Yet there is something about the guard in Barnard's photograph. Many have commented on the fact that, on closer view, it appears the man sitting and reading beside a rifle propped against the wall is, ironically enough, African American. There are many physical characteristics, including the consistent and even skin tone visible in the man's hands, which support this conclusion.
But if the soldier is African-American, then there is a real problem - because he shouldn't be there!
It has long been accepted that no African-American soldiers were involved in Sherman's campaign to capture Atlanta. Yet the curator of the African American Civil War Museum disputes this, asserting in private communication that there were several black men who served as spies for Gen. Grenville Dodge when he was in command of the Military District of the Mississippi. The curator argues that some of these men went with Dodge when he assumed command of the XVI Corps, ostensibly serving among the pioneers but in reality continuing the same espionage work they had done before. These men, several of these men held the NCO rank of corporal, were all former slaves, and so would presumably have knowledge of the country and its resources that could not otherwise be obtained by Sherman's troops.
Unfortunately, there are several facts which weigh against this argument. It is certainly true that Dodge did operate such a network of spies, but Dodge's operation was broken up when Grant took command in the East and brought on a new intelligence officer. What's more, Dodge's command was only half the XVI Corps, consisting of two divisions only, supported by light artillery. Dodge himself was severely wounded and sent home in August 1864, one month before Atlanta was occupied. When the city was garrisoned, the XVI Corps and its new commander went with Sherman as he pursued Hood and there is no record that any part of it was left behind.
This photograph was taken in November 1864 and, according to everything I have discovered, the closest African-American troops to Atlanta at that time were posted in Chattanooga, guarding Sherman's supply line. It is noteworthy that one of these units - the 14th Regiment of Colored Troops - did engage Confederate forces in a significant skirmish outside Dalton in August, but these forces were withdrawn back into Tennessee immediately afterwards.
This posting was consistent with the views of William T. Sherman. Except for the concept of "State's Rights," Sherman shared many Southern views and sentiments. He, like many in the Federal Army - especially the professional officer corps - had views which would be construed today as racist. And even though it is clear he knew of the actions of the 14th, he never wavered in his view towards what responsibilities Colored Troops should have; not only in his command, but throughout the U.S. and volunteer forces.
Federal law had barred black people from service in the U.S. military since 1792, but after the Civil War began, many abolitionists and black leaders began advocating a change in the law. That led to the Second Confiscation and Militia Act of 1862, which allowed the U.S. Army to allow "persons of African descent" (specifically the former "property" of people in rebellion against the U.S.) into the armed forces. Following the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, President Lincoln authorized the use of Colored Troops to garrison "forts, positions, stations and other places." In April 1864, one month before the Atlanta Campaign began, Union officials began recruiting former slaves in northern Georgia, Alabama and Middle Tennessee for enlistment in the U.S. Colored Troops. There was no shortage of black men from which to recruit soldiers because former slaves for miles around Union camps had been "self-liberating" themselves for months after the Chickamauga/Chattanooga campaign.
Recruitment, however, was slow - not least because of the attitudes of the senior general officers, Sherman, Grant and chief-of-staff Henry Halleck included. Sherman, preparing for his campaign, was particularly resentful because such activities cut into the available labor pool for teamsters and other laborers. Sherman was perfectly willing to have large numbers of African-Americans attached to his invasion force so long as they were confined to chopping down trees, driving wagons or doing the same kinds of menial, heavy-labor jobs they had done for their former masters. He would not, however, have any uniformed Colored Troops under his command on the front lines.
But it is not enough to say Sherman simply embodied the attitudes of the time, those within the senior military leadership, or those of the Southerners with whom he had socialized during his early military service. Sherman's prickly nature and his unchallenged ability to hold grudges and nurse petty grievances means some consideration should be given to the man in charge of recruiting the ex-slaves, Gen. Lorenzo Thomas.
Back in 1861, Sherman had been second-in-command to the ailing Gen. Robert Anderson, in charge of all U.S. and volunteer troops in Kentucky. In October, Anderson was forced by his illness to retire and Sherman was made his replacement, even though Sherman strenuously objected. The job proved too much for him and it was not long before he had convinced himself that the Union position was untenable, given the large number of Confederates he imagined to be at the front. Sherman began telling this to everyone, including (unfortunately) newspapermen and a visiting Secretary of War Simon Cameron. When Cameron returned to Washington, he reported that Sherman's perception of the Confederate threat was so far beyond the official military estimate that Sherman had demanded 200,000 men, twice the size of the Army of the Potomac.
A very depressed and suicidal Sherman was brought home to Lancaster, Ohio, by his wife, Ellen Ewing Sherman. She began to organize an effort to rehabilitate the general's reputation, pulling together the political forces represented by her family (her father, Thomas Ewing, was a former Senator and two-time Cabinet officer) and those of her husband's (Sherman's brother, John, was U.S. Senator.) Ellen went straight to the top, making an appeal to President Lincoln and saying that senior officers - and she named Lorenzo Thomas specifically - had conspired to ruin William Sherman. Not too long afterward, Sherman was back on top, primarily because of the influence and protection of his good friend and senior officer, Ulysses Grant, a man who had similarly been dismissed and vilified.
