:
Nor as less unrelenting warfare been waged by these pretended friends of human rights and liberties against the unfortunate negroes. Wherever the enemy have been able to gain access they have forced into the ranks of their army every able-bodied man that they could seize, and have either left the aged, the women, and the children to perish by starvation, or have gathered them into camps where they have been wasted by a frightful mortality. Without clothing or shelter, often without food, incapable without supervision of taking the most ordinary precautions against disease, these helpless dependents, accustomed to have their wants supplied by the foresight of their masters, are being rapidly exterminated wherever brought in contact with the invaders. By the Northern man, on whose deep-rooted prejudices no kindly restraining influence is exercised, they are treated with aversion and neglect. There is little hazard in predicting that in all localities where the enemy have gained a temporary foothold the negroes, who under our care increased six-fold in number since their importation into the colonies by Great Britain, will have been reduced by mortality during the war to no more than one-half their previous number.
Information on this subject is derived not only from our own observation and from the reports of the negroes who succeed in escaping from the enemy, but full confirmation is afforded by statements published in the Northern journals by humane persons engaged in making appeals to the charitable for aid in preventing the ravages of disease, exposure, and starvation among the negro women and children who are crowded into encampments.(17)
Davis' words are easily verified. Indeed, the official records of the war, published by the United States Government, are literally filled with accounts of the robbery, rape, and murder endured by Southern Blacks at the hands of their supposed "liberators." General Orders No. 27, issued on 17 August 1862 under the authority of Major-General David Hunter, stated that "numerous acts of pilfering from the negroes have taken place in the neighborhood of Beufort, committed by men wearing the uniform of the United States."(18) J.T.K. Hayward testified that Northern soldiers were "committing rapes on the negroes and such like things.... and no punishment, or none of any account, has been meted out to them."(19) In the tiny town of Athens, Alabama, Northern soldiers under the command of Colonel John B. Turchin "attempted an indecent outrage on [a] servant girl," and quartered themselves "in the negro huts for weeks, debauching the females." This account also tells of the gang-rape "on the person of a colored girl...."(20) Although Turchin was court-martialled and convicted for these crimes on 7 July 1862, he was promoted by Lincoln only a month later to the rank of Brigadier General.(21)
The following letter dated 29 December 1862 was written by a Northern chaplain and two surgeons stationed at Helena, Arkansas:
General,
The undersigned Chaplains and Surgeons of the army of the Eastern District of Arkansas would respectfully call your attention to the Statements and Suggestions following. The contrabands within our lines are experiencing hardships, oppression and neglect the removal of which calls loudly for the intervention of authority. We daily see and deplore the evil and leave it to your wisdom to devise a remedy. In a great degree the contrabands are left entirely to the mercy and rapacity of the unprincipled part of our army (excepting only the limited jurisdiction of Capt. Richmond) with no person clothed with specific authority to look after and protect them. Among the list of grievances we mention these:
Some who have been paid by individuals for cotton or for labor have been waylaid by soldiers, robbed, and in several instances fired upon, as well as robbed, and in no case that we can now recall have the plunderers been brought to justice.
The wives of some have been molested by soldiers to gratify their licentious lust, and their husbands murdered in endeavoring to defend them, and yet the guilty parties, though known, were not arrested. Some who have wives and families are required to work on the fortifications, or to unload Government stores, and receive only their meals at the public table, while their families, whatever provision is intended for them, are, as a matter of fact, left in a helpless and starving condition.
Many of the contrabands have been employed, and received in numerous instances, from officers and privates, only counterfeit money or nothing at all for their services. One man was employed as a teamster by the Government and he died in the service (the Government indebted to him nearly fifty dollars) leaving an orphan child eight years old, and there is no apparent provision made to draw the money, or to care for the orphan child. The negro hospital here has become notorious for filth, neglect, mortality and brutal whipping, so that the contrabands have lost all hope of kind treatment there, and would almost as soon go to their graves as to their hospital. These grievances reported to us by persons in whom we have confidence, and some of which we know to be true, are but a few of the many
wrongs of which they complain.
For the sake of humanity, for the sake of Christianity, for the good name of our army, for the honor of our country, cannot something be done to prevent this oppression and stop its demoralizing influences upon the soldiers themselves? Some have suggested that the matter be laid before the Department at Washington, in the hope that they will clothe an agent with authority to register all the names of the contrabands, who will have a benevolent regard for their welfare, through whom all details of fatigue and working parties shall be made, through whom rations may be drawn and money paid, and who shall be empowered to organize schools, and to make all needful regulations for the comfort and improvement of the condition of the contrabands; whose accounts shall be open at all times for inspection, and who shall make stated reports to the Department.
