The sergeant, p.19
The Sergeant, page 19
Meanwhile, back at Company I, Ellsworth was wreaking vengeance on the noncommissioned officers who had declined to help him in his fight. Corporal Henry Way was immediately demoted and jailed for mutiny, and by the end of the month, three of the remaining four corporals in the company were stripped of their ranks. He took no action against the sergeants, however, perhaps because they technically outranked him.
Baker was put on trial on May 17, sitting on one side of a long conference table with his army-appointed defender, James Walton, a twenty-five-year-old captain from the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts. A tribunal of twelve officers sat or stood around the table: one from the Fifty-Fifth, one from the Fifty-Fourth, and ten from all-white regiments in the area.
Ellsworth was the first to testify, telling how Baker had struck him with violent blows. Although Captain Walton handled much of the cross-examination, Baker was also allowed to question him, and most of his questions aimed to show he had been trying to comply with Ellsworth’s orders before the fight began.
“Was I buckling on my equipment and getting ready when I fell into line, or doing nothing?” Baker asked.
“He was coming along trying to put his equipment on…,” Ellsworth told the tribunal.
“Was I doing anything at the time you ordered me to attention to prevent me from obeying you?”
Ellsworth hesitated. “I believe he was putting on his equipment.”
It was a brief exchange, lasting only a couple of minutes, but together with the trial of Sampson Goliah a week earlier, it marked one of the first times in US history that a Black man had questioned a white man in court.
The trial lasted less than two days, with the defense trying to show that if Baker had done anything wrong, it came from being simpleminded rather than mutinous. “My opinion is that he is not a sensible man and does not know what he says,” testified Indiana farmhand Henry Call. Nevertheless, he was quickly found guilty and returned to the guardhouse to await sentencing.
Although the army hoped the trial would discourage insubordination, unrest over the pay issue was spreading throughout both the Fifty-Fifth and the Fifty-Fourth, which had also been experiencing a wave of short-lived mutinies. Like the Fifty-Fifth, the first sign of trouble at the Fifty-Fourth came during their return from Florida, when a handful of men unsuccessfully tried to take over their transport ship and steer it to New York, so they could leave the army, which they argued would not be desertion, but the just result of the army failing to live up to its promise of equal pay. On May 12, six men in Company B refused to fall in line, so their lieutenant struck one man with the broadside of his sword, and when they continued to refuse, he pulled out his pistol and shot one man in the chest, fortunately with a relatively minor wound. On May 21, the captain of Company H wounded one of his men in the arm in a similar incident. Two days later, a detachment from Company A refused picket duty and returned to work only after the regimental commander, Colonel Edward Hallowell, put his pistol to each man’s head, asking them: “Do you refuse to go on guard?” After convincing each man to do his duty, Hallowell wrote Massachusetts governor John Andrew that unless the pay issue was resolved soon, the confrontations could turn into “a catastrophe we should always deplore.”
18 “Well, Let Them Shoot”
Throughout this period, the sergeants of the Fifty-Fifth urged their men to maintain order. “Would a mutiny… alleviate the sufferings of our wives and children at home, or increase or hasten our chances of relieving them?” one wrote. “Would it elevate us either mentally, morally or socially, or hasten the time when we shall get rights under this government?… It is the duty of all soldiers to suppress all insubordinations.”
“Keep cool!… Let your motto be Patience and Perserverance,” wrote another.
But even as the sergeants urged calm, many of them were quietly seething. “Should you talk with a goodly number of our sergeants, you would find much hidden discontent, and I say hidden because they too dearly love to serve the cause to utter their discontent among the men,” wrote Sgt. James Trotter.
In Company I, Nicholas Said had his hands full dealing with the jailing of Wallace Baker and Henry Way. David Gray, a twenty-year-old servant from Ohio, was promoted to corporal to replace Way, but that lasted only three weeks. On May 21, 250 soldiers from the Fifty-Fifth were assigned to join elements of the all-white 103rd New York for an assault on a Rebel fortification on James Island, consisting of an artillery battery and a line of rifle pits, hidden among trees and protected by swampland. The operation initially included a ten-man squad from Company I, led by Corporal Gray, but on the eve of the battle, Gray refused to go, saying he would not fight until he received his proper pay. He was immediately charged with “cowardice” (although that, of course, was not the real issue) and stripped of his rank, so it’s likely that Said took command, leading the squad onto the small flotilla of pontoon boats that would take them on their amphibious assault.
