T. G. Steward - The Colored Regulars in the United States Army

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"I would particularly call the attention of the department to Major
F.E. Dumas, Capt. Villeverd and Lieuts. Jones and Martin, who were
constantly in the thickest of the fight, and by their unflinching
bravery and admirable handling of their commands, contributed to the
success of the attack, and reflected great honor upon the flag for
which they so nobly struggled."[33]

The battle which settled for all time the bravery of black troops, and
ought as well to silence all question about the capacity of colored
officers, was the storming of Port Hudson, May 27, 1863. For months
the Confederates had had uninterrupted opportunity to strengthen their
works at Port Hudson at a time when an abundance of slave labor was at
their disposal. They had constructed defenses of remarkable strength.
On a bluff, eighty feet above the river, was a series of batteries
mounting in all twenty siege guns. For land defenses they had a
continuous line of parapet of strong profile, beginning at a point on
the river a mile from Port Hudson and extending in a semi-circle for
three or four miles over a country for the most part rough and broken,
and ending again at the river, a half mile north of Port Hudson. At
appropriate positions along this line four bastion works were
constructed and thirty pieces of field artillery were posted. The
average thickness of the parapet was twenty feet, and the depth of the
ditch below the top of the parapet was fifteen feet. The ground behind
the parapet was well adapted for the prompt movement of troops.[34]

On the 24th of May General Banks reached the immediate vicinity of
Port Hudson, and proceeded at once to invest the place.

On the 27th the assault was ordered. Two colored regiments of
Louisiana Native Guards, the First Regiment with all line officers
colored, and the Third with white officers throughout, were put under
command of Colonel John A. Nelson, of the Third Regiment, and assigned
to position on the right of the line, where the assault was begun. The
right began the assault in the morning; for some reason the left did
not assault until late in the afternoon. Six companies of the First
Louisiana and nine companies of the Third, in all 1080 men, were
formed in column of attack. Even now, one cannot contemplate unmoved
the desperate valor of these black troops and the terrible slaughter
among them as they were sent to their impossible task that day in May.
Moving forward in double quick time the column emerged from the woods,
and passing over the plain strewn with felled trees and entangled
brushwood, plunged into a fury of shot and shell as they charged for
the batteries on the rebel left. Again and again that unsupported
column of black troops held to their hopeless mission by the
unrelenting order of the brigade commander, hurled itself literally
into the jaws of death, many meeting horrible destruction actually at
the cannon's mouth.

It was a day prodigal with deeds of fanatical bravery. The colors of
the First Louisiana, torn and shivered in that fearful hail of fire,
were still borne forward in front of the works by the color-sergeant,
until a shell from the enemy cut the flag in two and gave the sergeant
his mortal wound. He fell spattering the flag with blood and brains
and hugged it to his bosom as he lay in the grasp of death. Two
corporals sprang forward to seize the colors, contending in generous
rivalry until a rebel sharpshooter felled one of them across the
sergeant's lifeless body. The other dashed proudly forward with the
flag. Sixteen men fell that day defending the colors.

Black officers and white officers commanded side by side, moving among
the men to prompt their valor by word and example, revealing no
difference in their equal contempt of death. Captain Quinn, of the
Third Regiment, with forty reckless followers, bearing their rifles
and cartridge boxes above their heads, swam the ditch and leaped among
the guns, when they were ordered back to escape a regiment of rebels
hastening for their rear. Six of them re-crossed alive, and of these
only two were unhurt, the brave Quinn and a Lieutenant. The gallant
Captain Andre Cailloux, who commanded the color company of the First
Louisiana, a man black as night, but a leader by birth and education,
moved in eager zeal among his men, cheering them on by words and his
own noble example, with his left arm already shattered, proudly
refusing to leave the field. In a last effort of heroism, he sprang to
the front of his company, commanded his men to follow him, and in the
face of that murderous fire, gallantly led them forward until a shell
smote him to death but fifty yards from the works.

