Climbing Up to Glory (9 page)

Black soldiers may have had problems with the mistreatment of their families by white Southerners, but they fully understood this retaliation for enlisting in Union forces. However, when Federal authorities treated their wives and children with little regard for their well-being, as in the case of evicting several hundred of them from Camp Nelson, Kentucky, and refusing to let wives visit them at camp, black soldiers were angry. How could the very government that they were fighting and dying for be racist and insensitive? Most responded to the despicable actions of the U.S. government by either writing letters to military authorities or giving sworn affidavits outlining the behavior of white military personnel. Unlike in the Confederacy-occupied South where the enlistment of black soldiers entailed separation from their families, in Union-occupied parts of the Confederacy, parents, wives, and children often lived in contraband camps near the soldiers' quarters. As a consequence, they enjoyed a measure of security. Nevertheless, Federal commanders still sometimes refused sanctuary to the soldiers' families and at times would even expel them from army encampments.

Joseph Miller, a Union soldier, has provided a heart-wrenching account of his family, who for a time lived in Camp Nelson, Kentucky, until they were evicted. Since his master stated that if Miller enlisted, he would no longer sustain his wife and children, Miller brought them along when he first went to Camp Nelson to enlist in October 1864. The couple had four children who ranged in age from four to ten. The lieutenant in command at that time granted permission for his family to stay at the camp, where they remained until November 22 when a mounted guard informed his wife that she and her children would have to vacate the premises the next morning. They had no place to go, and the seven-year-old boy was very sick. Although Miller pleaded with the guard on the next day to let them remain, it was to no avail. The guard told Miller's family that if they did not get into his wagon, he would shoot them all. Miller's wife and children were taken away. A few hours later, Miller went in search of them and found his wife and children six miles from camp in an old meetinghouse belonging to blacks. Unfortunately, by this time, his son was dead. Miller wanted to spend the night with his family but doing so would have compromised his military obligations. Thus, he went back to camp that night but returned the next morning to bury his child.
¹²¹

The family of John Burnside, a Union soldier in Company K, 124th U.S. Colored Troops Infantry, was also evicted from Camp Nelson in November 1864. Like Miller, Burnside had brought his family along to protect them from a vindictive master who had already threatened them for giving aid to Union forces. Moreover, like most soldiers, black and white, Burnside wanted his wife nearby for moral support, and his daughter was ill. Just five days after Miller's family was evicted, an armed guard forced Burnside's wife and daughter into a wagon and drove them seven miles from camp to a wooded area of land owned by a Mr. Simpson. With a degree of despair, Burnside wrote, “while they were in the wood [sic] it rained hard and my family were exposed to the storm.”
¹²²
Fortunately, the efforts of soldiers such as Joseph Miller and John Burnside, who wrote affidavits detailing the expulsion of several hundred family members from Camp Nelson, were not futile. The Northern press published many of the affidavits, which became a public relations disaster for the Union army. This publicity, in addition to protests through military channels, resulted in the establishment at Camp Nelson of a “refugee home” for black soldiers' families.
¹²³

It should come as no surprise to learn that efforts were also made to prevent black women from visiting their men at many army camps, and these measures were employed at the same time that wives of enlisted white soldiers were allowed visitation privileges. George Buck Hanon, a black Union soldier in northern Alabama, wrote a moving letter to the commander of the military division complaining about these injustices. Hanon reached deep into his heart: “a colard man think jest as much of his wife as a white man dus of his if he is black they keep us hemd up here in side the guarde line and if your wife comes they hav to stand out side and he in side and talk across they lines that is as near as they can come.” But for white soldiers, Hanon notes, “evver offiscer here that has a wife is got her here in camps and one mans wif feel jest as near to him as anurther.”
¹²⁴
Echoing the same sentiments, an anonymous Kentucky Union soldier wrote about visitation: “When our wives comes to the camp and see us they are not allowed to come in camp and we are not allowed to go and See them they are drumed of[f] and the officers Says go you damned bitches.” With frustration and anguish the soldier continued, “you know that it is to much they are treated So by these officer they ought to be a friend to us and them to.”
¹²⁵

White Federal officials may not have respected the wives of black soldiers or valued black family life, but black soldiers from the North and South certainly did. In fact, two of the top priorities of many black soldiers upon getting settled in camp were to inform their loved ones of the events that had transpired in their lives since leaving home and, of course, to find out about the physical and financial status of family members. In order to do so, illiterate blacks had to have someone write letters for them. Humphrey, for example, a former Kentucky slave stationed at Camp Nelson, found a friend to write home for him on a weekly basis. In many of the letters, Humphrey depicted army life as superior to slavery. A high proportion of those writing letters at Camp Nelson for black soldiers were white ministers. In fact, one army chaplain wrote 150 letters to soldiers' families in a single month, and troops crowded around John G. Fee each evening with requests. It is estimated by Sanitary Commission authorities that its representatives at Camp Nelson wrote five thousand letters for black soldiers. As expected, literate blacks were also besieged by requests for letter writing. Elijah P. Marrs was known as “that little fellow from Shelby County” who could write. When off duty, he could be found “surrounded by a number of men, each waiting his turn to have a letter written home.”
¹²⁶

Sometimes they were frustrated in their efforts to obtain letters from the homefront. The following letter of John Posey of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry illustrates the disappointment felt by many black soldiers over the lack of letters from home. With sorrow, Posey wrote: “You all appear to be dead, and whether you be [so] or no, I can not tell. If you are not dead you are very careless about either friends or relations, and for writing you do not give a damn whether you all write or not.” Furthermore, “though I might write often, which I do every two or three days, and sometimes every [day], and to get [a letter] once a month—I care not [for] it.” Posey concluded, “I think it is the height of contempt.”
¹²⁷
An anonymous soldier in the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry lashed out at family members: “I give you to know that a letter from home is quite consoling to a soldier that can not get the news of the day. As for Uncle James I have not received the scratch of a pen, though I honored him with two [letters], and Aunt Sarah [says she] wrote three, but I never got one of them.”
¹²⁸