Just before daybreak May 22, the men slid off their boats to wade waist-deep through the marshes that lay on either side of the Rebels’ forest-enshrouded fortification. They were just reaching dry land when the Rebels—who were in the midst of eating breakfast—spotted them and began firing, but the men charged with such resolve that the Rebels quickly abandoned the fortification and fled, leaving their food and coffee behind. As the attackers soon found, the reason the Rebels retreated so quickly is that they had no heavy weapons to fire back. The “artillery battery” that stood at the center of the fortification was armed with fake cannons made of wood, with stacks of rocks substituting for cannonballs, to fool the Union forces into thinking it was too formidable to attack.
For more than a mile, the Rebels ran through forest and field, with the Fifty-Fifth and 103rd in hot pursuit, until they reached Grimball’s Causeway, a raised road protected by earthen fortifications and rifle pits, where they turned to face their attackers. What followed was a firefight that became so intense that Maj. Joseph Morrison of the 103rd, the commander of the attack, had to draw his pistol on some of his own men to force them forward, while one of his captains lost his nerve and ran, later to be discovered hiding behind some bushes. In contrast, the men of the Fifty-Fifth reportedly “fought like veterans,” acting with “promptitude,” “cool bravery,” and “[eagerness] to be led into action.” By the time it was over, eight men in the 103rd were seriously wounded, with two others missing and presumed dead. The Fifty-Fifth’s only casualty was Phineas Cost, a former New York farmhand serving with Company E, who sustained a leg wound so serious that he spent the rest of the war being transferred from one frontline hospital to another, probably hoping to rejoin his comrades once he recuperated.
The battle ended when the Rebels, who were also suffering casualties, were reinforced by South Carolina’s Eighteenth Heavy Artillery Battalion. Instead of continuing the attack, Major Morrison led his troops back to Folly Island, after destroying the fake artillery battery and rifle pits where they had first encountered the Rebels. When it was all over, the Fifty-Fifth’s commander, Colonel Hartwell, beamed with pride, noting that “not a man [in his regiment] flinched from his duty.” As a reward, he ordered that each participant in the expedition should be provided with two ounces of whiskey. Unfortunately, Hartwell could not give them what they truly desired: equal pay. But four days later, Nicholas Said got the chance to discuss the pay issue with a slightly more influential officer: Brig. Gen. Alexander Schimmelfennig, who oversaw all nine thousand troops on Folly and Morris islands.
Schimmelfennig, a thirty-nine-year-old Prussian immigrant with a frumpy uniform, bushy beard, and wildly untamed mass of hair, was not well liked on Folly. Many of the American-born officers—irritated with being commanded by a foreigner—mocked his thick accent and purposely mangled his name. Less controversial at the time, drawing little or no criticism from his peers, was the fact that he belonged to a small cadre of current and former Communists in the Union Army. After graduating from an officer training school in Berlin, he had been serving as a captain in the Prussian Army in 1848 when a wave of pro-democracy revolutions had swept through Europe and—caught up in the revolutionary fervor—he had deserted the army and joined a group of rebels fighting against the Prussian occupation of Bavaria. After the Bavarian revolution was quashed, he was court-martialed in absentia and sentenced to death, but he fled to England where, like a number of other high-ranking German-born officers in the Union Army, he joined Karl Marx’s Communist League before migrating to the United States. (Other one-time Marxists in the Union Army included generals August Willich, Franz Sigel, and Louis Blenker, and Colonel Fritz Anneke, most of whom were also very active in the liberal wing of the Republican Party.)
