The sergeant, p.33
The Sergeant, page 33
Mutinous rumblings: Fox, Record, 15–16. “I do not care for any…” and following dialogue: William Davis, Service Records, 1863–1865, Microfilm Roll 4; pages 74–75.
16. FORAY INTO FLORIDA
Jacksonville: Samuel Proctor, “Jacksonville During the Civil War,” Florida Historical Quarterly, April 1963, 343–55. “It is a most woeful-looking…” and “our officers and men”: Soldier of the 55th Mass. to the Weekly Anglo African, April 9, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 77–80). Westward campaign: Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, 156. “The country here…”: John Posey to a cousin, February 20, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 67–68). “Sore feet and weariness…: Fox, Record, 23.
Olustee: William H. Nulty, Confederate Florida: The Road to Olustee (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990). “Withering and destructive fire…”: James H. Clark, The Iron Hearted Regiment: Being an Account of the Battles, Marches and Gallant Deeds Performed by the 115th Regiment N.Y. Vols. (Albany, NY: J. Munsell, 1865), 84. “We’re badly whipped…”: Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, 163. “The colored troops…”: Benjamin W. Crowninshield, A History of the First Regiment of Massachusetts Cavalry Volunteers (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1891), 263. “It would seem that either…”: Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, 167–68. “The niggers…”: Cpl. Henry Shackelford to his mother, printed in the Atlanta Intelligencer, March 2, 1864. “Tried to make…,” “insolent,” and “black rascal”: William Frederick Penniman, manuscript, Reminiscences of the Civil War, Collection No. 02747, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill, NC Return to Jacksonville: Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, 175–77, including “The narrow road…” 174.
Yellow Bluff: Brigadier General J. M. Brannan, “Expedition to Jacksonville, Florida,” The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1863), VI, 20; Daniel Garrison Brinton, A Guide-Book of Florida and the South (Philadelphia: Geo. Maclean, 1869), 56. Wilder, Diary, March 1, 1864. “Had we been ordered…”: Mon to Weekly Anglo African, May 21, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 96–100). “At night we hear…: Dennis Jones, Diary, March 7, 1864, Box 5, Folder 17, Wilder Papers. “Now I am in hopes…: Jones, Diary, March 21, 1864. “Was in unusually good spirits…” and following dialogue: Soule to Jones, March 24, 1864. “Raising a false alarm”: Richard Morrison, Service Records, Microfilm Roll: 10; 122–51.
17. “THE GREATEST DISCONTENT PREVAILS”
Letters from home: The soldier with a sick wife was mentioned by Bay State to the Weekly Anglo African, April 30, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 85–88). Since, as mentioned previously, Bay State was likely a pseudonym for Company I’s First Sgt. Peter Laws, the soldier may have been from Company I. “Been driven by want…”: Mon to Anglo African, May 21, 1864. “The boys are very much dissatisfied…”: “From the Massachusetts 55th,” Boston Evening Transcript, April 1, 1864. Said is the only enlisted man in the Fifty-Fifth known to have a close personal relationship with the Transcript—so close that when the soldiers of the Fifty-Fifth finally received their pay, Said relied on Transcript literary editor Thomas Fox (Charles Fox’s father) for investment aid. (See chapter 19.)
Returning to Folly: Wilder, Diary, April 19, 1864; Fox, Letters, II, 44–45. “How we all…”: Mon to Weekly Anglo African, May 21, 1864 “Talking loud…” and following dialogue: Sampson Goliah, Court Martial Records, NN–2479, as well as Reports of Committees of the Senate of the United States, 1877–78, Vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1878), 260–62. Morrison court martial: Richard Morrison, Court Martial Records, NN–2479.
