Climbing Up to Glory (6 page)

At first, black soldiers did not receive the same pay as white soldiers of equal rank. According to the Enlistment Act of July 17, 1862, whites with the rank of private would be paid thirteen dollars per month salary and $3.50 for clothing; blacks of the same rank would be paid seven dollars and three dollars.
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If Union officials thought that blacks would accept this discrimination without complaining, they were mistaken; black soldiers and their white officers protested vigorously. “We have come out like men and we expected to be treated as men but we have bin treated more like dogs then men,” one black soldier complained to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.
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The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts boldly displayed its opposition by serving a year without pay rather than accept discriminatory wages.
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When Colonel Littlefield suggested to the regiment that they accept ten dollars per month now, with the promise of the additional three dollars per month later, not one man accepted his offer. A little irritated by their behavior, Littlefield insinuated that if they turned the money down, then they “might not receive any money till after the convening of Congress.” To this threat, members of the Fifty-fourth replied “that we had been over five months waiting, and we would wait till the Government could frame some special law, for the payment of part of its troops.”
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The regiment marched into battle in Florida in 1864 singing, “Three cheers for Massachusetts and seven dollars a month.”
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The refusal of black troops to accept unequal pay placed a heavy strain on their wives and children. Over and over again, black soldiers poured out their concern for family members because the government refused to pay them the same as white soldiers. A soldier in the Sixth U.S. Colored Troops cried out, “it almost tempts me to desert and run a chance of getting shot, when I read her [his wife's] letters, hoping that I would come to her relief. But what am I to do?”
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He noted, “it is the case all through the regiment. Men having families at home, and they looking to them for support, and they not being able to send them one penny.”
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Another soldier in the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts lamented that “although we have been in the service, ten months we have not received one cent of pay, and many of our families are suffering for the aid we must render them if we could only get our hardearned and just dues.”
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Still another member of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts recalled an emotional scene involving a comrade's anguish over his inability to support his wife: “I have seen a letter from a wife in Illinois to her husband, stating that she had been sick for six months, and begging him to send her the sum of fifty cents.” The soldier then asked, “Was it any wonder that the tears rolled in floods from that stout-hearted man's eyes?”
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The most likely reason that many black soldiers would not take the ten dollars per month was because to do so would be an affront to their manhood. Black men wanted to be recognized and appreciated by the federal government the same as white men were, and the only way was for them to receive the same amount as their white counterparts: thirteen dollars. One soldier underscored this point: “To say even, we were not soldiers and pay us $20 would be injustice, for it would rob a whole race of their title to manhood, and even make them feel, no matter how faithful, how brave they had been, that their mite towards founding liberty on a firm basis was spurned, and made mock of.”
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It was no wonder that when the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts refused to accept the ten dollars, members of the regiment remarked, “We will stay our three years out, and then go home like men to our homes, and go to work.”
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Furthermore, too much was riding on the issue for black men to budge even an inch on the matter. Although the suffering of their families greatly pained them, they were involved in a struggle that called for short-term sacrifices. Had they given in and accepted unequal pay, it would have disgraced their children and brought shame on the race. This point was eloquently made by a soldier from the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts: “I thank God that we did not take it, for if we had our children would blush with shame to think their fathers would acknowledge their inferiority by taking inferior pay to that of other soldiers.” Moreover, the soldier noted, if they had, “the whole civilized world would look on us as being a parcel of fools, not fit to enjoy our freedom.”
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The persistent efforts of black soldiers and their white supporters did not come to naught, for Congress passed an equal pay law in July 1864. However, victory was far from complete, since it gave back pay only to January 1, 1864. Whereas those blacks who were free at the time of enlistment were to be given back pay from the day on which they joined the army, the enslaved blacks only got six months of back pay. And, since nearly 70 percent of black soldiers were from either the seceded Southern states or Border slave states, the equal pay law would eventually lead to the so-called Quaker oaths: many blacks would declare that they were free by God's law if not by man's. Thus, it would take further protests before Congress would finally yield and on March 3, 1865, pass a law that granted full retroactive pay to all black soldiers.
