150 years ago: Arrival of the 54th Massachusetts and an issue with flags of truce

On June 3, 1863, Major-General David Hunter addressed a letter to Governor John A. Andrew, reporting the arrival of a new regiment at Hilton Head:

Governor: I have the honor to announce that the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts (colored troops), Colonel Shaw commanding, arrived safely in this harbor this afternoon and have been sent to Port Royal Island. The regiment had an excellent passage, and from the appearance of the men I doubt not that this command will yet win a reputation and place in history deserving the patronage you have given them. Just as they were steaming up the bay I received from Col. James Montgomery, commanding Second South Carolina Regiment, a telegraphic dispatch, of which certified copy is inclosed. Colonel Montgomery’s is but the initial step of a system of operations which will rapidly compel the rebels either to lay down their arms and sue for restoration to the Union or to withdraw their slaves into the interior, thus leaving desolate the most fertile and productive of their counties along the Atlantic sea-board.

The Fifty-fourth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers shall soon be profitably and honorably employed, and I beg that you will send for service in this department the other colored regiments which Colonel Shaw tells me you are now organizing and have in forward preparation.

Hunter also included a copy of recent correspondence to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Hunter had complained to the rebel leader about the treatment of black troops and laborers captured by Confederates. I’ll save full discussion of that subject for another day.

The arrival of the 54th Massachusetts, just as the 2nd South Carolina returned from the Combahee Ferry Raid, offers up yet another example of the Emancipation Proclamation applied to action. Yet, as we know, there was a contrast between the method by which the two regiments were recruited…or shall we say “gathered.”

At the same time, a message from the Confederates arrived at Hilton Head. Brigadier-General Thomas Jordan expressed his outrage about certain particulars by which flags of truce were exchanged. Just before the Combahee Raid, Brigadier-General W. S. Walker complained about a new Federal practice.

When we wish to communicate we are deprived of the opportunity by the action of the enemy in sending over negroes and their officers to receive us. When they wish to communicate with us they send officers representing white commands in order to secure a hearing. If this is permitted the advantages of such intercourse will be entirely with the Abolition forces and we will be debarred from them.

Indeed, can you imagine the awkward situation where a master might approach, under a white flag, his former chattel asking for a parlay?

In his letter to Hunter on June 3, Jordon echoed Walker’s observations:

The virtual effect of which is apparent to exclude us from all communication by flags of truce, while our enemy retains that privilege by compliance in the composition of the escort of his flag with our regulations. I cannot believe that this is your actual intention, that is, that you have determined by the obnoxious complexion of the detachment sent to receive our flags to reject all flags of truce from our side, while exercising the privilege of the flag of truce to its fullest extent on your own side. Therefore am I induced to present the matter frankly and plainly for your consideration, and to ask to be made acquainted with your future intentions in the premises.

Hunter responded to Jordon a few days later:

That no invidious distinction, as you seem to suppose, was intended to be made between the class of officers instructed to receive flags of truce from you and those sent by me with flags of truce to your lines.

The Government of the United States recognizes no difference between officers mustered into her service and fighting under her flag. All are equally competent to be intrusted with the duties of their respective positions, and all are accorded equal protection and rights.

It is the invariable practice of all armies for the senior officer on outpost duty to receive flags of truce sent to that portion of the lines under his charge, and it happened on the occasion of your sending a flag to which you refer that the regiment on duty was the First South Carolina Regiment of loyal volunteers. No change of the regular practice was thought necessary in the case, nor can any change of the practice, invidious to any portion of the soldiers of the United States, be allowed. The flag of the United States covers all its defenders with equal honor and protection, irrespective of any accidents of color. This is now the avowed and settled policy of my Government and of all other governments under whose flags colored soldiers, whether African or East Indian, have been or are employed. No principle of international military usage is better settled or more universally recognized amongst civilized nations. The flag of truce sent to you by my order was, as is also usual, intrusted to a staff officer of the post through which it was sent, and in so sending it no regard was had to the fact whether he was or was not commissioned to serve with colored troops.

Yes, if now the two South Carolina regiments, comprised of former slaves, was assigned garrison duty to relieve the white regiments for field campaigns… well who do you think will be accepting those truce requests?

But I don’t think Hunter was completely honest here. Without doubt the arrangements were made to press a delicate point. Perhaps something akin to refusing to sit at the back of the bus in the midst of war?