Wallace Baker: The account of Baker’s arrest and trial, including all quotations, is wholly based on the Wallace Baker Court Martial Records, with testimony from Henry Way, Morris Darnell, Henry Call, and Frank Gardner. Baker’s previous arrests, as well as the illnesses of Captain Gordon and Sergeant Said, are mentioned in the Regimental Orderly Book, Company I, April and May 1864. “An idea was prevalent…”: Fox, Manuscript, I, 65. Bucked and gagged: Gilbert E. Sabre, Nineteen Months a Prisoner of War (New York: The American News Co., 1865), 50, gives a vivid description of bucking and gagging, describing it as one of the “grossest tortures” he endured.
Baker and Said: Although there is no concrete evidence linking Baker with Said, the circumstances surrounding Baker’s arrest suggest Said may have been his sergeant. First, no sergeant tried to intervene in his fight with Ellsworth, despite Ellsworth’s request for their assistance. If Baker’s sergeant had refused to help, he probably would have been disciplined (Samson Goliah’s sergeant and corporal, for instance, were stripped of their ranks after his mutiny), but that did not happen. The only sergeant who was absent at the time—and therefore not culpable—was Said. Second, the only noncommissioned officer to speak out was Said’s corporal, Henry Way, who may have stepped up because he was leading the platoon in Said’s absence. Third, two weeks after the trial, two of the three privates who spoke in Baker’s defense—Morris Darnell and Henry Call—were assigned to division headquarters in a squad led by Said. That suggests they were part of Said’s platoon, which suggests their comrade Baker may have been as well.
Problems at the Fifty-Fourth: Donald Yacovone, ed., A Voice of Thunder: A Black Soldier’s Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 73, 76–77, including Edward Hallowell asking “Do you refuse to go on guard?” and warning of “a catastrophe…”
18. “WELL, LET THEM SHOOT”
Fears of mutiny. “Would a mutiny…”: Picket to Weekly Anglo-African, July 30, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 112–16). “Keep cool!…”: Wolverine to Christian Recorder, January 2, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 94–96). “Should you talk…”: James M. Trotter, letter to E. W. Kinsley, November 21, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 155–57).
Assault on James Island: Jacob N. Cardozo, Reminiscences of Charleston (Charleston, SC: J. Walker, 1866), 120–21. David Gray’s “cowardice”: Fox, Manuscript, II, 154; and Wilder, Diary, May 22, 1864. “Fought like veterans,” “promptitude,” “cool bravery,” “[eagerness] to be led into action” and “not a man”: Fox, Record, 27.
Alexander Schimmelfennig: Alfred C. Raphelson, “Alexander Schimmelfennig: A German-American Campaigner in the Civil War,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 87, No. 2 (April 1963): 156–81. “The men and their families…”: A. Schimmelfennig, letter to Lt. Col. E. W. Smith, April 25, 1864, Official Records, Vol. 66, Chapter XLVII, 68–69. Said’s assignment: The Fifty-Fifth’s Regimental Orderly Book, Company I, shows that Said was assigned to division headquarters from May 26 to June 5, 1864. “Letters have been…”: A. Schimmelfennig, letter to Captain W. L. M Burger, June 6, 1864, Official Records, Vol. 66, Chapter XLVII, 110–11. This was sent the day after Said left headquarters. “Ill-timed” and “shows an inclination…”: Major J. F. Anderson, letter to Colonel A. S. Hartwell, June 17, 1864, Official Records, Vol. 66, Chapter XLVII, 139. Biggest protest: Fox, Record, 28.
Baker’s execution: The account of Baker’s death, including all dialogue, is based largely on Rev. John R. Bowles’s letter to the Weekly Anglo-African, July 9, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 223–25). Fellow Kentuckian: Bowles identifies Baker’s friend as “G.R.” The only soldier in Company I with those initials was George Roberts of Bradfordsville, Kentucky. “We returned…”: Kimball, History, 126. “No doubt…”: Fox, Record, 29. Baker’s mother: Wallace Baker, Pension Records, Application No. 517,871, filed by Bernetta Pettit, June 13, 1891. Pettit apparently thought her son had joined a regiment in Ohio instead of Massachusetts.