Cailloux, a pure Negro in blood, was born a freeman and numbered
generations of freemen among his ancestry. He had fine presence, was a
man of culture and possessed wealth. He had raised his company by his
own efforts, and attached them to him, not only by his ardent pride of
race, which made him boast his blackness, but also by his undoubted
talents for command. His heroic death was mourned by thousands of his
race who had known him. His body, recovered after the surrender, was
given a soldier's burial in his own native city of New Orleans.

When the day was spent, the bleeding and shattered column was at
length recalled. The black troops did not take the guns, but the day's
work had won for them a fame that cannot die. The nation, which had
received them into the service half-heartedly, and out of necessity,
was that day made to witness a monotony of gallantry and heroism that
compelled everywhere awe and admiration. Black soldiers, and led by
black officers as well as white, assigned a task hopeless and
impossible at the start, had plunged into that withering storm of shot
and shell, poured fourth by artillery and infantry, charging over a
field strewn with obstacles, and in madness of bravery had more than
once thrown the thin head of their column to the very edge of the
guns. They recoiled only to reform their broken lines and to start
again their desperate work. When the day was gone, and they were
called back, the shattered remnant of the column which had gone forth
in the morning still burned with passion. With that day's work of
black soldiers under black officers, a part forever of the military
glory of the Republic, there are those who yet dare to declare that
Negroes cannot command.

The assault on Port Hudson had been unsuccessful all along the line. A
second assault was ordered June 13. It, too, was unsuccessful. The
fall of Vicksburg brought the garrison to terms. The surrender took
place July 9, 1863. In the report of the general commanding, the
colored soldiers were given unstinted praise. General Banks declared
that "no troops could be more determined or more daring."[35] The
Northern press described glowingly their part in the fight. The
prowess of the black soldiers had conquered military prejudice, and
won for them a place in the army of the Union. And the brave black
officers who led these black soldiers, they were, all of them, ordered
forthwith before an examining board with the purpose of driving them
from the service, and every one of them in self-respect was made to
resign. In such manner was their bravery rewarded.

In the four regiments of colored troops made a part of the Regular
Army since the Civil War, colored soldiers, to say nothing of the
three colored graduates from West Point, referred to earlier in this
chapter, have repeatedly given evidence of their capacity to command.
An earlier chapter has already set forth the gallant manner in which
colored non-commissioned officers, left in command by the killing or
wounding of their officers, commanded their companies at La Guasima,
El Caney and in the charge at San Juan. On numerous occasions, with
none of the heroic setting of the Santiago campaign, have colored
soldiers time and again command detachments and companies on dangerous
scouting expeditions, and in skirmishes and fights with hostile
Indians and marauders. The entire Western country is a witness of
their prowess. This meritorious work, done in remote regions, has
seldom come to public notice; the medal which the soldier wears, and
the official entry in company and regimental record are in most cases
the sole chronicle. A typical instance is furnished in the career of
Sergeant Richard Anderson, late of the Ninth Cavalry. The sergeant has
long ago completed his thirty years of service. He passed through all
non-commissioned grades in his troop and regiment, and was retired as
Post Commissary-Sergeant. The story of the engagements in which he
commanded give ample proof of his ability and bravery. It would be no
service to the sergeant to disturb his own frank and formal narrative.

The Sergeant's story:--

"While in sub-camp at Fort Cumming, New Mexico, awaiting
orders for campaign duty against hostile Indians (old
Naney's band), on the evening of June 5, 1880, my troop
commander being absent at Fort Bayard, which left me in
command of my troop, there being no other commissioned
officer available, a report having come in to the commanding
officer about 1 o'clock that a band of Apache Indians were
marching toward Cook's Canon, Troops B and L, under general
command of Captain Francis, 9th Cavalry, and myself
commanding Troop B, were ordered out.

We came upon the Indians in Cook's Canon and had an
engagement which lasted two or three hours. Three or four
Indians were killed and several wounded. We had no men
killed, but a few wounded in both L and B Troops. We
followed the Indians many miles that evening, but having no
rations, returned to Fort Cumming late that evening, and
went into camp until the following morning, when the two
troops took the trail and followed it many days, but being
unable to overtake the Indians, returned to Fort Cumming.

