The Black Civil War Soldiers of Illinois: The Story of the Twenty-ninth U.S. Colored Infantry

By Edward A. Miller, Jr.

Chronicles the Civil War experience of a representative African American regiment

The Black Civil War Soldiers of Illinois tells the story of the Twenty-ninth United States Colored Infantry, one of almost 150 African American regiments to fight in the Civil War and the only such unit assembled by the state of Illinois. The Twenty-ninth took part in the famous Battle of the Crater at Petersburg, joined Grant's forces in the siege of Richmond, and stood on the battlefield when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. In this comprehensive examination of the unit's composition, contribution, and postwar fate, Edward A. Miller, Jr., demonstrates the value of the Twenty-ninth as a means of understanding the Civil War experience of African American soldiers, including the prejudice that shaped their service.

Miller details the formation of the Twenty-ninth, its commendable performance but incompetent leadership during the Petersburg battle, and the refilling of its ranks, mostly by black enlistees who served as substitutes for drafted white men. He recounts the unit's role in the final campaign against the Army of Northern Virginia; its final, needless mission to the Texas border; the tragic postwar fate of most of its officers; and the continued discrimination and economic hardship endured after the war by the soldiers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Release date: Aug 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781643362410

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The Black Civil War Soldiers of Illinois

The Black Civil War Soldiers of Illinois

THE STORY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH U.S. COLORED INFANTRY

Edward A. Miller, Jr.

© 1998 University of South Carolina

Hardback edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 1998 Paperback and ebook editions published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press, 2021

www.uscpress.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/.

ISBN 978-1-57003-199-1 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-64336-240-3 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64336-241-0 (ebook)

