Race and Radicalism in the Union Army

5. The Union as It Never Was

: five The Union as It Never Was In 1863 Richard J. Hinton, the adjutant and self-appointed publicist for the First Kansas Colored, appealed to Senator Jim Lane, saying, “We want to form part of the Indian Division, provided it have a radical chief.” He suggested that if William A. Phillips were to take command,“his brains will make any movement successful, while his modesty will not make a success offensive to any one.”1 Hinton, Phillips, and the other radicals planned a project directly dependent on the mutual cooperation and respect of black, red, and white soldiers. This kind of project obviously assumed an importance both political and military. Even in its initial stages, radicals would number disproportionately among those disposed to risk the ordeal of organizing and managing the restoration of Indians to their homelands. As their superiors distanced themselves from any responsibility for that effort, its dynamic became even more independent, culminating in the construction of a small radical-led triracial Union army that won a remarkable though largely neglected victory at Honey Springs, the largest battle of the war in the Indian Territory. Thereafter the radicals waged subsequent campaigns that reached beyond military considerations toward a general political mobilization of Southerners opposed to secession and the Confederate war effort. The distinctive The Union as It Never Was / 87 Unionism that began to emerge threatened to construct an American nation the likes of which had never been seen. : Phillips and others regularly assured their Indian soldiers that they would soon reoccupy the territory.These officers,in turn,had assurances from their superiors, who marked the New Year by organizing a new Indian brigade. It comprised the three regiments of the Indian Home Guards, six companies of the Sixth Kansas Cavalry, and a battery of guns captured at Old Fort Wayne, and it totaled roughly 3,200 effectives. Officers around the much-wronged Colonel William Weer objected when its command went to Phillips, but the white and Indian officers, soldiers, and civilians who had served under him wanted no other. Nat Fish and twenty-two others urged his promotion to brigadier general as “a duty we owe to a gallant officer, as well as a brave but weak Nation.” Chief John Ross, who had a son and nephew under Phillips, trusted him and wanted him in command of the brigade.2 The previous August abandonment of the territory had created an even greater refugee problem.Numbers doubled in the Cherokee camp along Dry Wood Creek, near Fort Scott. Two-thirds of the Seminole Nation huddled at Neosho Falls, and some 300 Choctaws had reached the camps in Kansas, with hundreds more Choctaws and Chickasaws scattered in small groups in the northern Indian Territory. Elsewhere, OIA agent Peter P. Elder cared for some 6,000, mostly from his own Neosho District, though a year of frostbite, measles, mumps, diphtheria, pneumonia, and smallpox had killed at least a tenth of the Iroquois. Seneca chief John Melton protested that the U.S. government failed to pay his people their annuities for the second successive year, and they had never needed it more.3 Phillips’s brigade positioned itself both to protect the refugees from the guerrillas and to advocate on their behalf in the face of unresponsive federal authorities. After the U.S. government abandoned the Indian lands it had been bound by treaty to protect, its officials continued refusing to pay annuities to the Indians who had been driven from that land, and the army began arbitrarily cutting off food and clothes for the civilians. Blunt and Phillips both protested the “extensive spheres of speculation, not to say fraud,” created . The brigade garrisoned the largely deserted town of Neosho, turning a grocery and dram shop on the west side of the town square into a commissary . President Lincoln’s new OIA agent Justin Harlan turned up there 88 / race and radicalism in the union army with goods worth $12,000 and the president’s personal acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the Indian grievances, completely contrary to the policy being presented by most of the other military and OIA officials.The brigade itself settled into “Camp Ross,” located along the Elk River around Cowskin Prairie,the former stronghold of the guerrillas,who raided the refugee camps regularly. It also established a chain of outposts as far south as Maysville,Arkansas , and began repairing mills to grind corn and wheat...