In August, 1881, while my troop was in camp at Fort Cumming,
New Mexico, awaiting orders for another campaign against
these same Apache Indians, my troop commander having been
ordered to Fort Bayard, New Mexico, on general court-martial
duty, and during his absence having no commissioned officer
available, I was in command of my troop subject to the
orders of the post commander. At 12 o'clock at night, August
17, 1881, while in my tent asleep, the commanding officer's
orderly knocked on my tent and informed me that the
commanding officer wanted me to report to him at once. I
asked the orderly what was up. He informed me that he
supposed a scout was going out, as the commanding officer
had sent for Lieutenant Smith, then in command of Troop H,
9th Cavalry.

I dressed myself promptly and reported, and found Lieutenant
Smith and the commanding officer at the office on my
arrival.

The commanding officer asked me about how many men I could
mount for thirty days' detached duty, leaving so many men
to take care of property and horses. I told him about how
many. He ordered me to make a ration return for that number
of men, and send a sergeant to draw rations for thirty days'
scout; and for me to hurry up, and when ready to report to
Lieutenant Smith. By 12.45 my troop was ready and mounted,
and reported as ordered, and at 1 o'clock Troop's B and H
pulled out from Fort Cumming for Lake Valley, New Mexico;
and when the sun showed himself over the tops of the
mountains we marched down the mountains into Lake Valley,
thirty-five miles from Fort Cumming. We went into camp
hoping to spend a few hours and take a rest, and feed our
horses and men.

About 9 o'clock a small boy came running through camp crying
as if to break his heart, saying that the Indians had killed
his mother and their baby. Some of the men said the boy must
be crazy; but many of them made for their horses without
orders. Soon Lieutenant Smith ordered "Saddle up." In less
than five minutes all the command was saddled up and ready
to mount. We mounted and pulled out at a gallop, and
continued at that gait until we came to a high mountain,
when we came down to a walk. And when over the mountain we
took up the gallop, and from that time on, nothing but a
gallop and a trot, when the country was favorable for such.
When we had marched about two miles from Lake Valley we met
the father of the boy, with his leg bleeding where the
Indians had shot him. We marched about half a mile farther,
when we could see the Indians leaving this man's ranch. We
had a running fight with them from that time until about 5
o'clock that evening, August 18th, 1881. Having no rations,
we returned to Lake Valley with the intention of resting
that night and taking the trail the next morning; but about
9 o'clock that night a ranchman came into camp and reported
that the Indians had marched into a milk ranch and burned up
the ranch, and had gone into camp near by.

Lieutenant Smith ordered me to have the command in readiness
to march at 12 o'clock sharp, and said we could surprise
those Indians and capture many of them and kill a few also.
I went and made my detail as ordered, with five days'
rations in haversacks, and at 12 o'clock reported as
ordered.

About half-past 12 o'clock the command pulled out and
marched within about a mile and a half of the milk ranch and
went into camp; and at daylight in the morning saddled up
and marched to the ranch. The Indians had pulled out a few
minutes before our arrival. We took their trail and came up
with them about 10 o'clock, finding the Indians in ambush.
Lieutenant Smith was the first man killed, and when I heard
his last command, which was "Dismount," then the whole
command fell upon your humble servant. We fell back, up a
canon and on a hill, and held them until 4 o'clock, when a
reinforcement came up of about twenty men from Lake Valey
and the Indians pulled off over the mountains. The
following-named men were killed in the engagement:

Lieutenant G.W. Smith; Mr. Daily, a miner; Saddler Thomas
Golding; Privates James Brown and Monroe Overstreet.
Wounded--Privates Wesley Harris, John W. Williams and
William A. Hallins.

After the Indians ceased firing and fell back over the
mountains I cared for the wounded and sent Lieutenant
Smith's body to Fort Bayard, New Mexico, where his wife was,
which was about sixty miles from the battle-ground, and Mr.
Daily's body to Lake Valley, all under a strong detachment
of men under a non-commissioned officer; when I marched with
the remainder of the command with the dead and wounded for
Rodman Mill, where I arrived about 5 o'clock on the morning
of August 20 and buried the dead and sent the wounded to
Fort Bayard.

