Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War

6 Louisiana

c h a p t e r s i x Louisiana “The Fourth of July 1863 was the most memorable Independence Day in American history since that first one four score and seven years earlier ,” historian James McPherson has written.1 It was indeed a momentous day. Twenty-four hours earlier Robert E. Lee had abandoned his plans for a northern invasion and rapidly retreated from the deadly fields of Gettysburg , Pennsylvania. And on the glorious fourth itself, Ulysses S. Grant accepted the surrender of Vicksburg, the last major Confederate fort blocking the Mississippi River. Five days later at Port Hudson in Louisiana , the besieged Confederates, subsisting by then on rats and mules, surrendered to Union general Nathanael Banks. “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea,” announced Abraham Lincoln. The Confederacy had been divided in two, leaving Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana cut o¤ from the other states in rebellion.2 The Union now had control of the country’s major river but not necessarily the land on either side of its banks. Forts lately in Confederate hands had to be manned now by Union troops and urban centers on the river garrisoned by even more Union troops. The region captured was one of the most insalubrious in the United States. As the Mississippi River winds through the South, it enters a delta region marked by frequent flooding, swamps and bayous, and levees that often give way. This large amount of free water, accompanied by the South’s torrid summer temperatures , created a land perfect for breeding the mosquitoes that transmitted malaria. In New Orleans, the high water table meant that wells were impracticable, so urban residents built cisterns to store rainwater for drinking. The yellow fever–carrying mosquito found these receptacles ideal for their reproduction. These two diseases contributed mightily to the region’s reputation for ill health and early death.3 Physicians knew well that these fevers were particularly prone to strike strangers and that local inhabitants were protected by their years of seasoning . So it was with dread that Union commanders considered stationing men along the lower Mississippi within this hostile environment. Six months after Union gunboats had secured the lower Mississippi from Natchez to the Gulf, Colonel S. B. Holabird lamented the ill health of white troops in the region and recommended the experiment with black soldiers be tried. Writing to Major General Banks, then commander of the Department of the Gulf, he advised, “The Forts below the city, as wood & Pike on the lakes, St Phillip and Jackson on the river, with Ship Island & land Spits now held by white troops, it appears to me, might be two thirds, or more, garrisoned by negroes, with both propriety and policy.” His reasons were straightforward. “The whites su¤er terribly by disease and the men become weak. The negroes do not so su¤er, are very strong and would fight should it ever be necessary.” While he recognized that some white troops would be necessary, he thought their danger could be minimized by frequent rotation in and out of the region. “I think it will save our men and make the colored corps useful,” Holabird concluded.4 Banks saw the wisdom in this plan, and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton did as well. In January 1863 Stanton ordered General Daniel Ullmann to raise a brigade of black soldiers in Louisiana and authorized the creation of the Corps d’Afrique in the summer of 1863. General Henry Halleck told U. S. Grant in late March that the policy suggested by Holabird in December was now the established plan of the Lincoln administration. “It is the policy of the government to use the negroes of the South so far as practicable as a military force for the defence of forts, depts, &c,” Halleck wrote. “If the experience of Genl Banks near New Orleans should be satisfactory, a much larger force will be organized during the coming summer; & if they can be used to hold points on the Mississippi during the sickly season, it will a¤ord much relief to our armies.”5 Although the employment of black men on (now Union government controlled) plantations was a competing need that complicated federal policy, by the fall many regiments of black soldiers were manning the defenses of New OrLouisiana 105 leans and surrounding areas. Their experience would show that, contrary to Holobird’s prediction, the black soldiers could, indeed, su¤er...