That blacks often found entering the military to be a traumatic experience was even more reason why they relied heavily on the emotional support of their loved ones. Elijah Marrs, for example, wished he “had never heard of the war” after his first night in the barracks. Shortly after being inducted, Marrs and his fellow recruits marched to Taylor Barracks on Third Street in Louisville, Kentucky, where they were routinely issued uniforms and weapons and assigned bunks. However, night would usher in a horrid accident. Marrs was fast asleep on the top bunk when the recruit in the middle, sleeping with a cocked revolver, inadvertently discharged his weapon and killed the man on the lowest bunk. The dead man had collected $300 as a substitute. As he lay bleeding in his bunk, recruits descended upon him, stealing the money. In spite of the trauma of his first night in the service, reveille awakened Marrs to a new day and a new attitude. Thus, when an officer called his name and he stepped forward for his rations, Marrs “felt freedom” in his “bones,” and he thought to himself, “Pshaw! This is better than slavery.”
¹²⁹

Many of the black recruits spent most of their days in camp engaged in the routine. Marching to and from battle and actual fighting consumed very little of their time. For those recruits with few interests, boredom took over. For the energetic recruit, however, military life could offer opportunities. For instance, religion played a key role in the lives of black soldiers. The Rev. Sandy Bullitt preached to them on their night in the Louisville barracks; at Camp Nelson, preachers kept the dining hall busy almost nightly, and on Sundays from “sunrise to taps.”
¹³⁰
Having to cope with the real possibility of death, most soldiers, black and white alike, used religion as an anchor. They adopted the view that God would repay them for their sacrifices and hardships on Earth with rewards in Heaven. No wonder that a soldier in the First South Carolina Volunteers uttered the following prayer: “I hab lef' my wife in de land o' bondage. My little ones dey say ev‘ry night, Whar is my Fader? But when I die, when de bressed mornin' rises, when I shall stan in de glory wid one foot on de water an' one foot on de land, den, O Lord, I shall see my wife an' my little chilen once more.”
¹³¹
Many black soldiers also came to believe that God would protect them; and, if they died, God had decided to summon them home. Indeed, some of the most moving scenes in Civil War history are those involving the singing, testifying, and praying of black and white soldiers prior to going into battle.

Military camp also offered black soldiers an opportunity to improve their minds. Since education had been denied them as slaves and many black soldiers recognized the practicality of education, they had a thirst for it. Sometimes the wives of white officers served as teachers. For example, Frances Beecher, wife of Colonel James Beecher, commander of the Thirty-fifth U.S. Colored Infantry, taught many of his men to read and write while they were stationed at Beaufort, South Carolina, and Jacksonville, Florida.
¹³²
Moreover, countless numbers of soldiers, both black and white, took it upon themselves to teach reading and writing to individuals and groups of blacks at Federal encampments. In most cases, however, chaplains had the responsibility of educating soldiers and their families in the regular army. Northern benevolent associations or officers' families provided materials such as books and blackboards.
¹³³

At the conclusion of the war, when the final tabulations were in, it was seen that black soldiers had made remarkable progress in education. It mattered little whether the teachers had been chaplains and their wives, officers' wives, civilians, or black or white soldiers. For example, Frances Beecher reported that when the men of the Thirty-fifth first enlisted, only two or three of them could sign their names, but when they “mustered out each one of them could proudly sign his name to the pay-roll in a good legible hand.”
¹³⁴
In another case, a chaplain was able in a mere two days to teach a totally illiterate soldier to write his own name, and in only five months the same soldier was preparing company reports and reading the Bible and the Infantry tactics manual. His case was not exceptional but fairly typical. More than five hundred former slaves in a brigade could “read and write very well” after only six months of instruction. Only nine men in Company C, Forty-fourth U.S. Colored Infantry were literate when they enlisted, yet all of them could read and write by the time that they were mustered out. And the Forty-third U.S. Colored Infantry, composed of Northern blacks and freed slaves, had only seventy men who could read, and few of them could do that well. After seven months of work, over one-half could read and many “attend to their own correspondence.”
¹³⁵
In all likelihood the reading and writing skills of black soldiers were more advanced than the black populace overall when they left the service.

Camp life also accorded black soldiers recreational opportunities. At Camp Nelson and other Federal encampments, music classes were taught and taken by many blacks. Instruction was given in playing the drums, the fife, and the bugle, and there were glee clubs as well as occasional classes in vocal music. Moreover, soldiers played games, engaged in wrestling matches, held regimental picnics, and used weekend passes to “visit the ladies.”
¹³⁶
Holidays such as Thanksgiving were sometimes considered as festive occasions by the Union army. For example, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry was treated to a wholesome Thanksgiving celebration in November 1863. The men had a delightful dinner of cakes, oranges, apples, raisins, bread, and turkey. Several contests such as greasing the pole and wheelbarrow races were organized, with prizes ranging from two to thirteen dollars. The regiment was “alive and full of fun.”
¹³⁷
One year later the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry took a break from guarding prisoners in Maryland to celebrate Thanksgiving with a dinner of oysters, turnips, onions, bread without butter, and turkey. The winners of foot races, jig dances, wheelbarrow races, greasing the pole, sack races, a pig chase, and a turkey shoot vied for prizes ranging from a few dollars to a box of cigars, a pair of Mexican spurs, a pig, a plug of tobacco, and turkeys.
¹³⁸
These celebrations allowed the soldiers, at least for a couple of hours, to take the troubles of war off their minds.