Milliken’s Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory by Linda Barnickel (review)

On June 7, 1863, Confederate cavalry attacked a Union encampment along the Mississippi River at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana. They encountered an infantry brigade of African American troops, consisting of the 9th, 11th, and 13th Louisiana and the 1st Mississippi regiments and the 23rd Iowa Infantry. After the initial collapse of their first line, the survivors of the Union force fell behind a levee and with the support of gun-boats halted the Confederate advance. A Confederate withdrawal turned the battle into a federal victory. A relatively small engagement, the battle at Milliken’s Bend took on considerable significance despite controversy surrounding it. The incident was held up as an example illustrating that black troops would stand and fight, though questions existed as to the actual performance of the men at Milliken’s Bend. Uncertainty arose as to what happened during the battle and afterward, with some pointing to brutal treatment of black soldiers and their officers. Accepted by many at the time as an important event, Milliken’s Bend’s place in the canon of Civil War history has shifted drastically over time. What explains its changing place? In this winner of the 2013 Jules and Frances Landry Award, Linda Barnickel looks to determine what actually took place and why the reputation of the battle has changed over time.

The evidence for the battle—the official reports, letters, diaries, and newspapers—often contains contradictory information. Did blacks fight well? White soldiers with the 23rd Iowa dismissed their efforts. Officers of the black brigade claimed that the Iowans broke. Neither thought that the presence of the gunboat USS Choctaw was critical, but its commander believed his guns saved the day. How were black troops treated by Confederates? Some Confederates indicated in their letters that they gave no quarter to surrendering black soldiers. Confederate officers denied this claim, however, and pointed to captured blacks to prove the contrary. Union accounts varied, too. What happened to the Union soldiers captured? Two of three white officers taken may have been executed, but the imprisonment of the other leaves causation unclear. The fate of the enlisted men simply is not known. Despite contradictory evidence, contemporaries quickly settled on the story that at Milliken’s Bend black men proved themselves on the battlefield and Confederates refused to treat their captives as prisoners of war, massacring them instead of taking them captive. How did this happen?

Branickel devotes much of this book to developing the cultural context of the battle. Thus, only two of ten chapters directly address the battle and its immediate aftermath. The first five examine the ideas and experiences of the men who fought the battle, allowing the author to suggest the most probable course of events. Chapters 1 through 3 assess southern attitudes toward emancipation and the arming of blacks, both popular attitudes and emerging government policy regarding how black soldiers and their officers should be treated in battle or as captives. Southern ideas and Confederate policy helped create a culture among soldiers that virtually assured the murderous treatment of United States Colored Troops (USCT). No order would have been needed for an individual Confederate soldier to kill a black man attempting to surrender. Barnickel uses casualty rates to show that many USCT probably suffered such deaths. The 9th Louisiana, for example, bore the brunt of the attack and lost 23 percent of its men, a higher rate than the 1st Minnesota at Gettysburg.

The author uses the same tactic in addressing the question of the fortune of captured soldiers. In the case of Milliken’s Bend, what happened to the enlisted men is not known. Two of the officers definitely were executed, although exactly by whom or why is unknown. Examining the broader context allows the author to conclude that policy and culture probably determined the fate of the captured men. By 1862 Confederate policy emerged calling for the...