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Sergeant John C. Brock of the Forty-third U.S. Colored Infantry captured in a letter the excitement felt by the men in his regiment when the paymaster handed their money to them in August 1864, when the army began to issue to all black units their back pay. Brock wrote that “yesterday was a joyful day in our brigade on account of the presence of the paymaster. The boys fell in the ranks with more alacrity than they ever did on any other occasion. They were paid at the rate of $16 a month.”
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The Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry organized a celebration on October 10, described by James M. Trotter, a soldier in the regiment: “The men were paraded in companies; commanded by their 1st Sergts. A procession was formed which was marched to some distance from camp headed by our excellent brass band, and then back to the stand where [there] was to be speeches by the sergeants, music, vocal and instrumental.”
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Resolutions were drawn up by Sergeant Gabriel P. Iverson, which were then adopted by the men of the Fifty-fifth, who renewed their commitment to the Union and their race, forgave those who had criticized them for protesting their low pay, and thanked their friends at home who had worked for equality.
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As expected, when black soldiers received their back pay, many of them first sent money to their wives and families. For example, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts sent $64,000 and the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts $65,000 home by Adams Express.
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One soldier in the Fifty-fifth sent his mother $125 of the $167.10 paid to him. Still, he found the need to apologize. “I should of sent more but from all probability we won't be paid off very soon again, so, mother, I did the best I could.”
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Not surprisingly, there were other demands on their money. In one unit, a soldier reported, “the sutler, patent jewelry venders, watch pedlars and many other kinds of pedlars are reaping a rich harvest.”
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The Civil War ultimately had a devastating effect on black soldiers, who suffered a far higher mortality rate than white troops. At least 38,000 black soldiers lost their lives in the war, a rate of mortality estimated to be nearly 40 percent greater than that among whites. For example, the largest number of deaths in any outfit in the Union army occurred in the all-black Fifth U.S. Heavy Artillery, where 829 men died. Disease alone killed more than 600 men in the Sixty-fifth Colored Infantry; and, more often than whites, they were given inferior equipment and inadequate medical care.
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Higher casualties among black troops were also the result of inexperience. Veteran troops learned to conserve their own lives to fight the next day. But this approach ran counter to the main objective of black soldiers, whose primary aim was to prove to whites that they were not inferior to anyone. Accordingly, as historian Joseph Glatthaar notes, “they consciously took on extra risks, and lost many lives because of it, in hopes that their labors on the battlefield would reap benefits to the survivors, their families, and future generations.”
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Moreover, they were targeted by Confederates' “no quarter” policy.
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Under this policy, black soldiers were regarded as insurrectionists, and Confederates fought them with heightened intensity. The sight of black men armed, many of whom were runaway slaves, was appalling and frightening to most Southern whites.

The Confederacy sometimes refused to treat captured black soldiers as prisoners of war, thus denying them the opportunity to be exchanged. Moreover, their white officers were looked upon by the Confederates as instigators of slave rebellions. Local Confederate commanders decided the fate of captured black soldiers and their officers in the first year and one-half of the war and often chose to execute them on the spot. President Jefferson Davis, however, in December 1862 ordered the black captives delivered to civil authorities in “the respective [Confederate] States to which they belong to be dealt with according to the laws of said States”; their officers were also to be remanded to state authorities. Under these laws, the soldiers faced punishments ranging from reenslavement or sale into slavery to execution, and officers convicted of inciting slave insurrection were subject to execution or imprisonment. Although many Northerners were infuriated by the Confederate policy toward black prisoners of war, the Lincoln administration was slow to respond.
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Lincoln's caution, however, did not prevent other Federal officials from taking up the challenge. General David Hunter, for example, who had played a leading role in early efforts to recruit black soldiers in coastal South Carolina and Georgia, issued a prompt and stern response to Davis's order: “I now give you notice, that unless this order is immediately revoked, I will at once cause the execution of every rebel officer, and every rebel slaveholder in my possession.”
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Despite Hunter's warning, Davis's order remained in effect. And, as the war progressed, other high-ranking Confederate officials, such as secretary of war, promoted the killing of some black prisoners to set an example. Colonel W. P. Shingler told his subordinates in 1864 to kill all the blacks in battle to prevent any from having the opportunity to surrender.
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These were not empty threats. The Confederates did, indeed, often refuse to capture black soldiers and instead slaughtered those offering to surrender. Strong evidence points to the charge that some wounded blacks left on the battlefield at Olustee, Florida, on February 20, 1864, were murdered instead of taken prisoner.