All which is respectfully submitted,
Samuel Sawyer
Pearl P. Ingall
J.G. Forman(22)
After the fall of Richmond, Virginia, General Grant was notified that "a number of cases of atrocious rape by these men have already occurred. Their influence on the colored population is also reported to be bad."(23) General Saxton wrote the following report to Secretary of War Stanton on 30 December 1864: "I found the prejudice of color and race here in full force, and the general feeling of the army of occupation was unfriendly to the blacks. It was manifested in various forms of personal insult and abuse, in depredations on their plantations, stealing and destroying their crops and domestic animals, and robbing them of their money.... The women were held as the legitimate prey of lust...."(24) Private John W. Haley of the Seventeenth Maine Regiment, related how he and his fellow soldiers amused themselves at the Negroes' expense: "A host of young niggers followed us to camp and soon made themselves too familiar. We bounced them up in blankets and made them butt against each other also against some pork barrels and hard-bread boxes. A couple hours worth of bouncing satisfied them. One young nigger had an arm broke and several others were more or less maltreated."(25) The Official Records also record the following communiqué from General John A. Dix: "...[T]he colored people... have been forced to remain all night on the wharf without shelter and without food; ...one has died, and... others are suffering with disease and... your men have turned them out of their houses, which they have built themselves, and have robbed some of them of their money and personal effects."(26)
Such accounts were corroborated by the eyewitness testimonies of Southerners themselves, both White and Black. The vast majority of atrocities against the Blacks were committed by Northern soldiers during William Tecumseh Sherman's infamous march from Atlanta, Georgia to Charleston, South Carolina in late 1864 and early 1865. Mrs. Nora Canning of Savannah, Georgia told how the dead baby of one of the family's slave-women was dug up by Northern soldiers looking for buried treasure, the body being carelessly cast aside "for the hog to root" when none was found.(27) Dr. Daniel Trezevant, a respected citizen of Columbia, South Carolina, testified how one "old negro woman, who, after being subjected to the most brutal indecency from seven of the Yankees, was, at the proposition of one of them to 'finish the old Bitch,' put into a ditch and held under water until life was extinct...."(28) In a letter that was discovered in the streets of Columbia after Sherman's "bummers" passed through, Lieutenant Thomas J. Myers wrote the following words to his wife in Boston: "The damned niggers, as a general rule, prefer to stay at home, particularly after they found out that we only wanted the able-bodied men, (and, to tell you the truth, the youngest and best-looking women.) Sometimes we took off whole families and plantations of niggers, by way of repaying secessionists. But the useless part of them we soon manage to lose; sometimes in crossing rivers, sometimes in other ways."(29)
Dr. John Bachman, pastor of the Lutheran Church at Charleston, described the brutal treatment of the Blacks by the Northern invaders as follows:
When Sherman's army came sweeping through Carolina, leaving a broad track of destruction for hundreds of miles, whose steps were accompanied with fire, and sword, and blood, reminding us of the tender mercies of the Duke of Alva, I happened to be at Cash's Depot, six miles from Cheraw.... A system of torture was practiced toward the weak, unarmed, and defenseless, which, as far as I know and believe, was universal throughout the whole course of that invading army. Before they arrived at a plantation, they inquired the names of the most faithful and trustworthy family servants; these were immediately seized, pistols were presented at their heads; with the most terrific curses, they were threatened to be shot if they did not assist them in finding buried treasures. If this did not succeed, they were tied up and cruelly beaten. Several poor creatures died under the infliction. The last resort was that of hanging, and the officers and men of the triumphant army of General Sherman were engaged in erecting gallows and hanging up these faithful and devoted servants. They were strung up until life was nearly extinct, when they were let down, suffered to rest awhile, then threatened and hung up again. It is not surprising that some should have been left hanging so long that they were taken down dead. Cooly and deliberately these hardened men proceeded on their way, as if they had perpetrated no crime, and as if the God of heaven would not pursue them with his vengeance....