As the number of blacks in arms or otherwise employed by the Federals increased, such as here with the 54th Massachusetts, the Confederates faced an ever more complex situation. Escaped slaves were easily translated to spades worth of sand not excavated, cotton not harvested, or other labor not completed. And with the arming of those former slaves, the Confederates were forced into awkward, to say the least, situations.

Debate the causes all you want. Cite speeches and letters of firebrands, please. But at the front lines of the Civil War, slavery was at center stage.

(Hunter’s letter to Governor Andrew is from OR, Series I, Volume 14, Serial 20, pages 462-3. Walker’s letter to Jordon is in the same serial, page 962. Jordon’s letter to Hunter on page 464. And Hunter’s response on pages 465-66.)

Cleveland discovering, honoring African-American Civil War veterans

From the Northeast Ohio Plain Dealer:

Names of black Civil War veterans to be added to the Soldiers & Sailors Monument in Cleveland

It’s an honor that’s been 119 years in the making, but officials overseeing the Soldiers and Sailors Monument downtown now say they have verified the service of 140 black Civil War veterans and are beginning to add their names to the monument’s wall.

The monument, opened in 1894 to honor local residents who fought in the war, is a familiar sight on Public Square, with its imposing 125-foot column topped with a statue of the Goddess of Freedom.

Beneath, in the Memorial Room, the names of 9,000 local residents who served the Union are engraved in the marble tablets that line the walls. But only 18 are black soldiers, even though hundreds from the area are thought to have enlisted….

“It’s amazing,” said Jerry Young, one of the trustees who led the effort to verify the black soldiers’ and sailors’ service. “We’ve got a lot of names to add. It’s my hope that we can do that by late summer or early fall.

“What people need to understand is that these men were real heroes,” Young added. “These guys served at great peril because of the Confederacy’s policy of no black prisoners. They knew that going in. The policy was to sell them back into slavery or execute them on the spot.”

To be included on the monument wall a person must have enlisted from Cuyahoga County, or have been one of hundreds of local black soldiers and sailors who left the county to serve in regiments based in Massachusetts and elsewhere because Ohio barred them from service until 1863.

Soldiers also must have either been killed in action or completed their tour of duty to qualify to be on the monument’s wall.

In addition to the 140 people now in the process of being approved for the monument, Young said that volunteers are “one piece of information away” from verifying about 60 more people for inclusion….

(Read full article here)

The article goes on to mention a separate memorial being placed in Cleveland’s Woodlawn Cemetery honoring 63 African-American veterans buried there. Those involved appear to have the right focus – not just listing names to fit a slate but rather researching the subject properly. Not only does that lend an air of authority, but no doubt some interesting stories.

The Cuyahoga County Soldiers and Sailor’s Monument was originally completed in 1894.

It recently underwent restoration work, totaling some $2 million. Among the statues surrounding the monument is one depicting a Navy mortar crew in action. At least one of the crew depicted is African-American. But this bronze interior panel is perhaps more evocative.

Arming the Slaves (Courtesy Cuyahoga County Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument website)

150 Years Ago: Bricks for Fort Clinch… gathered by the “Sable Arm”

I’m a bit early with this sesquicentennial themed post.  But there are several events “stacked up” at the end of this month, furthermore the topic goes well with today’s holiday – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Fort Clinch, near Fernandina Beach, Florida, protected the entrance to St. Mary’s River, bordering Georgia and Florida.  The five-million or so bricks of Fort Clinch have captured my attention on each visit to the site.  Even a casual observer notes the distinct line of colors in the brickwork.

Fort Clinch – looking to the west end of the gorge wall

Most of the lower, grayer bricks are from the initial construction period and were drawn from local sources.  Although started in 1847, work proceeded slowly.  Even when Federals occupied the fort in March 1862, the work was still far from complete.  Authorities felt, even though the fort was a backwater in a backwater theater, Fort Clinch should be completed in order to shore up defenses along the coast.   Such efforts required bricks… and labor.

Project engineer Captain Alfred F. Sears began contracting “contraband” labor in 1862.  But he was short of bricks, with no available source on the barrier island.  The brickyard which had supplied the fort’s builders before the war lay some thirty miles upstream on the St. Mary’s River, behind Confederate lines.  With Sears’ urgings, an expedition formed in mid-January 1863 with the aim to secure the bricks.  It is easy to overlook this activity with much larger events occurring in the major theaters of war at around the same time.  Call them “raids” or “expeditions,” such forays occurred with regularity along the coastlines during the war.  What draws my attention to this particular expedition are the troops employed – the First (US) South Carolina Infantry.