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Had the Confederates abided by the international rules of war, this outrage would not have occurred. However, black soldiers were quick to assert that if Confederates offered them “no quarter,” then they would offer “no quarter” in return. A soldier in the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry wrote forcefully, “as far as this regiment is concerned we will ask no quarter, and rest satisfied that we will give none. We are compelled to take this in our own hands. The Johnny Reb will find out that Niggers won't die so fast.”
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Another member of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts warned: “Should Jeff. Davis enforce his threat of treating us as servile insurgents, there will be but little quarter shown to rebels who fall into our hands; every man shall die who has not the power to defend himself, and then we will hear what Jeff has to say about enslaving or butchering black soldiers.” The soldier concluded, “It must be one thing or the other—liberty or death.”
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The Olustee debacle would be only one of many involving charges of Confederate atrocities against black soldiers and their white officers. Undoubtedly, the most notorious was the Fort Pillow massacre of 1864 in Tennessee. On April 12 of that year, the fort fell to Confederate forces under the command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former slave trader who would later play a major role in organizing the white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan.
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When the firing concluded, nearly 300 of the estimated garrison of 600 men suffered death or mortal wounds. The black units lost 64 percent, while the white troops lost 31 to 34 percent.
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An army investigating committee interviewed thirty-five witnesses, many of them eyewitnesses, who claimed that Forrest's men repeatedly shot unarmed blacks who had their hands raised, desperately trying to surrender—even those alleged to have been on their knees begging for mercy when their lives were taken. Witnesses charged that wounded blacks were either burned or buried alive. Moreover, five men, all members of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, testified that they had heard during the final assault such cries as “Kill the last God damn one of them,” and “Kill them, God damn them.”
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How much blame for the massacre should be placed directly on Forrest himself? Did he on this occasion plan to carry out his threat of “no quarter,” a threat that he had made several times before? And did he actually order his men to do it? Current research tends to suggest that Forrest did not order the killings; in fact, he was lightly injured and remained at his post four hundred yards away. It is very likely, however, that even with Forrest's injury, had he planned the massacre, he would have led the charge and been a willing participant in the bloodletting. Even if we accept the conclusions of those who argue that Forrest did not order the killings, we can still suppose that his inaction may have been just as dubious. Once he lost control of his men, they were free to do as they pleased.
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And, in all likelihood, what they did was not a source of great concern to him, since he knew that his men shared the same intense hatred of fighting armed slaves and Tennessee Unionists as he harbored. In his written report just three days after the capture of the fort, Forrest boasted about the massacre. Referring to the large numbers of Union soldiers killed after they jumped into the Mississippi, Forrest wrote, “the river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for 200 yards.”
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Not surprisingly, blacks were not caught off guard by the Fort Pillow massacre. A black soldier wrote from South Carolina, “I do not wonder at the conduct and disaster that transpired at Fort Pillow, I wonder that we have not had more ... Fort Pillow massacres.”
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If Confederates thought their “no quarter” policy would demoralize black soldiers, they were badly mistaken. Indeed, the massacre had the reverse effect. For the remainder of the war, blacks would fight with an intensity never before imagined. Shortly after the Fort Pillow engagement, units of black soldiers met at Memphis, got down “on their knees,” and pledged to avenge the loss and to show Confederate troops “no quarter.” Their battle cry became, “Remember Fort Pillow.”
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Thereafter, black troops fought with no idea of surrendering. This was the case even where Union forces suffered huge losses. For example, at Brice's Cross-Roads in June 1864, where Union disaster struck the Union troops, reports show that black soldiers engaged there kept firing until their ammunition was spent. Afterward, they fought with bayonet and clubbed musket; finally they either picked up weapons and ammunition from the road along which the rest of the Union forces were fleeing or died.
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The desperation with which black troops fought put fear in the hearts of Confederate soldiers. Commenting on this fear, one Federal soldier wrote in a letter to his family, “the Jonnies [Johnny Rebs, or Confederates] are not as much afraid of us as they are of the Mokes [black soldiers].” He added, “when they charge they will not take any prisoners, if they can help it.”
