The Sergeant, page 17
“Never will I take it,” wrote a third. “You may sever my head from my body first.”
How did Sergeant Said feel about all this? To Said, the pay dispute undoubtedly seemed like one more manifestation of what he came to call “that plague of humanity, prejudice of color, or rather of condition.” In his autobiography, he wrote of how “prejudice hardens the heart, beclouds the judgment,… exposes and magnifies the faults, and overlooks and covers up the virtues of a fellow creature.”
Over the next year, the sergeants of the Fifty-Fourth and Fifty-Fifth launched a campaign to make the general public aware of the pay dispute, writing dozens of newspaper columns; petitioning the White House; contacting influential officials in Boston, Capitol Hill, and the War Department; and soliciting aid for the soldiers’ families from charities. In Company I, first sergeant Peter Laws took the lead, possibly including writing newspaper columns under the pseudonym Bay State, and Sergeant Said was apparently right by his side, taking notes and assisting with correspondence, thanks to his precise penmanship and the “literary quality” of his writing. In that role, it’s likely Said helped write or edit some of the columns the men wrote for newspapers, although that’s impossible to know since most were signed with pseudonyms, such as Wolverine, Picket, Bellefonte, and De Waltigo.
The protestors were strongly supported by Massachusetts governor John Andrew, who vigorously lobbied Washington to change its policy. At his urging, the state legislature in Boston dipped into its coffers to bring the soldiers’ salaries into parity with their white counterparts. Massachusetts paymaster general James Sturges and Boston abolitionist E. W. Kinsley were dispatched to Folly Island with crates of money, but the men rejected the offer, since it would still let the federal government treat them like inferiors.
“We earnestly hope that it will not be thought by the state of Massachusetts that we returned the money for any motive other than that we desire in this crisis, the recognition of our rights as men and soldiers,” one soldier wrote.
In Company I, Captain Gordon fully supported the protest. Although he had no power to boost the men’s pay, he thought he did have a way to help “refine and elevate” their prospects for civilian life once they left the army, by establishing a school for the regiment’s illiterate soldiers. Many of the soldiers had grown up in rural areas without schools, and some had been slaves on plantations where education was banned. As a result, fewer than half the soldiers in the Fifty-Fifth could read and less than a third could write. On the other hand, the regiment also had a number of highly educated soldiers, including some who had gone to college in the Northern states, Canada, and Europe. In addition to three white officers, nine Black soldiers had been teachers or were being trained to be teachers in civilian life—six sergeants (including Nicholas Said), two corporals, and a private—and the school likely relied on all of them for their teaching skills. Since Said was the only teacher in Company I, it’s likely that he put a special focus on tutoring the less literate soldiers in his company, including former slaves like Wallace Baker.
The school was launched in January 1864, under a patchwork of tents stitched together to provide room for up to fifty students. Carpenters from Company I built the necessary chairs, desks, and tables, and philanthropists from Boston sent textbooks and other materials. The classes took place in the evenings, so as not to interfere with the soldiers’ daily schedules. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays there were classes in reading, writing, spelling, grammar, and arithmetic, with the students divided into five different study groups depending on their skill levels. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, there were seminars on military strategy and tactics—probably aimed at the sergeants and corporals—with the regimental surgeons occasionally dropping in to give talks on health and hygiene. For the more religiously inclined, there was also a Sunday school, where the men were taught to read the Bible. “Where it was once said the black man should not learn the alphabet, there he is being taught to read the divine word of God,” exclaimed Sgt. Isaiah Welch, who had been studying at Ohio’s Wilberforce University to become a teacher and minister when he enlisted.
Although the classes cut into their free time, the school was very popular with the soldiers. “I never saw men so eager to learn in my life,” Captain Gordon wrote. “They will sit up till almost midnight studying their spelling books by the light of a fire, and all this notwithstanding a heavy fatigue duty all day.” A sergeant wrote that the students were “assiduously” devoted to their studies and seemed “destined to make their marks [as] bright ornaments” in their communities.