Front cover illustration courtesy of the Library of Congress

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Preface

Chapter 1  Finding a Place

Illinois Acts

The Race Issue in Illinois

Recruiting in Illinois

The Chicago Companies

Three More Companies

To the Theater of War

Chapter 2  Campaigns in Virginia

With the Army of the Potomac

On the Line before Petersburg

Chapter 3  Test of Battle

The Crater Battle

Mopping Up

Counting the Cost

Fixing the Blame

Chapter 4  Further War Service

New Recruits

More Reorganization and Support Duty

Completing the Regiment

Chapter 5  War’s End and Final Service

Postwar Events

Mission to Texas

Heading Home

Chapter 6  The Later Years

Crimes, Frauds, and Confusion

Identity and Family Problems

Doctors and Peacetime Soldiers

Successful and Unsuccessful Veterans

An Incomplete Story

Appendix: Some Statistics

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

Map of the area of the Twenty-ninth Infantry’s wartime service

Following page

Pvt. William Buchner, Company A, 1872

Pvt. David Curtis, Company A, circa 1883

Pvt. James Harris, Company H, Baltimore, 1893

Pvt. John Dorsey, Company H, 1892

Pvt. Lewis Martin, Company E, 1865

Pvt. Jefferson Michie, Company A, 1908

Grave of Pvt. Reuben Wilson, Company E, Alexandria, Virginia, National Cemetery

Recruits at Charleston, 1865

Swearing in the First South Carolina Regiment (Colored), later Thirty-third USCT

A typical black soldier

Payday

A soldier’s rest in Alexandria, Virginia

Kitchen at the soldier’s rest in Alexandria, Virginia

Wartime camp at Quincy, Illinois

Black soldiers in action

Before Petersburg, 30 July 1864

Explosion of a mine at Petersburg, 30 July 1864

Charge after the mine explosion, 30 July 1864

Map drawn by a participant at the crater battle

Black troops of Ferrero’s Fourth Division at Petersburg, 9 August 1864

Camp of the chief ambulance officer, Ninth Army Corps, Petersburg, August 1864

Maj. Gen. George Meade, 1864

Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, summer 1864

A drawing of Gen. Burnside, 1864

Brig. Gen. Edward Ferrero and staff, June or July 1864

Brig. Gen. James H. Ledlie and staff, June or July 1864

Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, probably in 1864

Brig. Gen. Henry G. Thomas after the war

Lt. Col. John Armstrong Bross

Brig. Gen. Godfrey Weitzel, 1864

Illinois governor Richard Yates

General Weitzel’s Texas expedition, June 1865

PREFACE

This is the story of a black regiment in the Civil War. My choice of the Twenty-ninth U.S. Colored Infantry, the single black regiment raised in Illinois, was more or less arbitrary. Apart from the well-known Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Colored) and its sister regiment, the Massachusetts Fifty-fifth, few Americans have heard the story of any of the 149 infantry, cavalry, and artillery organizations manned by black troops. Many of their members fought as hard, if not as long, as did the Fifty-fourth, and each of them has an important history, about how mostly uneducated black men, the overwhelming majority of whom were just freed from slavery, adapted themselves to useful service in the armies of the Union.

Most black units had been in uniform for a year when the war ended, although some were kept on for another six or seven months, so their histories are short. Since few of the noncommissioned officers and other enlisted men could read or write, army paperwork was left to the often shorthanded white company officers, most of them former enlisted men commissioned without special training. Consequently, army inspectors faulted the Twenty-ninth for poor paperwork, a condition never corrected because the officers had the more pressing responsibilities of training and disciplining troops.

The stories of many white regiments are enhanced by the large number of letters written by officers and men during the war which have been preserved and by journals and recollections, published and unpublished. Bell Irvin Wiley found no more than twenty examples of letters by black men to add to his memorable work The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union.¹ Forty years of scholarship since the publication of Wiley’s book have turned up more. Those that survive, however, are often heavily edited versions published in newspapers and periodicals during the war.² This study adds a few useful letters culled from the military and pension records of soldiers of the Twenty-ninth Regiment as well as descriptions of events, most recalled many years after the conflict, in affidavits and depositions accompanying requests for pensions. My primary sources for information about the lives of black men in uniform were not the skimpy company and government files in the National Archives but, rather, the military and pension files of the individual soldiers at the same location. Being advocacy documents, the latter records are not always reliable; comrades often supplied supporting letters that were identical word for word because pension agents assembled the files for unlettered veterans. Consequently, some of what soldiers—and their officers—might say must be used with caution, since there is little other information to check alleged incidents and facts.

More than a century since Luis F. Emilio’s memorable 1894 History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1863–1865 (now in print as A Brave Black Regiment), scholars have still given little attention to any single black regiment. One would have assumed that more popular accounts of black regiments would have followed the motion picture Glory, based on Emilio’s book, but there have been none. Perhaps this study will inspire others to undertake the tedious task of reviewing the sparse organizational papers and the thousands of individual files that hold the story of a single regiment.

Selecting the Twenty-ninth U.S. Colored Infantry came as the result of a request by Wanda S. Dowell and Susan G. Cumby, dedicated archivists at the Fort Ward Museum and Historical Site in Alexandria, Virginia. They asked me to assist in learning about two black regiments thought to have served in Alexandria during the war. We learned that both had passed through the city, but their short visits did not add much to local history. This preliminary look at black military history revealed the scarcity of published data, so I continued the project with the Illinois regiment. Ironically, my research revealed that the Twenty-ninth Regiment had enlisted many men in Virginia and Maryland, so there was a local connection, after all.

The history of the black soldier is in many ways a tragedy because the bright hope of freedom which brought many to the recruiting tables was not met in postwar America. The black veteran was not recognized as having earned his right to full citizenship. These poorly educated men gained little preparation for life after the army, and few of them had more than day-to-day employment in menial labor for the rest of their lives. Their contribution to the military victory of the Union was small, but a soldier’s work is not measured this way. What can be said of the men of the Twenty-ninth U.S. Colored Infantry is that they did their duty. This is the best compliment one can pay to a soldier.

