Fig. 16. Louisiana Native Guard (Author’s Collection)
General Butler initially resisted the enlistment of black troops into the Union army. In early August of 1862, Brigadier General John W. Phelps requested permission from Butler to start a black regiment. Butler refused, stating that only Lincoln had the authority to start black regiments under the Second Confiscation Act of July 17, 1862. Phelps was ordered to use the Negroes as laborers instead of soldiers. Phelps was angered by the order and resigned.
What changed Butler’s mind about using blacks as soldiers was, perhaps, a case of brutality that he had to rule on in New Orleans. On May 1, 1862, General Benjamin Butler was put in charge of New Orleans. Similar to Hunter, he was stationed in the South to maintain order. A young lady was brought to his attention at his headquarters in New Orleans. The girl was beautiful and may have reminded him of one of his own children. Her back was scarred and disfigured by the repeated tear of the bullwhip. The perpetrator was her father and her master. Reports of the incident suggested that Butler was deeply shaken, stunned, and never the same again. Butler witnessed in New Orleans how the dehumanization of slaves dehumanized the slaver and infuriated tenderhearted observers.
“
“One Sunday morning, while General Butler was seated at the breakfast table, Major Strong, a gentleman who was not given to undue emotion, rushed into the room, pale with rage and horror.
“General,” he exclaimed, “there is the most list damnable thing out here!”… The woman who was the object of so much attention, was nearly white, aged about twenty-seven…”Look here, General,” said Major Strong, as he opened the dress of this poor creature.
Her back was cut to pieces with the infernal cowhide. It was all black and red-red where and the infernal instrument of torture had broken the skin, black where it had not. To convey an idea of its appearance, General Strong used to yon say that it resembled a very rare beefsteak, with Ire the black marks of the gridiron across it.
No one ever saw General Butler so profoundly for moved as he was while gazing upon this pitiable ten spectacle. Who did this?” he asked the girl.
“Master,” she replied.
“Who is your master?”
“Mr. Landry”
Landry was a respectable merchant living in near by quarters, not unknown to the members of the staff.
“What did he do it for?” asked the general.
“I went out after the clothes from the wash,” said she, “and I stayed out late. When I then came home, master licked me and said he would teach me to run away.”…At this moment Major Strong whispered in the general’s ear a piece of information which I caused him to compare the faces of the master and the slave. The resemblance between them was striking.
“Is this woman your daughter?” asked the met general.
“There are reports to that effect,” said Landry. … The general, for once, seemed deprived of his power to judge with promptness. He remained for some time,” says an eye-witness, “apparently lost in abstraction. I shall never forget the singular expression on his face.
“I bad been accustomed to see him in a storm of passion at any instance of oppression or flagrant injustice; but on this occasion he was too deeply affected to obtain relief in the usual way.
“His whole air was one of dejection, almost listlessness; his indignation too intense, and his anger too stern, to find expression even in his countenance… …I close this chapter of horrors. Each of these anecdotes illustrates one phase of the accursed thing, and all of them tend to show what has been already remarked, that the worst consequences of slavery fall upon the white race. It is better to be murdered than to be a murderer. It is better to be the victim of cruelty than to be capable of inflicting it. Mrs. Kemble judges rightly, when she says, in her recent noble and well-timed work, that it were far preferable to be a slave upon a Georgian rice plantation than to be the lord of one, with all that weight of crime upon the soul which slavery necessitates, and to become so completely depraved as to be able to contemplate so much suffering and iniquity with stolid indifference…But a woman’s bleeding back, the master’s brutal insensibility, the absolute destruction in the character of slave-owners of all that redeems human nature, such as sense of truth, pity the helpless, regard for the sanctities of domestic life; the flighty inferiority of their minds, their stupid improvidence, their incurable wrong-headedness and wrong-heartedness, their childish vanity and shameful ignorance, their boastful at emptiness and contempt for all people and nations more enlightened than themselves; these things appealed to him, these things he marked and inwardly digested. Impatient as he had previously been at the slow progress of the war, he now became more reconciled to it, because he saw that every month of its continuance made the doom of slavery more certain and more speedy. He was now perfectly aware that the United States could never realize General of Washington’s modest aspiration, that it might become “a respectable nation,” much less a great and glorious one, nor even a nation homogeneous enough to be truly powerful, until slavery had ceased to exist in every part of it.
Those who lived on intimate relations with the general, remarked his growing abhorrence of It slavery. During the first weeks of the occupation of the city, he was occasionally capable, in the hurry of indorsing a peck of letters, of spelling negro with two g’s. Not so in the later months. Not so when he had seen the torn and bleeding and blackened backs of fair and delicate in women. Not so when he had reviewed his noble colored regiments. Not so when he had learned that the negroes of the South were among the heaven-destined means of restoring the integrity, the power, and the splendor of his in country. Not so when he had learned how the oppression of the negroes bad extinguished in the white race almost every trait of character se which redeems and sanctifies human nature.
“God Almighty himself is doing it,” he would say, when talking on this subject. “No man’s hand can stay it. It is no other than the omnipotent God who has taken this mode of destroying slavery. We are but the instruments in his hands. We could not prevent it if we would. And let us strive as we might, the judicial blindness of the rebels would do the work of God without our aid, and in spite of all our endeavors against it.