Schimmelfennig’s political views gave him a special affinity for the struggles of the working class, especially the Black soldiers in his brigade. A week before Wallace Baker’s arrest, he pled for the army to resolve the pay dispute. “The men and their families are suffering and greatly in need of the pay which is due them,” he wrote, warning that “the greatest discontent prevails, and in several instances a spirit of mutiny has developed.” He was still awaiting a response on May 26, when Nicholas Said was assigned to work at his headquarters.
It was likely no mere coincidence that, as Wallace Baker and Henry Way languished in their jail cells, awaiting sentencing for mutiny, their apparent sergeant was transferred to serve directly under Schimmelfennig, heading a five-man squad that included Henry Call and Morris Darnell, both of whom had testified on Baker’s behalf at his court-martial. Ostensibly, Said and his squad were supposed to act as guards at Schimmelfennig’s headquarters—the rambling wood-frame building that was once the home of Folly’s beachcomber—but with the threat of mutiny spreading, Schimmelfennig likely wanted a clearer understanding of the growing rebellious behavior in the Fifty-Fifth. And there were certainly areas where he and Said could have established rapport, especially given Said’s skills in the German language and his travels through Schimmelfennig’s old stomping grounds in Bavaria.
It also seems more than coincidental that at the end of Said’s stint at the headquarters, Schimmelfennig once again wrote to his superiors, calling for a solution to the pay dispute, this time with more details than he had previously included. Several weeks before, the anonymous newspaper correspondent Bay State—who was probably Said’s immediate supervisor, 1st Sgt. Peter Laws—had written a column for New York’s Anglo-African newspaper citing letters from the soldiers’ wives and mothers to show how badly they were being affected by the pay dispute. Now, possibly with Said’s help, those letters made their way into Schimmelfennig’s hands, who cited them as he once again asked his higher-ups to pay the soldiers properly.
“Letters have been constantly arriving… in which the wives of the enlisted men describe their sufferings and the sufferings of their families,” Schimmelfennig wrote to the office of Maj. Gen. John G. Foster, who oversaw all the Union troops in the region. “Children have died because they could not be supplied with the proper food, and because the doctor could not be paid or medicines obtained from the druggist. Wives have proved untrue to their husbands and abandoned their offspring. Mothers advise their sons to throw down the muskets and come home, it being impossible for them to live longer without their support. The effect of such letters on the minds of the enlisted men… may be easily imagined.”
Schimmelfennig ordered the Fifty-Fifth’s commander, Colonel Hartwell, to meet with Foster in his headquarters in Hilton Head, where Hartwell suggested—likely with Schimmelfennig’s blessing—that if the army wasn’t going to pay his soldiers properly, it should disband the regiment and let the soldiers return home. Foster bristled at the “ill-timed” suggestion, saying it “shows an inclination to make trouble… [rather than] allay the current difficulties.”
With no progress on the pay issue, morale continued to sink on Folly. When the paymaster arrived on June 15, the Fifty-Fifth had its biggest protest yet, with 120 soldiers refusing to go on picket duty. An irate Colonel Hartwell seized Sgt. Hezekiah Johnson, a leader of the protest, hauled him in front of the other soldiers. and stripped him of his chevrons, later sentencing him to hard labor at a federal prison. Hartwell threatened that anyone else who refused orders could be court-martialed and shot. When one soldier continued to balk, Hartwell had him bucked and gagged until the regimental surgeon said he could stand it no longer.
Two days later, the twelve-man military tribunal met to determine Wallace Baker’s sentence, armed with the knowledge that the risk of widespread insurrection was rising and the army had no immediate plans to defuse it. After deliberating until nearly 3:00 A.M., they gave Baker a sentence they hoped would squelch all mutinous behavior. “They came in here this morning about 3 o’clock and told me they were going to take me out at 10 and shoot me,” Baker told the regiment’s chaplain, who was assigned to offer him spiritual aid. “That’s a hell of a thing to do to a man—take him out and shoot him without giving him a chance. They have given me no chance. I have done nothing to be shot for. Well, let them shoot.”
News of Baker’s imminent execution hit Nicholas Said shortly after he woke up. Over the past year, Said had likely served as Baker’s tutor and confidant as well as sergeant, but in just a few hours, he would see him be put to death. Like every other soldier in the regiment, Said had to participate in a lottery to determine whether he would be part of the firing squad. Twelve men were chosen: six for the squad and six as a backup, in case the first volley did not kill him.