THE BLACK CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS OF ILLINOIS

Chapter 1

FINDING A PLACE

Black soldiers served in the American armed forces from the Revolution onward, but not until the Civil War were their numbers significant. No provision for black enlistments existed at the war’s beginning. Still, groups of Northern blacks requested acceptance in defense of the Union, and antislavery and egalitarian-leaning whites supported their cause. Initial war enthusiasm was not sufficient, however, to overcome the common Northern prejudice about the ability of blacks and the limits that law and custom placed on their acceptance for military service in state militias and in the volunteer and regular armies. But more important than prejudice was the belief that the war would be over quickly and thus blacks were not needed. This changed when the Battle of Bull Run and other early engagements showed that the rebels would not be defeated easily, and preparations for a long conflict began. The initial surge of enlistments which followed the surrender of Fort Sumter slackened, and many militia regiments, signed up for only ninety days, went home, aggravating a persistent manpower shortage. Now, however, slaves were in federally occupied rebel areas, and more of them were entering Union lines. They could provide labor to help with building roads and intrenchments and working as porters and teamsters in the army’s support system.

The problem with the use of blacks, and especially the escaped slaves who were among them and considered to be contraband of war, was the administration’s concern for the loyalty of border slave states. President Lincoln’s position was that these states must not be lost, so contraband slaves were initially subject to eventual—and sometimes immediate—return to their owners. Government policy held that the war could not be seen as a crusade against slavery, although for many it clearly was. The declared reason for opposing the Confederacy was to preserve the Union. Under these circumstances it was understandable that blacks could have no significant role in the war effort. Congress was not insensitive to the plight of contrabands, and in the Confiscation Act approved on 13 March 1862 it prohibited army and navy officers from using their forces to return fugitive slaves to their owners. The act further provided that any officer found guilty by court-martial of violating this provision would be dismissed from the service. Within a few months another bill, the Militia Act of 17 July, authorized the president to receive into the service of the United States, for the purpose of constructing intrenchments, or performing camp duty, or any other labor, or any military or naval service for which they were found competent, persons of African descent. The act further provided that when any man or boy of African descent, who by the laws of any State shall owe service or labor to any person who during the present rebellion has levied war, or has borne arms against the United States, or has adhered to their enemies by giving them aid and comfort, shall provide service under this act, he, his mother, and his wife, and children, shall forever therefore be free, any law usage, or custom whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding. Based on a 20 April 1863 opinion of the solicitor of the War Department, pay was fixed at the same ten dollars monthly provided to black laborers, of which three dollars may be in clothing, and blacks providing military or naval service were not to receive the federal bounty (then one hundred dollars) to which white enlistees were entitled. White private soldiers at the time were paid thirteen dollars plus a clothing allowance of three dollars and fifty cents a month. This and another law, the Second Confiscation Act, approved simultaneously, provided that all rebel-owned slaves within or who might enter Union lines or found in any rebel area occupied by Union forces would be considered prisoners of war and shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again be held as slaves. As for slaves of citizens loyal to the Union, the act did not give them freedom but, rather, allowed persons who first made an oath that they had not served in the Confederate forces or aided those forces to have their fugitive slaves returned. The slaves of loyal citizens were somewhat protected because the law prohibited any person in the army or navy from deciding the validity of ownership claims and called for the dismissal from the service of anyone giving up such claimed slaves. In addition to other provisions, the Second Confiscation Act gave the president discretion to employ as many persons of African descent as he may deem necessary and proper for the suppression of the rebellion.¹

Lincoln implemented the acts by his 22 July 1862 executive order, directing military commanders in the states of Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas to seize and use all property needed for military purposes and to employ as laborers, within and from said States, so many persons of African descent as can be advantageously used for military and naval purposes. The order said: As to both property and persons of African descent, accounts shall be kept sufficiently accurate and in detail to show quantities and amounts, and from whom both property and such persons shall have come, as a basis on which compensation can be made in proper cases. This authority did not mean blacks would be accepted as soldiers to be armed and organized in military units but, rather, allowed them to serve in labor organizations.²