Nevertheless, frustration about the pay issue continued to grow, sometimes spilling over into ill-will toward the white officers, who were not boycotting their salary, with the lowest officers earning more than ten times the money that any Black soldier was entitled to, no matter how little experience they had. In late 1863, four men were convicted of mutinous behavior in the Fifty-Fifth, although because their actions were tied to the pay dispute, the punishment was relatively light. By early 1864, the mutinous spirit was seeping into Company I.
“I do not care for any goddamned white man in this regiment,” Private William Davis, a thirty-six-year-old wagon driver from Ohio, exclaimed over breakfast on January 31.
“That’s right! Give ’em all hell,” said Private Robert White, a twenty-two-year-old barber from Indiana.
First Sgt.Peter Laws, who overheard the conversation, did not take such talk lightly, arresting Davis for mutinous and seditious language. “You are a goddamned short-assed rascal,” Davis complained as Laws hauled him to the guardhouse, earning himself an additional charge of insulting a superior officer. After a court-martial, Davis was sentenced to lose a month’s pay and spend twenty days in hard labor—a relatively light sentence for a man who was already refusing his pay and was spending much of his time doing the hard labor of fatigue duties. By the time he was released, the regiment was preparing to leave for Florida, where they hoped to finally face the Rebels in open battle.
16 Foray into Florida
On February 14, 1864, Nicholas Said disembarked the steamship Peconic at the war-damaged docks of Jacksonville, Florida, as part of an occupation force that included the Fifty-Fourth and Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts. Jacksonville had changed hands between the Union and Confederacy six times in the past two years. In the successive waves of attack and retreat, soldiers from both sides had torched many of its factories, churches, homes, and businesses, leaving large swaths of the city in shambles, with the residents so weary of war that when Union general Truman Seymour showed up on February 7, they surrendered with barely a fight. “It is a most woeful-looking place…,” a soldier from the Fifty-Fifth wrote. “On every street are the ruins of homes which were burnt [in previous attacks] and in many places there are tall weeds, resembling young trees, growing where one short year ago were splendid mansions.”
Emboldened by Jacksonville’s easy defeat, General Seymour embarked on a crusade designed to bring the entire state to its knees. Leaving the Fifty-Fifth in Jacksonville to bolster its defenses, he led 5,500 men westward, including white regiments from New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, as well as the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, the US Eighth Colored Troops, mainly composed of freemen from Pennsylvania, and the US Thirty-Fifth Colored Troops, made up of former slaves from the Carolinas.
Eight miles west of Jacksonville, they overran an earthen fortress known as Camp Finegan, netting a large number of prisoners as well as nine cannons and crates of swords, rifles, and ammunition. Eleven miles later, they captured Baldwin, a fortified railroad junction and telegraph relay station. Twelve miles further, they took over a cattle ranch owned by Moses Barber, one of the Confederate Army’s major beef suppliers. Barber had already left the property, taking his cattle and slaves with him, so Seymour converted his home into his headquarters as he developed plans to march at least to the Suwanee River, fifty miles away, and maybe even seventy miles further to the state capital in Tallahassee. To do that, he would need reinforcements, so he sent word back to Jacksonville to dispatch five companies from the Fifty-Fifth, including Company I. For Sergeant Said and his platoon, this would be their first march in a major military campaign.
Unbeknownst to the troops, Seymour had no authorization for this campaign. After he took Baldwin, his commanding officer, Maj. Gen. Quincy Adams Gillmore, told him not to advance further without approval, but that message was ignored. Although they did not know Seymour was violating Gillmore’s orders, the men of the Fifty-Fifth had other reasons to be leery of him. As commander of Union forces on Folly Island the previous year, it was Seymour who had reportedly suggested that “those damned niggers” in the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts should lead the suicide attack on Fort Wagner, which would “get rid of them one way or another.”
“Our officers and men place but little confidence in the commanding general, and among troops of all arms can be heard expressions of distrust regarding him,” a soldier of the Fifty-Fifth later wrote. “He has never been successful, and has, in different instances, been the means of having men uselessly slaughtered.”