One thing that attracted my attention more than anything
else was the suffering of Private John W. Williams, Troop H,
who was shot through the kneecap and had to ride all that
night from the battle-ground to Brookman's Mill. Poor
fellow!

I buried all my dead, and then marched for Fort Cumming,
where we arrived about sunset and reported to General Edward
Hatch, then commanding the regiment and also the district of
New Mexico, giving him all the details pertaining to the
engagement.

General Hatch asked me about how many men I could mount the
next morning, the 21st. I informed him about how many. He
ordered me to have my troop in readiness by daylight and
report to Lieutenant Demmick, then commanding Troop L, and
follow that Indian trail.

My troop was ready as ordered, and marched. We followed
those Indians to the line of Old Mexico, but were unable to
overtake them. Such was my last engagement with hostile
Indians."

The formula that Negroes cannot command, with the further assertion
that colored soldiers will neither follow nor obey officers of their
own race, we have now taken out of the heads of its upholders, and
away from its secure setting of type on the printed page, and applied
it to the facts. Negro soldiers have shown their ability to command by
commanding, not always with shoulder-straps, to be sure, but
nevertheless commanding. With wearying succession, instance after
instance, where Negroes have exercised all manner of military command
and always creditably, have extended for us a recital to the border of
monotony, and made formidable test of our patience. In France and the
West Indies, in Central and South America, Negroes have commanded
armies, in one instance fighting under Napoleon, at other times to
free themselves from slavery and their countries from the yoke of
oppression. In our own country, from the days of the Revolution, when
fourteen American officers declared in a memorial to the Congress,
that a "Negro man called Salem Poor, of Colonel Frye's regiment,
Captain Ames' company, in the late battle at Charlestown, behaved like
an _experienced officer_, as well as an excellent soldier;"[36] from
the first war of the nation down to its last, Negro soldiers have been
evincing their capacity to command. In the Civil War, where thousands
of colored soldiers fought for the Union, their ability to command has
been evidenced in a hundred ways, on scouts and expeditions, in camp
and in battle; on two notable occasions, Negro officers gallantly
fought their commands side by side with white officers, and added
lustre to the military glory of the nation. Upon the re-organization
of the Regular Army at the close of the war the theatre shifted to
our Western frontier, where the Negro soldier continued to display his
ability to command. Finally, in the Spanish War, just closed, the
Negro soldier made the nation again bear witness not alone to his
undaunted bravery, but also to his conspicuous capacity to command.
Out of this abundant and conclusive array of incontestable facts,
frankly, is there anything left to the arbitrary formula that Negroes
cannot command, but a string of ipse dixits hung on a very old, but
still decidedly robust prejudice? There is no escape from the
conclusion that as a matter of fact, with opportunity, Negroes differ
in no wise from other men in capacity to exercise military command.

Undoubtedly substantial progress has been made respecting colored
officers since 1863, when colored soldiers were first admitted in
considerable numbers into the army of the Union. At the period of the
Civil War colored officers for colored soldiers was little more than
thought of; the sole instance comprised the short-lived colored
officers of the three regiments of Louisiana Native Guards, and the
sporadic appointments made near the close of the war, when the
fighting was over.

More than three hundred colored officers served in the volunteer army
in the war with Spain. Two Northern States, Illinois and Kansas, and
one Southern State, North Carolina, put each in the field as part of
its quota a regiment of colored troops officered throughout by colored
men. Ohio and Indiana contributed each a separate battalion of colored
soldiers entirely under colored officers.

In 1863 a regiment of colored troops with colored officers was
practically impossible. In 1898 a regiment of colored volunteers
without some colored officers was almost equally impossible. In 1863
a regiment of colored soldiers commanded by colored officers would
have been a violation of the sentiment of the period and an outrage
upon popular feelings, the appearance of which in almost any Northern
city would hardly fail to provoke an angry and resentful mob. At that
period, even black recruits in uniforms were frequently assaulted in
the streets of Northern cities. We have seen already how Sergeant
Rivers, of the First South Carolina Volunteers, had to beat off a mob
on Broadway in New York city. In 1898 regiments and battalions of
colored troops, with colored colonels and majors in command, came out
of States where the most stringent black laws were formerly in force,
and were greeted with applause as they passed on their way to their
camps or to embark for Cuba.