Some successful and unsuccessful attempts had been made earlier to enlist and arm blacks, the first being Maj. Gen. David Hunter’s unauthorized May 1862 roundup of blacks in the Sea Islands area of South Carolina, then under federal occupation. This effort was disallowed by Lincoln but had little chance for success anyway because Hunter could not pay the troops. Most were sent home in a few months, leaving but one company as a nucleus for a future regiment raised in October 1862, designated the Thirty-third U.S. Colored Infantry, and mustered into U.S. service the following 31 January. Free and slave blacks, officered in part by men of their own race, were enrolled in the First Louisiana Native Guards (later renamed the Seventy-third U.S. Colored Infantry) in September 1862, followed by four more Louisiana regiments by early March 1863. That spring a regiment was formed in Kansas (later the Seventy-ninth U.S. Colored Infantry), and a major recruiting effort began in the Mississippi Valley under the personal direction of the army’s adjutant general, Lorenzo Thomas.³

The catalyst for the use of blacks in large numbers and in organized military units was Lincoln’s acceptance of the inevitability of emancipation. His proclamation of 22 September 1862 promised future freedom for slaves in rebellion states, except for those in some cities that were later to be identified as Union occupied, and counties in Louisiana and Virginia. As for slaves in loyal states, Lincoln promised to recommend to Congress a measure tendering pecuniary aid to those states that may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits. As a further concession to states that believed freed slaves would be a danger or an overwhelming social problem, Lincoln called for support of colonization of freed blacks in overseas nations whose governments might agree to accept them. Although the preliminary proclamation freed few slaves not already considered de facto free, nonetheless, it was seen as the vehicle of liberation by blacks everywhere. The implementing proclamation of 1 January 1863 addressed the question of black soldiers and sailors directly, saying that blacks will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations and other places—not exactly granting full equality with whites in terms of promising combat duty but representing a change from simply being given labor assignments. Within the War Department boards were created to examine candidates for officer positions, and the Bureau for Colored Troops was established in the adjutant general’s office to govern the raising of black units. Black soldiers, volunteers and later conscripts, were mustered directly into the service of the United States and were not to be assigned as state troops. They were organized and led by officers under U.S. authority. This was unlike most white regiments, militia and volunteer, which had their officers appointed by governors of individual states. Other than two Massachusetts volunteer regiments, and a few others that would retain state identity, each of the 149 black infantry, cavalry, and artillery units was designated or redesignated a regiment or a battery of the United States Colored Troops (USCT), without identification of the state from which its members were recruited. The soldiers were, however, credited to the quotas of the jurisdictions in which they were enlisted.⁴

State authority over one aspect of the U.S. Colored Troops was retained; states were authorized to recruit black soldiers and to provide camps of assembly for their organization into regiments and batteries. The state’s incentive was that a black soldier counted the same as a white recruit in meeting a state’s Washington-imposed volunteer quota. On the day of mustering in, and after an oath administered by a U.S. Army officer, black units became a federal responsibility. When conscription began in mid-1863, meeting volunteer quotas became more important, since the draft was used only to make up the difference in recruits between the number required to meet quotas and the number enlisted. Exemptions could be purchased, however, and paid substitutes were accepted, thus benefiting the more affluent members of society. The draft itself caused riots among the working class in New York, and numerous assaults on black troops were reported. In Illinois armed resistance to the draft was reported in July and August in Fulton County, Williamson and surrounding counties, Danville, Joliet, and Peoria, the latter unrest, as in New York, attributed primarily to Irish working men. Monumental victories and enormous casualties at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in early July 1863 took the edge off such protests nationally, and they eventually diminished. Of course, declining opposition to black troops may also be attributed to the North’s growing sense of reality. As one wartime soldier recalled, tongue in cheek: Just in proportion as the certainty of a draft increased, did the prejudice against Negro soldiers decrease. It was discovered that Negroes were not only loyal persons and good mule drivers, but exceedingly competent to bear arms.⁵

ILLINOIS ACTS

Illinois governor Richard Yates, a former Whig congressman already earning a reputation as the state’s much-admired war leader, may have had the use of black soldiers in mind when he urged President Lincoln in July 1862 to accept the services of all loyal men, presumably without regard to color. His point was that the rebellion had to be destroyed and that Illinois was ready for the call to total war. His view was shared by others in the state; a colored company had been started in Galesburg, and many of Illinois’s black citizens responded to the call of agents of eastern states, particularly those from Massachusetts. Black interest in military service was not high, but it was encouraged by black leader Frederick Douglass’s March 1863 call, Men of Color to Arms, and was helped by Douglass’s active recruiting efforts. His emphasis on the killing of slaveholders did not do much to stir blacks in the North, and the fact that blacks were paid less than their white comrades and were refused commissions made the recruiting job difficult.⁶