"Grant stood by me when I was 'crazy', and I stood by him when he was 'drunk'," Sherman had sardonically observed after their military successes had, by 1864, made them the top military commanders in the nation. Now, as Sherman and Grant were planning a coordinated military attack on the armies of the Confederacy, fate delivered Lorenzo Thomas back into Sherman's life.
Thomas was adjutant-general of the Federal army and Halleck's chief of staff, but the same political machinations he had wrought against Sherman had brought him into disrepute with the new war secretary, Edwin Stanton. In March, 1863, Thomas was put in charge of the Bureau of Colored Troops, a position which, within the War Department, was considered a demotion but which Thomas no doubt saw as opportunity to curry favor with pro-abolition politicians.
When Thomas moved his recruitment efforts into the Chattanooga area, Sherman swiftly replied with "Special Field Orders, No. 16" issued outside Dallas, Ga., on June 3, 1864. The order not only forbade Thomas' recruitment officers from enlisting black men from any who had been hired as laborers by his officers, it ordered his men to "arrest and, if need be, imprison" any recruitment officer found doing so.
Thomas sent a copy of Sherman's order to Secretary of War Stanton on June 15, then five days later wrote Sherman himself, saying "Of course I don't wish to deprive you of any Negroes you may require for service with your army," and advised Sherman that Stanton had by now seen the Special Field Order.
Sherman, as astute as anyone about politics in and and out of the miltary, evidently responded by telegraph, for on June 25, Thomas again wrote Stanton, reporting that Sherman had explained that black men were then "scarce in North Georgia," and that in any case he preferred them "armed with spades and axes to soldiers at the present time."
Sherman wanted to make absolutely sure Thomas understood his position, so on June 26 - remarkably, the very eve of Kennesaw Mountain, the largest battle of the entire Atlanta Campaign - he followed up that message with another letter. In it, he carefully explained that Field Order 16 was meant only to curb "the eagerness" of the recruiting officers' zeal "to make up their quota in order to be commissioned." He expressed openness toward Thomas' enlistment efforts to fill the ranks of Colored Troops already in Tennessee, but suggested that new regiments be deployed not there, but elsewhere - such as Clarksville, Bowling Green and on the Tennessee River (far away from the current locus of Western Theater activity.) Of course, Sherman never actually modified the original order sent out to his commanders nor shared with them this rationale. All they knew was that the major general commanding considered recruitment officers a pestilence.
Then Sherman did what Sherman often did, and instead of stopping his letter there, he decided to self-baste his own cooking goose with additional viewpoints on the political efforts under way to lift former slaves out of bondage. He advised his senior officer that "If you divert too large a proportion of the able-bodied into the ranks, you will leave too large a class of black paupers on our hands; the great mass of our soldiery must be of the white race, and the black troops should for some years be used with caution and with due regard to the prejudice of the races." He allowed that "the experiment" of Colored Troops was "worthy a fair trial" but that it should not be "forced beyond the laws of natural development."
Sherman's real views toward the recruitment effort were more directly expressed to chief-of-staff Halleck, Sherman's friend and who had helped rehabilitate Sherman's reputation. On July 14, as he paused to reconnoiter crossings of the Chattahoochee, Sherman wrote to make it clear that he had neither the time or resources (or tolerance) for anticipated new regulations which would require him to provide for state recruitment officers being sent into the Confederacy. "It is the height of folly," he wrote. "I cannot permit it here and will not have a set of fellows here hanging about on any such pretenses. We have no means to transport and feed them." To that, he added his opinion of the civilian Sanitary and Christian Commissions already at work in the field, saying such brothers and sisters of the faith were "enough to eradicate all traces of Christianity out of our minds." He considered all such people employed in these endeavors as seeking "dodges" to evade their own active military service.
Sherman apparently was surprised, after these letters, to learn that some people outside the military were considering him prejudiced. He addressed that issue in a July 30 letter to one of those state recruitment officers, John A. Spooner, newly appointed from Massachusetts to work within Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. The result was what Sherman would later call his "Negro letter."
"You speak of the impression going about that I am
opposed to the organization of colored regiments. My opinions are usually
very positive, and there is no reason why you should not know them,"
he wrote. He doubted the "wisdom" of the Congress in passing a law
on July 4, 1864, authorizing Spooner's work in the Confederate states. This
was "because civilian agents about an army are a nuisance" and that
the agents' activities were an insult to the "sacred" duty of citizens
to fight for their country." This was an allusion to a widely held view
in the military that the real beneficiaries of Negro recruitment were Northern
manufacturers, who could pay Negro soldiers to serve
as substitutes for their valued employees and so keep their factories humming.
To this, Sherman added his opinion that "the Negro is in a transition state, and is not the equal of the white man" and that because these ex-slaves had been "liberated from his bondage by act of war," the liberating army was "entitled" to their "assistance" (hard labor) in helping to fight that war.