On Sunday, the negroes were dressed in their best suits. They were kicked, and knocked down and robbed of all their clothing, and they came to us in their shirt-sleeves, having lost their hats, clothes, and shoes. Most of our own clothes had been hid in the woods. The negroes who had assisted in removing them were beaten and threatened with death, and compelled to show them where they were concealed. They cut open the trunks, threw my manuscripts and devotional books into a mud-hole, stole the ladies' jewelry, hair ornaments, etc., tore many garments into tatters, or gave the rest to the negro women to bribe them into criminal intercourse. These women afterward returned to us those articles that, after the mutilations, were scarcely worth preserving. The plantation, of one hundred and sixty negroes, was some distance from the house, and to this place successive parties of fifty at a time resorted for three long days and nights, the husbands and fathers being fired at and compelled to fly to the woods.(30)
Even more shocking is the following account given by William Gilmore Simms of Columbia:
Something should be said in respect to the manner in which the negroes were treated by the Federals while in Columbia.... [The soldiers] were adverse to a connection with them; but few negroes were to be seen among them, and they were simply used as drudges, grooming horses, bearing burdens, humble of demeanor and rewarded with kicks, cuffs and curses, frequently without provocation. They despised and disliked the negro; openly professed their scorn or hatred, declared their unwillingness to have them as companions in arms or in company at all.
Several instances have been given us of their modes of repelling the association of the negro, usually with blow of the fist, butt of the musket, slash of the sword or prick of the bayonet.
Sherman himself looked on these things indifferently, if we are to reason from a single fact afforded us by Mayor Goodwyn. This gentleman, while walking with the general, heard the report of a gun. Both heard it, and immediately proceeded to the spot. There they found a group of soldiers, with a stalwart young negro fellow lying dead before them on the street, the body yet warm and bleeding. Pushing it with his feet, Sherman said, in his quick, hasty manner:
"What does this mean, boys?"
The reply was sufficiently cool and careless. "The d—d black rascal gave us his impudence, and we shot him."
"Well, bury him at once! Get him out of sight!"
As they passed on, one of the party remarked:
"Is that the way, General, you treat such a case?"
"Oh!" said he, "we have no time now for courts martial and things of that sort!"
...The treatment of the negroes in their houses was, in the larger proportion of cases, quite as harsh as that which was shown to the whites. They were robbed in like manner, frequently of every article of clothing and provisions, and where the wigwam was not destroyed, it was effectually gutted. Few negroes having a good hat, good pair of shoes, good overcoat, but were incontinently deprived of them, and roughly handled when they remonstrated....
The soldiers, in several cases which have been reported to us, pursued the slaves with the tenacity of blood-hounds; were at their elbows when they went forth, and hunted them up, at all hours, on the premises of the owner. Very frequent are instances where the negro, thus hotly pursued, besought protection of his master or mistress, sometimes voluntarily seeking a hiding place along the swamps of the river; at other times, finding it under the bed of the owner; and not leaving these places of refuge till long after the troops had departed.
For fully a month after they had gone, the negroes, singly or in squads, were daily making their way back to Columbia, having escaped from the Federals by dint of great perseverance and cunning, generally in wretched plight, half-starved and with little clothing. They represented the difficulties in the way of their escape to be very great, and the officers placing them finally under guards at night, and that they could only succeed in flight at the peril of life or limb. Many of these were negroes of Columbia, but the larger proportion seemed to hail from Barnwell. They all sought passports to return to their owners and plantations.(31)
Even many honorable men in the North saw through the thin philanthropic mask of the Abolitionist invasion of the South. According to R.G. Horton of New York, "The driving off negroes from the plantations was no uncommon occurrence throughout the South. The negro is naturally very much attached to his home, and when the abolition officers came among them and told them they were free to leave their masters and they did not do so, they often became very angry with them, and compelled them to enjoy what they called 'the blessings of freedom.' These 'blessings,' it has been proved, consisted mainly of 'disease and death'" [emphasis in original].(32) It was estimated by Senator James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin, himself an ardent Abolitionist, that one million Negroes had perished from disease, neglect, and other factors associated with the invasion of the South and a disruption of its institutions.(33) According to Robert Lewis Dabney's 21 October 1865 letter to Major-General Oliver O. Howard, half the Black population of Louisiana were lying in their graves by the end of the war.(34)
Such accounts, which would literally fill volumes and sicken the soul of any civilized man or woman, are rarely brought to light by those who propagate the myth that the war was fought by the Northern armies with the welfare of the Black race in mind. We will conclude this chapter with the following words of Dennis A. Mahony, editor of the Dubuque (Iowa) Herald, written in the Old Capitol Prison at Washington, D.C. where he was imprisoned in 1862 by the Lincoln Administration for his Democratic sentiments. In his journal entry for the ninth of September, Mahoney recorded the entrance into the prison of several Confederate prisoners of war, captured at the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia:
Several prisoners have been brought here to-day from the neighborhood of Fredericksburgh. Among them were some negroes, one of them, a large, intelligent spoken fellow, was very anxious to see his master, who, having been paroled, was not brought to the prison. I asked this slave whether he would go back to his master.