In Baltimore, in 1863, the appearance of a Negro in the uniform of an
army surgeon started a riot, and the irate mob was not appeased until
it had stripped the patriotic colored doctor of his shoulder-straps.
In 1898, when the Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers passed
through the same city, the colored officers of Company L of that
regiment were welcomed with the same courtesies as their white
colleagues--courtesies extended as a memorial of the fateful progress
of the regiment through the city of Baltimore in 1861. One State which
went to war in 1861 to keep the Negro a slave, put in the field a
regiment of colored soldiers, officered by colored men from the
colonel down. To this extent has prejudice been made to yield either
to political necessity, or a generous change in sentiment. Thus were
found States both North and South willing to give the Negro the full
military recognition to which he is entitled.

With this wider recognition of colored officers the general
government has not kept pace. In the four regiments of colored
volunteers recruited by the general government for service in the war
with Spain, only the lieutenants were colored. Through the extreme
conservatism of the War Department, in these regiments no colored
officers, no matter how meritorious, could be appointed or advanced to
the grade of captain. Such was the announced policy of the department,
and it was strictly carried out. The commissioning of this large
number of colored men even to lieutenancies was, without doubt, a
distinct step in advance; it was an entering wedge. But it was also an
advance singularly inadequate and embarrassing. In one of these
colored volunteer, commonly called "immune" regiments, of the twelve
captains, but five had previous military training, while of the
twenty-four colored lieutenants, eighteen had previous military
experience, and three of the remaining six were promoted from the
ranks, so that at the time of their appointment twenty-one lieutenants
had previous military training. Of the five captains with previous
military experience, one, years ago, had been a lieutenant in the
Regular Army; another was promoted from Post Quartermaster-Sergeant; a
third at one time had been First Sergeant of Artillery; the remaining
two had more or less experience in the militia. Of the eighteen
lieutenants with previous military experience, twelve had served in
the Regular Army; eight of these, not one with a service less than
fifteen years, were promoted directly from the ranks of the regulars
for efficiency and gallantry. At the time of their promotion two were
Sergeants, five First Sergeants and one a Post Quartermaster-Sergeant.
The four others from the Regular Army had served five years each. Of
the six remaining Lieutenants with previous military experience, four
had received military training in high schools, three of whom were
subsequently officers in the militia; fifth graduated from a state
college with a military department; the sixth had been for years an
officer in the militia. With this advantage at the start, it is no
extravagance to say that the colored officers practically made the
companies. To them was due the greater part of the credit for whatever
efficiency the companies showed. Moreover, these colored officers were
not behind in intelligence. Among them were four graduates of
universities and colleges, two lawyers, two teachers, one journalist,
five graduates of high schools and academies, and the men from the
Regular Army, as their previous non-commissioned rank indicates, were
of good average intelligence. There is no reason to believe that this
one of the four colored volunteer regiments was in any degree
exceptional.

These are the officers for whom the War Department had erected their
arbitrary bar at captaincy, and declared that no show of efficiency
could secure for them the titular rank which they more than once
actually exercised. For they were repeatedly in command of their
companies through sickness or absence of their captains. They served
as officers without the incentive which comes from hope of promotion.
They were forced to see the credit of their labors go to others, and
to share more than once in discredit for which they were not
responsible. They were, and in this lay their chief embarrassment,
without the security and protection which higher rank would have
accorded them. In case of trial by court-martial, captains and other
higher officers filled the court to the exclusion of almost all
others. These were white men. It is gratifying to record that the War
Department recognized this special injustice to colored officers, and
in the two regiments of colored volunteers recruited for service in
the Philippines all the line-officers are colored men, the field
officers being white, and appointed from the Regular Army in pursuance
of a general policy. Thus far has the general government advanced in
recognition of the military capacity of the Negro. In the swing of the
pendulum the nation is now at the place where the hardy General Butler
was thirty-seven years ago, when he organized the three regiments of
Louisiana Native Guards with all line-officers colored.

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