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Afraid of reprisals, Confederate troops avoided surrendering to black troops or fled at their approach. Late in the war, a white Union soldier at Fort Blakely, Alabama, reported that Confederate soldiers were “panic-struck.” Rather than confront blacks, the soldier noted, “numbers of them jumped into the river and were drowned attempting to cross, or were shot while swimming. Still others threw down their arms and ran for their lives over to the white troops on our left, to give themselves up, to save being butchered by our Niggers[;] the Niggers did not take a prisoner, they killed all they took to a man.”
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Nevertheless, Confederate troops continued to employ the “no quarter” policy in dealing with black troops. In fact, just six days after the Fort Pillow massacre, Confederates shot, captured, and wounded black soldiers in the Battle of Poison Spring in Arkansas. Reports revealed that the First Kansas Colored had suffered staggering losses, amounting to 117 dead and 65 wounded. Confederates cut off and subsequently cut up a large foraging party of white and black troops.
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Although not of the magnitude of atrocities waged against blacks at Fort Pillow, the ruthlessness displayed by Confederate troops at Poison Spring was horrifying. “The surprise of the enemy was complete—at least 400 darkies were killed,” wrote Lieutenant William M. Stafford, a Texas artilleryman, in his journal. “No black prisoners were captured.”
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An Arkansas cavalryman appeared to exult in the fact that a large portion of the Union dead were blacks: “We almost exterminated the troops that had the train in their charge.” When they were ordered to remove the captured wagons to a safer place, the Confederates drove over the dead and dying blacks, competing to see who could crush the most “nigger heads.”
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Several boasted that they had left six hundred Federal dead rotting at Poison Spring, “primarily Negroes who neither gave or rec[eived] quarter.”
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Choctaws fighting with the Confederates were among some of the most vicious attackers of black and white Union troops. In fits of rage, the Choctaws seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves as they scalped and stripped the bodies of Union soldiers.
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The response of black troops to the Union disaster at Poison Spring was similar to that after Fort Pillow: they vowed to get revenge. The Second Kansas Colored, the sister regiment of the hard-hit First Kansas Colored, resolved to take no prisoners. Only twelve days after the Poison Spring slaughter, the Second Kansas Colored would take full advantage of an opportunity to exact revenge. On April 30,1864, Colonel Samuel F. Crawford, the commanding officer, led his troops against the Confederates at Jenkins Ferry, on the Sabine River in Arkansas. Crawford ordered his men to charge, and charge they did, overrunning the rebel battery with shouts of “Remember Poison Spring!” The Confederates paid a huge price, losing about 150 killed or mortally wounded. At the same time, Union casualties were light: the Second Kansas Colored lost only fifteen men killed, and fifty-five others were wounded.
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Confederate casualties were so high because vengeful blacks drew no distinction between able-bodied or wounded foes in the fury of their charge. One white Union soldier observed a small black boy “pounding a wounded reb in the head with the but of his gun and asked him what he was doing. [T]he negro replied he is not dead yet!” The soldier concluded, “I tel you they won't give them up as long as they can kick if they can just have their way about it.”
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Black soldiers were also seen slashing the throats of wounded Confederates.
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Black sailors were also victims of the Confederacy's “no quarter” policy. For example, a sailor recalled, “the rebels captured a colored man, and put twelve bullets in his body and left him in the road. This is the way they treat us when they take us prisoners.”
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Just as this policy had failed to demoralize black soldiers and instead caused them to fight more fiercely, it had the same impact on black sailors. When President Davis issued an order authorizing Confederate forces in the vicinity of Richmond to hang sailors belonging to the Potomac Flotilla whenever they captured them, it “made the officers and men more eager to fight and destroy their property than ever.”
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Responding to news of the Fort Pillow massacre and other executions of black soldiers by Confederates, President Lincoln announced in July 1864 that the United States would give “equal protection to all its soldiers”; for every Union soldier killed, he directed the execution of a rebel soldier; and for every black Union soldier enslaved, a Confederate soldier would be put to hard labor until the end of the war.
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Yet, despite the “no quarter” orders of some high-ranking Confederate officers, many captured black troops were not executed but were held as prisoners of war in the South. General Butler reported, for example, that 3,000 black troops were prisoners of the Confederates; moreover, nearly 1,000 black prisoners worked on Confederate fortifications at Mobile, Alabama, late in 1864.
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