A 15 June 1863 editorial in the Chicago Daily Tribune described changing conditions in Illinois, noting that opposition to black enlistments was declining in the army and among citizens. The example of Massachusetts showed that blacks adjusted well to military life and duties, and two hundred and fifty Illinois blacks had gone to Massachusetts regiments. It would be better, however, the newspaper observed, if Illinois blacks could enlist as part of the quota of their own great State, and Chicago alone could supply three to four hundred men. Finally, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton was called on to authorize Governor Yates to raise a regiment that will stand as much hardship, and fight as desperately, and kill as many rebels in battle, as any equal number of men of the purest Anglo-Saxon blood that have gone to the wars.⁷

This editorial was sent by Joseph Medill, the newspaper’s editor, to the clerk of the Senate Military Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C., asking the official to talk to Stanton and adding that the three hundred blacks in Chicago ready to join up refuse to go off to Massachusetts, and I don’t blame them. Upon receiving this correspondence, Stanton ordered the army to send Yates the appropriate authority. Nothing appears to have been done immediately, and Yates wired the secretary again on 28 July, asking whether an army officer then in Illinois recruiting black men for units in other states was also authorized to raise black units in the state. Stanton replied the same day, informing Yates that the officer was so empowered but adding, If you can raise one or two regiments [of black troops], authority will be given to you. A month later the governor answered: It is my duty to raise a colored regiment in this State, and he requested permission to do so. In late September he was finally authorized to raise a regiment of Infantry to be composed of colored men, to be mustered into the United States service for three years, or during the war, the order further specifying that no federal enlistment bounty was to be paid to the blacks. Yates was also sent instructions outlining the composition of a colored infantry regiment. The unit would have one colonel, lieutenant colonel, major, chaplain, surgeon (and two assistant surgeons), adjutant (first lieutenant), quartermaster (first lieutenant), and sergeant major and three other enlisted men in the headquarters and ten companies of infantry. There was no battalion organization. A company was authorized one captain, a first and second lieutenant, a first sergeant, three sergeants, six corporals, two musicians, a wagoner, and between sixty-four and eighty-three private soldiers.⁸

Within days Yates was complaining that pay and bounty inequities between whites and blacks would make enlistments difficult. Of course, Washington told the state that it could not and would not correct the condition because the War Department interpreted the law to fix the pay for black troops at ten dollars, including three dollars in clothing, so the scene was set for Illinois to begin recruiting. On 26 October Governor Yates issued his General Orders no. 44, perhaps delaying because of bitter Copperhead (antiwar Democrat) opposition to free black soldiers within the state. The first enlistments in the First Regiment Illinois Volunteers (Colored), as the unit was initially named, were made on 1 November: two sergeants, two corporals, one wagoner, and about a dozen privates, all of them signed on at Quincy, where Company A was the first to be organized. Those enlisted as noncommissioned officers had no military experience but were thought by recruiters to have characteristics or qualifications—such as the ability to read and write—which would be useful in organizing and running the unit and keeping up with army paperwork. Recruiting went slowly, perhaps because many black men had already been enlisted into regiments from other states, whose agents traveled all over the area, but probably equally because of the difference in pay between black and white soldiers and a deep current of racial prejudice in Illinois which led prospective recruits to expect discrimination against them by white soldiers and civilians.⁹

THE RACE ISSUE IN ILLINOIS

The background of race relations in Illinois was not one of tolerance; many early settlers came from or through the South and had a strong prejudice against blacks. Although the 1787 Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude, Illinois, when part of Indiana and later, maintained for twenty-five years a registered servants program (applied to blacks only) of up to lifetime indenture, allowing slavery in all but name of supposedly free blacks. Only a year after the state joined the Union, 1818, it passed the first of a series of black codes that continued in effect in various forms until 1865. These laws required blacks to record at the county seat a certificate of freedom and a description of family members, information allowing overseers of the poor to expel them from the state when it was thought necessary. Other provisions withheld court standing and the vote from blacks, allowed flogging of lazy or disobedient blacks, and made harboring of a black by another black a felony calling for a fine and a thirty-five-stripe whipping. Free blacks entering the state had to post a one-thousand-dollar bond as guarantee against becoming a public charge, and blacks who could not pay fines could be sold into indentured service. Furthermore, blacks could not serve in the militia and were not provided education by law.¹⁰