Despite all this and apparently unaware of his self-contradictory language, Sherman was anxious that Spooner (and others) realize that he shared the altruistic aims of abolitionists and others. Sherman summed up by saying "no one shall infer from this that I am not the friend of the Negro as well as the white race. I contend that the treason and rebellion of the master freed the slave." He declared that his armies had "conducted to safe points more Negroes than those of any other general officer in the army," but he preferred that those black men Spooner aimed to recruit to serve his army "as pioneers, teamsters, cooks, and servants," and that active duty of blacks as soldiers be a gradual "experiment," that should "begin with the duties of local garrison."
But Sherman needed only to wait one month for proof that Colored Troops were already fit for more hazardous duty. That was when the 14th Regiment of Colored Troops, which had been stationed in Chattanooga on garrison duty, were called into action.
On August 14, word was received that Confederate General Joseph Wheeler's cavalry had detached itself from Hood's army at Atlanta and headed north to harass Federal supply lines and destroy Sherman's railroad in the same countryside where the two armies had fought one another in May. Since no men were available at the Atlanta front, Gen. James B. Steedman, whose command at Chattanooga was part of Sherman's forces left behind in the rear of the action, was summoned forward to reinforce Dalton. It was soon learned that Wheeler's superior force had surrounded the Dalton garrison and had demanded the surrender of the Federal troops there. Steedman gathered what forces he thought he could spare, including six companies of the 14th U.S. Colored Infantry, loaded them onto train cars and rushed forward.
The 14th Infantry was under command of Col. Thomas J. Morgan, who had organized them from "contraband" ex-slaves who had made their way into Tennessee following the Chickamauga/Chattanooga campaign of the previous year. Steedman's force arrived at midnight on August 15, and at daylight spread out in a line of battle, advancing on the town with Co. B of the 14th covering the front and flank of Steedman's troops. They soon came under fire from Wheeler's force,. which were pushed back by the Colored Troops. Morgan's after-action report stated that the black troops "certainly" killed five Confederates and wounded others. What's more: "the conduct of the entire regiment was good. It was their first encounter, and they evinced soldierly qualities; the men were brave and the officer (white) cool." One of the 14th's soldiers was killed outright in the skirmish; another had his right leg amputated while another was severely wounded in the hip. Wheeler returned south and Steedman pulled his force back into Tennessee.
Sherman was made aware of these actions, including the contributions of the Colored Troops. But it evidently made no impression on him, as is clear from another letter sent to Halleck on September 4, two days after Atlanta was captured. In that note Sherman worried that his "Negro letter" had been construed as unfriendly to the political policies of Lincoln and Stanton, but he said that he honestly believed that "it is not fair to our men to count Negroes as equals." He asked his old friend if "we," meaning the professional officer corps, could not "at this day drop theories, and be reasonable men? Let us capture (ex-slaves) of course, and use them to the best advantage" which, to Sherman, meant relieving white soldiers "who are now used to unload and dispatch trains."
"If Mr. Lincoln or Stanton could walk through the camps of this army and hear the soldiers talk they would hear new ideas. I have had the question put to me often; 'Is not a Negro as good as a white man to stop a bullet?' Sherman rhetorically replied "Yes, and a sand-bag is better," but argued that there was more to soldiering that being wounded in battle. "Can they (Colored Troops) improvise roads, bridges, sorties, flank movements, &c., like the white man? ... Soldiers must and do many things without orders from their own sense, as in sentinels. Negroes are not equal to this."
In saying so, Sherman showed himself to either unaware, or self-deceiving, that at least three black soldiers had not only "stopped bullets" in Dalton the previous month, but had done so acting with all the bravery and self-initiative of any soldier in any battle.
It is clear from these exchanges what Sherman felt about Colored Troops and the uses to which they should be put. And while his feelings towards black enlistment were probably influenced by his bitter resentment toward the officer in charge of that recruitment, by the opinions of the higher military command, and by his disgust at able-bodied men who relied on such recruits as paid substitutes for their own war service, there is a clear racial undertone toward African-Americans as a people. And there is no accounting for this attitude other than Sherman himself.
All this being said, if the man in the picture is an African-American soldier, he is certainly not there because Sherman wanted him to be. It is possible that Barnard, like other Civil War photographers (who were not adverse to altering reality in their photos) simply dressed a black man in a Federal uniform, thinking of how such a picture would be received back home. But we don't know if this is true. The only thing that can be said for certain is that this is a mystery which may never be solved.
SOURCES
"The War of the Rebellion: A Compilaton of the Official
Records of the Union and Confederate Armies," Series 3, Vol. 4,
Part 1 (Union Letters, Orders, Reports) and Series I, Volume XXXVIII, Part
1, Reports, Published under direction of the War Department, Government Printing
Office, 1891.
Lincoln's Generals, by Gabor S. Boritt and Stephen W. Sears
Hari Jones, Curator, African American Civil War Museum, Washington, D.C. (private
correspondence)
Dr. Daniel A. Brown, Historian/Archivist US Army Signal Center, U.S. Signal
Corps Museum, Ft Gordon, Georgia (private correspondence)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
||||||||||||