Shortly before 10:00 A.M., Baker was hauled out of the guardhouse and put into a horse-drawn ambulance, which also carried his coffin, to be taken to the execution site, two miles down the beach. When he got there, he was surprised to see that all the regiments on Folly Island—Black and white—had been assembled to witness the execution, lined up on three sides of a square facing a grave that had been dug for him that morning. “They make a heap of ado to kill one man,” Baker joked. “If it was Jeff Davis, they could do no more.”
As he was led toward the execution site, he bantered with men he recognized in the crowd. To a hospital attendant, he said, “Goodbye, doctor! I shan’t want any more of your medicine.” To an officer: “Goodbye, sir! Here I go with my wooden jacket with me,” referring to the coffin being carried behind him. He passed his pouch of tobacco to a white acquaintance, saying “I shall want no more of it.” And he asked a comrade in Company I, fellow Kentuckian George Roberts, to tell his mother about his death and pay her any money the army owed him, assuming the pay dispute would someday be resolved.
Finally, Baker was led to a freshly dug grave, with his coffin placed at its edge. His hands were tied behind his back, and he was blindfolded and told to sit on the side of the coffin, so he would fall back into it once he was dead. Then he was allowed to make his final remarks: “I came out here to fight the rebels and I would not mind being killed in battle, but I don’t want to be murdered by my own side. I have done nothing worthy of death. But you can shoot and be damned! God will make it all right.”
Six rifles were handed to the members of the firing squad, one of which was loaded with a blank, to give each man the chance to think he did not fire the fatal bullet. As the soldiers fired, four bullets broke through Baker’s skull and another ripped through his heart, killing him instantly. It was a terrible spectacle for all who saw it. Lewis Flower, a corporal with the 103rd New York, wrote that after the execution “we returned to our camp, there to speculate on the difference between justice and mercy and the penalty inflicted for the disregard of military authority.” At the Fifty-Fifth, Lieutenant Colonel Fox wrote that the execution “no doubt saved the lives of others by showing the inevitable result of such a course, but had justice been done the enlisted men in regard to their position as soldiers, no such example would have been needed.”
If any good came from the execution, it’s that no other soldier in the Fifty-Fifth would be executed for mutiny during the course of the war. Henry Way, Samson Goliah, and other protestors were instead sentenced to prison terms of hard labor, which ended when the war was over. In a sad postscript to the execution however, George Roberts, whom Baker had asked to contact his mother, was killed in battle just six months later. As a result, Baker’s mother never learned of his death, and it appears that when she asked the army about him years later, she did not correctly name his regiment, so they told her they could not find him in their records, leaving her forever clueless about his fate and never collecting the pay he was due.
19 Reaching the Crossroads
Wallace Baker was in his grave for less than two weeks when Nicholas Said and his platoon finally got a chance to do what Baker had died yearning to do: face the Rebels in a tough-fought battle. On July 1, 1864, the Union Army launched an attack aimed at taking Fort Lamar, the linchpin of a line of forts protecting the village of Secessionville, five miles southeast of Charleston. The all-white 103rd New York was to lead the right flank of the attack, with the Thirty-Third US Colored Troops (composed of former South Carolina slaves) taking the left flank and the Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts in the rear as a reserve.
Sergeant Said and his men knew there were special risks involved when Black soldiers faced Rebel troops. They knew how the Rebels had killed Black soldiers wounded at the Battle of Olustee, and more recently they had learned of the massacre of Black troops at Fort Pillow, a Union outpost in Tennessee. After Rebels led by Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest overran the fort’s heavily outnumbered defenders, they seized white survivors as prisoners while killing many of the Black troops even as they tried to surrender. “The poor deluded negros would run up to our men fall on their knees and with uplifted hands scream for mercy but they were ordered to their feet and then shot down,” a Confederate sergeant wrote. Forrest, the future founder of the Ku Klux Klan, hoped the battle would “demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.” Instead, it motivated Black soldiers to fight harder.