There was a two-way traffic in slaves; freed or free blacks were kidnapped and sent to the South, particularly from the Shawneetown area, a practice that was not a felony in Illinois. An underground railway of slaves from border states, most crossing the Mississippi River at Quincy, Alton, and Chester, ran in the other direction. Tolerance of blacks was greater in the northern half of the state than in the southern Egypt section but not sufficiently to prevent passage of an 1853 law prohibiting blacks from entering the state under threat of a fifty-dollar fine. Failure to pay led, as in similar codes established earlier, to sale of the black at a sheriff’s auction. Asked in 1862 if the state should modify the law making it a crime for a Negro to set foot in Illinois, 150,000 out of 260,000 voters in a constitutional referendum opposed repeal. In February 1863 six blacks were convicted of living in the state and were sold to the highest bidder in lieu of paying the fine. This law was not repealed until 1864—the remaining black codes were finally abolished in February 1865, almost at war’s end; not until 1870, and passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, were Illinois blacks given the vote.¹¹

Illinois’s Civil War treatment of blacks was not much different than that of other states. Some were more enlightened in terms of discriminatory laws, but probably most Northerners, regardless of state, shared a common view of the black man which was not much different from the racist, white supremacy views of Southerners. But prejudice was not the entire story, particularly in Illinois. There opposition to blacks was stronger in urban areas because of economic rivalry between unskilled blacks and white laborers, many of the latter being recent immigrants. Farmers were not much concerned economically about blacks, although during the war antiblack sentiment became more acute among farmers of Southern origin. Not all blacks accepted the legal restrictions on their lives in Illinois, but certainly few of them who recognized their subjugation were able to do much about it. In Chicago a group of well-off blacks formed the Repeal Association and circulated petitions calling for the end of black codes. In January 1864, just as recruiting for Illinois’s black regiment was getting seriously under way, some of the bite was taken out of the black exclusion codes’ involuntary servitude punishment clause by a state supreme court decision, but the repeal of exclusion itself had to wait another year. A contemporary writer said of black exclusion that there was strong public sentiment against it, and, whatever the reason, relaxation of enforcement probably allowed more blacks to drift in from loyal slave states Missouri and Kentucky, from which, it turned out, the majority of the blacks recruited for the Illinois regiment would come.¹²

What incentives encouraged blacks to come to Illinois and remain there? For most of them freedom from bondage was the reason for their migration, and in Illinois they could work for a daily wage. The pay, however, was usually barely sufficient to maintain more than a subsistence existence, and there were no guarantees that it would continue. The body of potential recruits was made up almost entirely of farm and city laborers, few of them with any promise of a future for themselves or their families. Black society, judging from the descriptions veterans recorded in their pension requests, did provide some mutual support and limited social activities, particularly in towns. An army enlistment was attractive to some, however, because it offered regular pay, not as a protection from prejudice or exploitation. It does not appear that patriotism, a desire to serve Illinois, or a wish to help other blacks gain freedom were important considerations.

Prejudice against black soldiers was, as would be expected, strong in the ranks of white regiments, especially among those from Southern and border states, and among the Irish and other groups of recent immigrants. The peak of antiblack sentiment in the army was in mid- and late 1862, and many feared that putting blacks in uniform threatened white supremacy. Other objections were spin-offs of these beliefs, such as the conviction that blacks were not smart enough to soldier. As it turned out, black units were useful and were generally accepted by their white comrades, not because the blacks immediately became outstanding soldiers but because blacks were often used in undesirable fatigue and garrison duties formerly performed by whites. In addition, being able to get a commission in a black regiment was an attractive proposition to many white enlisted men, though there was never universal acceptance of blacks in the military.¹³