Nevertheless, the troops were in a buoyant mood as they marched westward through a broad plain of farmland, orchards, and pine forests. “The country here reminds to me more of home than any place else I have seen in the south,” wrote a private from Indiana. “It is as level as ever I saw, the weather is in growing order, peach and cherry have put forth their blooms, there is a-plenty of hogs and chickens here, the boys are a-faring well and having plenty of fun.”
After marching more than twenty miles, they camped in the countryside and resumed their march the next day, aching from the unremitting pace. At around 3:00 P.M., however, their “sore feet and weariness were forgotten” (in the words of Lieutenant Colonel Fox) as they began to hear cannons, reverberating like thunder through the pine trees of the swampy flatlands. Eager to get to the battle, they quickened their pace into a long, swinging step, lightening their load by tossing aside nonessential gear. But in the wooded plains of northern Florida, sounds were deceptive. The cannons’ deep booms echoed from tree to tree, so what the men heard were echoes of echoes of cannonades being fired dozens of miles away. By twilight, the cannons sounded no closer than they had an hour or two before, and then the booms sputtered out, signifying the fight was ending without the Fifty-Fifth getting a chance to join in.
Night had fallen by the time Nicholas Said and his men reached Barber’s Plantation. Since it was already dark, the soldiers had little choice but to roll out their blankets on the pastureland and try to get some sleep. At around 10:00 P.M., they were wakened by a sorrowful sight: streams of wounded, weary, tattered soldiers shuffling toward them like phantoms under the light of the nearly full moon. General Seymour had suffered one of the war’s bloodiest defeats at a place called Olustee, about eighteen miles to the west. Nearly a third of his men were dead, wounded, or missing, and as the survivors began to make their way into Barber’s Plantation, the men of the Fifty-Fifth were hurriedly shaken awake and posted on guard duty, since the victorious Rebels were sure to be following closely behind.
What happened was this: Early that morning, Seymour got impatient waiting for his reinforcements and decided to push forward, convinced that the road ahead was defended by only a few hundred militia troops. He was wrong. Confederate general Joseph Finegan, namesake of Jacksonville’s Camp Finegan, had deployed more than 5,000 troops—nearly equal to Seymour’s column—into a semicircle of fortified positions near the Olustee train station, so that Seymour’s troops advanced straight into a trap.
Seymour sent one regiment after another to attack the Rebels, only to see them firmly repelled. The Seventh New Hampshire, given two sets of conflicting orders, disintegrated into chaos. The Third Rhode Island Artillery, unknowingly positioned within range of hidden Rebel cannons, was quickly decimated, with most of its men wounded or killed. The 115th New York fared better, pouring such “withering and destructive fire into [the enemy] that they soon began to waver, and at last went reeling and staggering back with tremendous loss”—until the New Yorkers ran out of ammunition and had to withdraw. The Eighth US Colored Troops, which had left boot camp in Pennsylvania only a month before, had so little drilling that many soldiers couldn’t load their muskets properly. They fought bravely, but the Rebels hit them with a crossfire that left their dead and wounded clumped in piles on the field.
By late afternoon, Seymour knew he had been defeated, but feared that if he broke into a full retreat, the Rebels would sweep in and cut his men to shreds, so he called up the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts to cover the withdrawal. Moving forward, they had the disquieting experience of passing a flood of soldiers running in the opposite direction. “We’re badly whipped!” they were warned. “You’ll all get killed!” But still they advanced, steeling themselves with the sardonic battle cry: “Three cheers for Massachusetts and $7 a month!”
Demonstrating the same bravery they had shown at Fort Wagner, the Fifty-Fourth stood as a bulwark against Finegan as the rest of Seymour’s forces left the battlefield. “The colored troops went in grandly, and they fought like devils,” one white soldier wrote. But as evening approached, they discovered they had been left to fend for themselves without any backup forces to cover their own withdrawal. “It would seem that either the position of the regiment was forgotten, or its sacrifice was considered necessary,” Captain Emilio later wrote.