"Yes, sir," said he, "I don't want to stay here; my master always treated me well, and I don't want to leave him."
"But," said I, "they will keep you here, or send you north."
"Well, massa," said he, "if they won't let me go home, I can't help it; but, if they will let me away, I will go with my master."
In connection with this, I may say, from conversations I have had with nearly every one of the male contrabands around the premises, that every one of them desires, and designs, if he should have an opportunity, to go back to his master. Most of them were brought here against their will, and, if left free to choose, they will go back to their old masters, in preference to remaining here or going north.(35)
Further comment on the "freedom" given to the Southern Blacks by the Northern invaders is not necessary.
Endnotes
1. Official Records: Armies, Series III, Volume V, page 661.
2. Whiting, War Powers, page 107.
3. Whiting, ibid., page 28.
4. Edwin M. Stanton, dispatch to Brigadier-General Rufus Saxton, 25 August 1862; in Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume XIV, pages 377-378.
5. General Orders No. 17, 6 March 1863; ibid., Volume XIV, page 1020.
6. General Orders No. 119, 16 August 1864; ibid., Series III, Volume IV, page 621.
7. Lincoln, quoted by Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln: Complete Works, Volume II, page 562.
8. John A. Logan to T.S. Bowers, 26 February 1864; Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume XXXII, Part II, page 477.
9. Frederick Martin to Benjamin F. Butler, 1 September 1864; ibid., Series I, Volume XLII, Part II, pages 653-654.
10. Innis N. Palmer to R.S. Davis, 1 September 1864; ibid., page 654.
11. Rufus A. Saxton to Edwin M. Stanton, 30 December 1864, ibid., Series III, Volume IV, page 1028.
12. Edward L. Pierce to David Hunter, 13 May 1862; ibid., Series III, Volume II, page 57.
13. Carpenter, Logic of History, page 170.
14. Unnamed Northern soldier, quoted by Charles Godfrey Leland, Abraham Lincoln (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1881), page 61.
15. G.M. Wells to Edward Pierce, 13 May 1862; Official Records: Armies, Series III, Volume II, page 59.
16. Quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, page 263.
17. Jefferson Davis, address to the Confederate States Congress, 7 December 1863; Official Records: Armies, Series IV, Volume II, Part I, page 1047.
18. Edward W. Smith, General Orders No. 27; ibid., Series I, Volume XIV, page 376.
19. J.T.K. Hayward, ibid., Series I, Volume III, page 459.
20. Ibid., Series I, Volume XVI, Part II, pages 273-275.
21. Ibid., page 277.
22. Quoted by Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (editors), Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (New York: The New Press, 1992).
23. Henry W. Halleck, in Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume XLVI, Part III, page 1005.
24. Saxton to Stanton, 30 December 1864; ibid., Series III, Volume IV, page 1029.
25. John W. Haley in Ruth L. Silliker (editor), The Rebel Yell and Yankee Hurrah (Camden, Maine: Down East Books, 1985), page 273.
26. John A. Dix, Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume XVIII, page 464.
27. Mrs. Nora M. Canning in Rod Gragg (editor), The Illustrated Confederate Reader (New York: Gramercy Books, 1998), page 179.
28. Dr. Daniel Heyward Trezevant in Gragg, ibid., page 192.
29. Letter of Lieutenant Thomas J. Myers to Mrs. Thomas J. Myers, 26 February 1865; quoted by Dean, Crimes of the Civil War, pages 82-83.
30. Dr. John Bachman, letter dated 14 September 1865; quoted by Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume II, pages 710, 712.
31. William Gilmore Simms, The Sack and Destruction of Columbia, South Carolina (Columbia, South Carolina: Power Press of the Daily Phoenix, 1865), pages 60-62.
32. Horton, History of the Great Civil War, pages 291-292.
33. James R. Doolittle, quoted by Horton, ibid., page 292.
34. Dabney, Discussions, Volume IV, page 38.
35. Mahony, Prisoner of State, pages 235-236.
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