The Illinois soldier’s reaction to emancipation and blacks in uniform was much the same as elsewhere in the West—initial hostility followed by reluctant acceptance. An Illinois white regiment, the 109th Volunteer Infantry, which had been raised in Anna on the southern tip of the state in September 1862, was disarmed and ordered into close confinement … during the continuance of the war, largely because of opposition in the ranks to the Emancipation Proclamation and the arming of blacks. Another, the 128th Illinois, formed in November 1862, was disbanded because of a high desertion rate, possibly caused by the prospect of white soldiers serving in the army with black troops. The Ninetieth Illinois Volunteers, the Irish Legion, a Chicago regiment, was also hostile to the government’s policy toward blacks as announced by Adjutant General Thomas, and its colonel wrote to a newspaper, saying that he and his men would not basely stultify themselves and renounce the honest convictions of their hearts. The colonel was ‘dishonorably dismissed’ by order of the Secretary of War ‘for a highly insubordinate statement respecting the Adjutant General of the Army [Thomas] published in the Chicago Times over his official signature.’¹⁴

Thomas, on the other hand, reported that, when he addressed Union troops at Cairo in March 1863 on the black troop policy, it was not enthusiastically received by the troops, with one exception, the regiment from Illinois. Some white soldiers saw the wisdom of enlisting black troops, a position expressed by an Illinois veteran in a letter home: I think if a negro could save their lives [whites’] by sacrificing theirs they [the whites] would be willing to accept blacks. Another wrote that his comrades thought that, if a negro can stop an enemy’s ball, why let him go and do it[?] Use of black troops as a way of hastening defeat of the rebellion did not overcome prejudice against blacks generally, but it did reduce the aversion to the abolition of slavery and strengthened the promise of black regiments, as far as the army was concerned. Black soldiers had fought in several engagements by early 1864, when Illinois’s black recruiting effort was at its peak, and had generally conducted themselves well. In Illinois, however, Copperhead influence was high, and public opinion was generally hostile to black enlistments, despite the sometimes impressive performance of black regiments. This slowed signing up recruits for the Illinois regiment. Well-publicized massacres of black prisoners by the rebels may also have weakened black men’s enthusiasm for military service. The most important example of reported barbarity occurred at Fort Pillow on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi above Memphis in April 1864. Here Confederate troops under the command of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest shot down a large number of black troops after they had surrendered.¹⁵ This atrocity, occurring at the very time the new Illinois regiment was starting out for war, would be remembered.

The West was rich with candidates for black regiments, and recruiting agents had combed much of it, particularly Missouri and Kentucky, but they did not neglect states with smaller black populations. Indiana, for example, saw it necessary to prohibit agents from soliciting its blacks, under penalty of being arrested and summarily punished. There the governor had asked to raise a black regiment for reasons similar to Governor Yates’s—not so much because our colored citizens were anxious to enter the service, as for the reason that the State had been and was overrun with agents representing other States, and he had found it necessary, to prevent the men from being enticed away and credited elsewhere. Governor Yates’s reaction to the very active agents from outside Illinois, and facing a high October 1863 quota for enlistees, was similar. He proclaimed late that month, I forbid all recruiting in this State except for our own regiments, a general rule that had particular immediacy with respect to raising the first black companies.¹⁶

An Illinois citizen who knew Ulysses S. Grant in Galena before the latter’s return to the army, Augustin Chetlain, a staunch Union backer and early militia volunteer, was commissioned a brevet brigadier general in 1863 to gather up blacks in Tennessee. He worked for General Thomas, but, since enlistments by such federal officers were credited to the states in which the men were found, no real conflict about his efforts arose with state officials. General Thomas, the primary federal recruiter of blacks, did quarrel a year later with Illinois’s adjutant general about the disposition of four hundred blacks at Cairo, most of them contrabands from Southern and border states on the Mississippi. Thomas wanted them sent to Paducah, but Illinois refused, even though the four hundred would be credited to that state. This could have been the result of distrust, given the frequent quarrels between the state and federal governments over recruit counts.¹⁷