So they devised their own method of escape. Giving nine loud cheers, as if they were welcoming reinforcements, the Fifty-Fourth made an orderly withdrawal toward the forest behind them, stopping periodically to turn to face the enemy before moving further back. The tactic worked. In the gathering darkness and the shadows of the tall pine trees, the Rebels could not tell if the troops were retreating or merely making room for another regiment to take their place, so they held back instead of immediately moving into the vacuum. By the time they realized no replacements were coming, the Fifty-Fourth was in full retreat, hidden by the woods.
When it was all over, at least 203 Union troops had been killed, 1,152 were wounded, and 502 were either missing, dead, or taken prisoner. Dozens of Black soldiers were shot or clubbed to death as they lay wounded on the battlefield. “The niggers… would beg and pray but it did no good,” one Georgia soldier wrote to his mother. An officer wrote that he “tried to make the boys desist [from ‘shooting niggers’] but I can’t control them.” Some Black soldiers were taken prisoner, but that didn’t necessarily protect them. One Rebel officer bashed in the skull of a Black prisoner, with his rifle butt, for being too “insolent,” while another put his pistol to the head of a wounded “black rascal” and blew his brains out.
In the meantime, Seymour’s retreating soldiers stumbled toward Barber’s Plantation. “The narrow road was choked with a flowing torrent of soldiers on foot, wounded and unwounded, vehicles of every description laden with wrecks of men…,” Captain Emilio wrote. “In this throng, generous and self-sacrificing men were seen helping along disabled comrades, and some shaking forms with bandaged heads or limbs, still carrying their trusty muskets. About the sides of the road exhausted or bleeding men were lying, unable to proceed, resigned or thoughtless of inevitable captivity.” It was past 2:00 A.M. when the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts arrived, but instead of being allowed to rest, many were assigned to join the Fifty-Fifth on the picket lines guarding against a potential Confederate assault.
As it turned out, the Confederates did not attack that night. They had 946 dead and wounded—half as many as Seymour, but enough to slow them down. When Finegan ordered his cavalry to chase the retreating enemy, the commander refused, saying his men were too hungry and tired. They were still licking their wounds the next day, as Seymour led his men east toward Jacksonville, with the Fifty-Fifth guarding the rear in case of attack. It took two days for Seymour to get to Jacksonville, including a ten-mile stretch in which the wounded were loaded onto railroad cars, which were then attached to ropes and pulled by men from the colored regiments, since the locomotive had broken down and there weren’t enough horses for the job. By then Finegan, while still far behind, was in full pursuit.
In the days that followed, Jacksonville became even gloomier than it had been before, gripped by the fear that Finegan would try to retake the city. Seymour, heavily criticized for his loss, took it out on the troops, threatening severe punishments for anyone who disobeyed his rules. One white soldier was sentenced to be executed when his musket accidentally misfired. Another received a similar sentence for stealing a chicken. Through the pleadings of their officers both men kept their lives, but such threats became common under Seymour’s command, so it undoubtedly came as a blessing to Nicholas Said and his men when Company I and three other companies from the Fifty-Fifth were transferred out of Jacksonville, on February 28, to Yellow Bluff, a dozen miles away, putting them beyond Seymour’s line of sight.
Before the war, Yellow Bluff had been a sleepy fishing hamlet, with a rustic boarding house, a couple of wood-panel homes, and a post office atop a tall wedge of highland overlooking the St. Johns River. Because of its height, Union engineers decided the bluff would be a good strategic location for a signal tower, halfway between Jacksonville and the Atlantic Coast, with each about twelve miles away. The bluff was so tall that, with the help of a signal tower, it would be possible to relay messages from one location to the other.
Over the next couple of months, Nicholas Said and his men helped build the signal tower and the defensive works around it: a stockade, a cannon battery, a powder magazine, and rifle pits. Although their work was important, the men were disappointed to once again be on fatigue duty instead of fighting Rebels. Their comrades in the Fifty-Fourth, at least, had the glory of being heroes at Olustee while the white troops around them dissolved into disarray and defeat. For the Fifty-Fifth, there was the futility of marching more than thirty miles to get to a battle that ended before they arrived. (“Had we been ordered to the front a half-day earlier, we too would remember many of our number as those who sleep in a soldier’s grave,” wrote one soldier.)