19. REACHING THE CROSSROADS
Pincer attack on James Island: Fox, Record, 29–31; Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, 200–201; Kimball, History, 126–27. Fort Pillow: Bruce Tap, The Fort Pillow Massacre (New York: Routledge, 2013), including “The poor deluded negroes…,” 62, and “demonstrate to the Northern people…,” 131. “We were not to be discouraged…” and “hurled among us like hail…”: James M. Trotter, letter to Edward W. Kinsley, July 18, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 119–23). “Legs [shot] off…”: Susie King Taylor, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp (Boston: self-published, 1902), 34. “Could you have seen…” and “You may imagine…”: “How Colored Soldiers Think and Act,” The Liberator, October 4, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 127–29). “Twenty-eight…”: Mon to Weekly Anglo African, August 13, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 123–27).
Final protests. “Dealt with accordingly…”: Wilder, Diary, July 14, 1864; Fox, Record, 33; Fox, Letters, II, 112. “If immediate steps…”: Petition to the President of the United States, July 16, 1864, Office of the Adjutant General, Colored Troop Division, Letters Received, NARA (Trudeau, Voices, 116–18). “In that company…”: This joins two quotes from Fox, Manuscript, I, 83, and Fox, Letters, II, 149. “A well-meaning…”: Fox, Letters, II, 126.
Payday. “It came at last…” “the triumph of freedom…” and “gentlemen sang…”: John F. Shorter to Christian Recorder, November 12, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 149–54), in a letter detailing the regiment’s celebration of the payday. Sending money home: Fox, Record, 37. Said seeks investment help: Fox, Letters, III, 31.
20. BAPTIZED IN BLOOD
Regimental hospital. “At a distance…”: Wilder, Diary, July 24, 1864. “The position is certainly not safe…”: Wilder, Diary, May 5, 1863. “An idea in grandeur…”: Burt Green Wilder, “Memoirs of a Cripple,” Our Young Folks, September 1866, 534. “He personally consumes…”: Richard Hecker, Service Records, Microfilm Roll 6, 1,074–113. “Army life is not favorable…”: Wilder, Diary, October 18, 1864. “The new steward writes…”: Wilder, Diary, October 31, 1864. William Bardon: William Bardon, Service Records, Microfilm Roll 1, 808–32. “He does not expect to live…”: Wilder, Diary, November 11–12, 1864. “The weaker men died…”: Wilder, Diary, July 24, 1864. “I have the advantage…”: Wilder, Diary, April 24, 1865. Wilder’s menagerie: Wilder, Diary, August 29, 1863, and November 20, 1864; Burt Green Wilder, “How My New Acquaintances Spin,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1866, 129–145. “A jollier set of soldiers…”: Wilder, Diary, November 28, 1864.
Honey Hill: Capt. Charles C. Soule, “The Battle of Honey Hill” and “The Great Disproportion in Losses,” Philadelphia Weekly Times, May 10 and 17, 1884; Lt. Col. Charles C. Jones Jr., The Siege of Savannah (Albany, NY: Joel Munsell, 1874), 34–42; Fox, Record, 40–44; and Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, 236–53. “The troops, not knowing…”: Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, 240. “The Rebels had a trap…”: William Scott, letter to Burt Green Wilder, November 21, 1914 (Trudeau, Voices, 168–69). “Hatch, why in hell…”: This Sherman quote appears in Soule, “Battle of Honey Hill.” “It was like rushing into…”: James Trotter to Edward W. Kinsley, December 18, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 163–66). “Don’t dodge, men!…” and “Come on, boys!…”: Soule, “Battle of Honey Hill.” “Cheer up boys!…”: James M. Guthrie, Camp-fires of the Afro-American (Philadelphia: Afro-American Publishing Co., 1899), 565. Carrying the flag: Andrew Smith, “Adventures of a Colored Boy in the War,” National Tribune, Washington, DC, March 21, 1929 (Trudeau, Voices, 186–91).
