Black Troops, White Commanders and Freedmen during the Civil War

8. The Cause and Consequence of a Union Black Soldier's Mutiny and Execution

8 The Cause and Consequence ofa Union Black Soldiers Mutiny and Execution OF THE nineteen Union soldiers executed by the Union army for mutiny committed during the Civil War, fourteen were blacks. l Since the war was half over before the army began extensive enlistment of blacks, those figures understate the blacks' relative involvement in the most serious military crime. It seems strange that so disproportionate a number mutinously defied the authority that had become engaged in ending slavery. The first black to be executed for mutiny was William Walker, a sergeant of Company A of the Third South Carolina Colored Infantry. He was charged with leading his company in a strike that protested that the rate of pay to black troops was less than the pay to whites. Rarely have historians done more than note the event.2 More is merited . However risky it may be to generalize from an instance, the Walker story aids in tracing our society's stumbling advance from slavery toward freedom. Walker, twenty-three years old when he was enlisted in the spring of 1863, was one of the host of slaves who had come under Union domination in November 1861 in the Port Royal, South Carolina, area. 3 Early in that month a navy-army expedition had occupied Port Royal, roughly midway between Charleston and Savannah. Nearly all the Originally published in Civil War History 31, no. 3 (September 1985):222-36. Reprinted with permission of The Kent State University Press. 125 126 Black Troops white populace for many miles around fled; most oftheir thousands of slaves remained. During following months the Union achieved control of the entire coast between the vicinities ofCharleston and Savannah, with lodgments also below Savannah and in northeastern Florida. Port Royal itself became a busy naval base for a blockading squadron. And, with managers and teachers brought from the North, the Treasury Department organized and launched a program to establish for the blacks a self-sustaining life of freedom on the rich coastal plantations. The program became known to history as the Port Royal Experiment. In June 1862 Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton sent Rufus Saxton, newly appointed from captain to brigadier general, as military governor , to lead Port Royal's orderly development and government.4 Employment by the army, the navy, and the Port Royal Experiment had opened great opportunities for South Carolina blacks. Walker, though illiterate, possessed unusual ability and found employment as a civilian gunboat pilot with the navy.5 By the spring of 1863 he and his fellow South Carolinians had left far behind their old world of slavery. A revolutionary opportunity in their new world was the enlistment of blacks into the armed ranks of the United States Army. Just after General Saxton's arrival in late June 1862 a military crisis in Virginia caused the recall of a large fraction of the Port Royal army. That, in turn, led the secretary of war, in a letter of August 25 to General Saxton, to authorize Saxton to recruit blacks as soldiers, under white officers, specifying that they were to "receive the same pay and rations as are allowed by law to volunteers in the service." This was the first time since the War of 1812 that the United States government had allowed any but white men in its army. Conscious of the measure's importance Saxton proceeded with care. After a trip north in connection with his Port Royal affairs, he began recruitment of a black regiment in October. By January 1863 he had one well-trained regiment and had begun assembling a second.6 In the previous spring, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida had been designated the Department of the South. Maj. Gen. David Hunter, who had been the department commander for a few weeks during the previous year, returned as its commander in early 1863 and entered enthusiastically into General Saxton's recruitment campaign. By the spring there were indications that the Union high command might decide to mount an assault on Charleston from the Port Royal A Union Black Soldier's Mutiny 127 base, so recruitment was accelerated; indeed, Hunter had ordered a draft of blacks. On April 24 enrollment of the Third South Carolina Colored Infantry began.7 Recruiters for the Third South Carolina persuaded Walker to volunteer , though he was exempt from the draft by a naval "pass," and, in its initial enrollment, he was...