The 1st South Carolina first formed, by order of General David Hunter, in the spring of 1862 from contrabands at Hilton Head.  Under political pressure, the regiment was disbanded.  But by November the regiment reformed under Colonel Thomas W. Higginson.  Despite the state designation, the regiment consisted of a number of escaped slaves from Georgia and Florida.  That factor worked in favor of the expedition.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Despite the military air of his portrait, Higginson was not a military man by training.  A minister and ardent abolitionist, Higginson hailed from Massachusetts.  Before the war he’d supported John Brown, going as far to say that slavery had to end even if it meant war.  And when war came, Higginson went as a Captain of the 51st Massachusetts.  His beliefs and reputation, despite his lack of experience, led General Rufus Saxton to offer command the 1st South Carolina to Higginson.

Higginson’s expedition left Beaufort, South Carolina on January 23.  The 1st South Carolina, consisting of 462 officers and men, loaded into three steamers.  As reports go, Higginson’s was one of the worst in terms of formatting.  In reciting the details, he failed to provide any specifics as to the routes taken or even dates of activities (although he did offer a chapter length account of the expedition in Army Life in a Black Regiment, published in 1870).  By February 1, the expedition returned to South Carolina.  He could report accomplishment of his primary objective – “I have turned over to Captain Sears about 40,000 large-sized bricks, valued at about $1,000, in view of the present high freights.”  Higginson went into great detail about the stores and supplies acquired, and in some cases left behind due to lack of transport.

But in a broader perspective, one might say the 1st South Carolina took away some bricks, but left behind something more important.  The expedition was among the first, if not THE first, operation involving black troops after the effective date of the Emancipation Proclamation.  That fact was not lost on Higginson:

The expedition has carried the regimental flag and the President’s proclamation far into the interior of Georgia and Florida. The men have been repeatedly under fire; have had infantry, cavalry, and even artillery arrayed against them, and have in every instance come off not only with unblemished honor, but with undisputed triumph.

Higginson reported a few slave families returned with the expedition.  But he didn’t figure the count of freed slave to be the measure of success at this stage of the war:

No officer in this regiment now doubts that the key to the successful prosecution of this war lies in the unlimited employment of black troops. Their superiority lies simply in the fact that they know the country, while white troops do not, and, moreover, that they have peculiarities of temperament, position, and motive which belong to them alone. Instead of leaving their homes and families to fight they are fighting for their homes and families, and they show the resolution and the sagacity which a personal purpose gives. It would have been madness to attempt, with the bravest white troops what I have successfully accomplished with black ones. Everything, even to the piloting of the vessels and the selection of the proper points for cannonading, was done by my own soldiers. Indeed, the real conductor of the whole expedition up the Saint Mary’s was Corpl. Robert Sutton, of Company G, formerly a slave upon the Saint Mary’s River, a man of extraordinary qualities, who needs nothing but a knowledge of the alphabet to entitle him to the most signal promotion. In every instance when I followed his advice the predicted result followed, and I never departed from it, however slightly, without finding reason for subsequent regret.

We might write this off as Higginson championing his abolitionist aims. However, he was right in some regards.  The President’s proclamation, now a war aim, depended upon the Army and Navy for successful enforcement.  But likewise, the Army and Navy needed the “Sable Arm” in order to prosecute the war.  The Army needed more Corporal Suttons.

A year or so later the 1st South Carolina became the Thirty-third United States Colored Troops.  Such completed the transition of this pre-Emancipation Proclamation regiment.  But Fort Clinch remained incomplete, needing more bricks.  Eventually bricks shipped down from the north allowed the completion of the major portions of the wall. Their composition stood out as a distinct line compared to the locally produced bricks.

Several colors of Bricks in the Fort Clinch Wall

But this came at a time when brick fortifications were just not worth maintaining.  After decades of neglect and intermittent military activity, the fort received the attention of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1934.  The CCC and later the State of Florida restored the brickwork, adding newer bricks where needed. The end result is a patchwork of colors in the wall.

Perhaps a standing, physical metaphor for us to consider?

Interior of Fort Clinch

(Colonel Higginson’s report appears in OR, Series I, Volume 14, Serial 20, pages 195-198.)

Related articles

• Captain Higginson Takes Command (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Freedom’s Eve ~ Honoring Black Soldiers in the Civil War (indybay.org)
• Emancipation Proclamation at 150: SC pays tribute (miamiherald.com)
• ‘Oh, Freedom’: Hundreds gather in Beaufort to mark the 150th anniversary of slavery’s end (islandpacket.com)