Field hospital. Running out of stretchers: Wilder, Diary, December 2, 1864. Company I casualties: Peter Laws, letter to the Weekly Anglo African, February 4, 1865 (Trudeau, Voices, 166–67); and Service Records of Charles L. Mitchell, Isaac Cain, James Jones, John N. Graham, and Richard Morrison. “It would be difficult…” and “almost perfectly hopeless operation”: Charles Briggs to his brother Robert Briggs, December 15, 1864, in a letter that describes his frenetic pace of work, Charles E. Briggs Letters, Box 1, Folder 17, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. “Some of the surgeons…”: Charles Briggs to his sister Emma (Briggs) Allen, December 28, 1864. “The whole vicinity…” and “a confused turmoil…”: Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, 251. “The generalship displayed…”: Soule, “Battle of Honey Hill.” “The men are in good spirits…”: J. R. Bowles, letter to Gen. Lorenzo Thomas, December 1, 1864 (Trudeau, Voices, 299–300)
21. “BABYLON IS FALLEN”
Fall of Charleston: Fox, Record, 54–58, including “The few white inhabitants…,” 56. Charles Carleton Coffin, The Boys of ’61, or Four Years of Fighting (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1886), 462–89, including “Its timbers [were] rotting…,” 462. “Such enthusiasms…”: Peter R. Laws, letter to Francis Jackson Garrison, April 1, 1868, Boston Public Library, Anti-Slavery Collection. “But curiosity led…”: Fox, Record, 57–58. Campaigning through South Carolina: Fox, Record, 58–74, including “Almost every wagon…,” p. 72–73. “I was careful not to…”: Wilder, Diary, April 13, 1865. “Officers and men rushed…”: Fox, Record, 74. “We did not know…”: Wilder, Diary, May 13, 1865. “Alas for his plans…”: This quote is in the anonymous afterword of Said, “Bornoo,” 495, probably written by Fox. Marriage and honeymoon: Marriages involving former slaves were not formalized until 1866, when Union occupation troops developed “Marriage Rules,” since the Southern states had no legal structure to recognize the marriages of formerly enslaved people even after emancipation. (Leslie Ann Schwalm, A Hard Fight for We: Women’s Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 240–48.) Said’s Service Records show he received thirty days marital leave on June 7, but Wilder, Diary, June 26, 1865, indicates he was back to work after nineteen days.
Sanitary Commission survey: Benjamin Apthorp Gould, Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1869). Crescent Farm: Fox, Record, 74; Wilder, Diary, April 18, 21, and 24, 1865. “Very low, low, average, or quick”: Gould, Investigations, 226–27. “Superior in all respects…”: Wilder, Diary, January 19, 1864.
“Very philosophical…”: Wilder, Diary, April 25, 1865. Adam and Eve: Said to New Jerusalem. Wilder and Darwin: Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, 267; Charles Darwin, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin (Cambridge University Press, 2015), XXIII, 116–17; and “Notes,” Nature, September 30, 1880, 517. “Why…did we…”: Burt Green Wilder, The Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, Colored (Brookline, MS: Brookline Historical Society, 1919), 3–4. Emanuel Swedenborg: Emanuel Swedenborg’s Journal of Dreams and Spiritual Experiences (Bryn Athyn, PA.: The Academy Book Room, 1918). “As true as you see…”: Edmund Swift Jr., Emanuel Swedenborg: The Man and His Works (London: James Speiers, 1883), 209. “Love is the life…”: Emanuel Swedenborg, Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom (Boston: New Church Printing Society, 1835), 2. “Elixir of moonbeams” and “He delivers golden…”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1876), 117, 123. “As soon as I read…”: Said to New Jerusalem. Said gets more books: Wilder, Diary, April 30 and June 26, 1865. “Responded to all…” and following passage: Swinton, “The Negro Pundit.”