“AMEN!”[1]
General Benjamin Butler was to become as fanatical a supporter of Negro rights as John Brown and Frederick Douglass. He now believed he would be serving God by destroying slavery. One thing made him different from other abolitionists, however. Butler had the ear of the president. Although Butler was a Democrat and President Lincoln was a Republican, Lincoln reached across the aisle and confided in Butler. Butler was a high-ranking general and was so well thought-of by Lincoln that he would be asked to be Lincoln’s running mate in the 1864 presidential election.
A year before Butler assumed control of New Orleans, on May 2, 1861, the Confederacy had organized a regiment of free black soldiers in New Orleans called “Native Guard, Colored.” At that time, New Orleans had a population of 150,000, including 18,000 slaves and 10,000 free blacks.[2] Free blacks had previously been enrolled by Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 and represented 10 percent of his army at the Battle of New Orleans.[3] Although the Louisiana Native Guard was initially composed of black Confederates, it was the first black Civil War regiment to be formed and had the distinction of being the only black regiment to be commanded by black officers. Some of the soldiers were slave owners, and some were mulattos, but they were primarily free blacks.
Following the defeat of the Confederacy at New Orleans in May of 1861, the Louisiana Native Guard remained in the city. By May of 1862, General Hunter had formed the First South Carolina Colored Volunteers, and Governor James H. Lane had started the First Kansas Colored Volunteers, but these regiments were not authorized by President Lincoln. Butler, however, had a great deal of power in New Orleans, but he was short of men. Butler wondered if the Native Guard would switch sides and fight for the freedom of all blacks. Butler had the following conversation with a group of them:
“But,” I said, “I want you to answer me one question. My officers, most of them, believe that negroes won’t fight.”
“Oh, but we will, “came from the whole of them.
“You seem to be an intelligent man, “said I, to their spokesman;
” answer me this question: I have found out that you know just as well what this war is about as I do, and if the United States succeed in it, it will put an end to slavery.” They all looked assent.
“Then tell me why some negroes have not in this war struck a good blow somewhere for their freedom? “General, will you permit a question?”
“Yes.”
“If we colored men had risen to make war on our masters, would not it have been our duty to ourselves, they being our enemies, to kill the enemy wherever we could find them? and all the white men would have been our enemies to be killed?”
“I don’t know but what you are right,” said I. “I think that would be a logical necessity of insurrection.”
“If the colored men had begun such a war as that, General, which general of the United States army should we have called on to help us fight our battles?”
That was unanswerable.
“Well,” I said, “why do you think that your men will fight?”
“General we come from a fighting race. Our fathers were brought here slaves because they were captured in war, and in hand to hand fights, too. We are willing to fight. Pardon me, General, but the only cowardly blood we have got in our veins is the white blood.”[4]
Benjamin F. Butler
The First Regiment of Louisiana Native Guard was mustered into the US Army on August 22, 1862. By December of 1862, there were three Native Guard regiments: the First, Second, and Third Louisiana Native Guard.
When Butler first came to New Orleans, he occasionally used the word “nigger” to describe blacks. His biographer, James Parton, said, “Not so in the later months. Not so when he had seen the torn and bleeding and blackened backs of fair and delicate women.” While in New Orleans, Butler became a strong supporter for the use of black soldiers and felt they could be the key to a Union victory. Butler believed in John Brown’s plan of “arming the Negroes.” Butler was impressed by the ease it took to drill and train them, he wrote:
“Bettersoldiers never shouldered a musket. They were intelligent, obedient, highly appreciative of their position, and fully maintained its dignity. They easily learned the school of soldier. I observed a, very remarkable trait about them. They learned to handle arms and to march more readily than the most intelligent white men. My drillmaster could teach a regiment of negroes that much of the art of war sooner than he could have taught the same number of students from Harvard or Yale…
Again, their ear for time as well as tune was exceedingly apt; and it was wonderful with what accuracy and steadiness a company of negroes would march after a few days’ instruction…
Again, white men, in case of sudden danger, seek safety by going apart each for himself. The negroes always cling together for mutual protection.”[5]
Benjamin F. Butler
*
After mustering black soldiers into service, Butler had to address the prejudices that his officers had for black troops. An example of this prejudice was that of General Godfry Weitzel who was second in command to Butler in New Orleans and helped him organize the Louisiana Native Guard. Butler had promoted Weitzel from lieutenant of engineers to brigadier-general of volunteers. Butler organized an expedition to control rich Louisiana farm land that was to be commanded by Weitzel. The expedition was to include the Louisiana Native Guard which angered Weitzel. Weitzel wrote:
“I cannot command those negro regiments…I beg you therefore to keep the negro brigade directly under your own command or pace someone over both mine and it,”[6]
Like Butler, Weitzel would change his opinion of black troops. Weitzel would eventually command the largest black army in the history of the United States the XXV Corps.
Shortly after Hunter started organizing black units in South Carolina, in the summer of 1862, Senator/General James H. Lane started recruiting black soldiers in Kansas. They were similarly called the First Kansas Volunteer Infantry. Again, Lincoln did not authorize the enlistment of black soldiers.
[1] Atlanta Monthly, July 1863, 143–145. Also, General Butler in New Orleans, 145, and Brown, The Negro in the American Rebellion.
[2] James Parton, General Butler in New Orleans (New York: Mason Brothers, 1864), 130.
[3] Ibid., 134.
[4] Butler, Butler’s Book, 492.
[5] Butler, Butler’s Book, 491.
[6] Butler, Butler’s Book, 497.