“Scientific racism.” Sanford B. Hunt, “The Negro as a Soldier,” Anthropological Review, January 1869, 40–54, with its references to Black people being “too animal…” with “a well-known imitative faculty” is seen as one of the core documents of the “scientific racism” movement in the late 1800s. Its impact is mentioned in such works as Leslie A. Schwalm, “A Body of ‘Truly Scientific Work’: The U.S. Sanitary Commission and the Elaboration of Race in the Civil War Era,” Journal of the Civil War Era, December 2018, 647–76; Herbert Hovenkamp, “Social Science and Segregation Before Brown,” Duke Law Journal, 1985, 651–52.
Wilder and race; Burt Green Wilder’s writings on racial equality include The Brain of the American Negro (New York: National Negro Committee, 1909) and “Two Examples of the Negro’s Courage, Physical and Moral,” Alexander’s Magazine, January 1906, 22–28, which says “no white troops…” could endure what the Fifty-Fifth went through. He mentioned Nicholas Said, “from the very interior of Africa,” in a letter to Benjamin Apthorp Gould on May 19, 1865, US Sanitary Commission Records, Statistical Bureau Archives, Administrative Records, Box 3, File 17, New York Public Library.
22. “THE NEGRO PUNDIT”
“Knowledge is power…”: Proceedings of the Colored People’s Convention of the State of South Carolina (Charleston: South Carolina Leader Office, 1865), 9–10. “Young and old…”: John W. Alvord, First Semi-Annual Report on Schools and Finances of Freedmen (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, January 1866), 3–4, which also listed the number of schools in South Carolina. Alvord, Fourth Semi-Annual Report, July 1867, 18, noted that “many returned colored soldiers” taught in rural schools. “Endeavor to teach…”: Said, Autobiography, 212. “Even adult and aged blacks…”: Swinton, “The Negro Pundit.” “There are a number…”: Alvord, Third Semi-Annual Report, January 1867, 13–14. “It is a pity…”: “Wonderful! Truly Wonderful!” The Daily Phoenix (Columbia, SC), December 10, 1867. “Here is an appeal…”: Alvord, Third Semi-Annual Report (January 1867), 14.
Plantation teacher: For O’Hear’s ownership of Marshfield, see 1860 Agriculture Census, Saint Andrews, Charleston County, SC, 3, and 1860 Slave Census, Saint Andrews, Charleston County, SC, 32. Marx Cohen: Seth R. Clare, “Marx Cohen and Clear Springs Plantation,” Southern Jewish History, 2014, 1–43. Said studies Hebrew: Swinton, “The Negro Pundit.” “Numerous white friends…”: Said, Autobiography, 203, lists his friends as “General Simmons, Kanapaux, Dr. Ogier, Sim, De Saussure, Chazal, Cohen.” Ogier, Sim, Chazal, and Cohen can be easily identified by their surnames. There was no Confederate General Simmons, so this probably refers to James Simons. De Saussure and Kanapaux are more ambiguous, since there were several prominent members of both families in Charleston. Not doffing a hat: Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roark, No Chariot Let Down: Charleston’s Free People on the Eve of the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 106–107. “It is an insult…”: Nancy Bostick De Saussure, Old Plantation Days: Being Recollections of Southern Life Before the Civil War (New York: Duffield & Company, 1909), 18–19. The first sentence of the quote was written by a South African friend of Nancy, who approved and elaborated upon it in her book. Restrictions against freemen: Johnson and Roark, “No Chariot,” 132–39. “Good citizens…”: Records of the Assembly, Document ND 2801, Microfilm Reel 1, Frames 210–13, South Carolina Department of Archives and History. “South Carolina Legislature,” Charleston Courier, December 6, 1860, covers the bill’s passage. “The kindest people…”: “An African Prince,” Daily Constitutionalist (Augusta, GA), December 15, 1870.
