Freedom's Witness: The Civil War Correspondence of Henry McNeal Turner

Chapter 4. Freeing Slaves, Meeting Sherman

191 Chapter Four Freeing Slaves, Meeting Sherman (February 25, 1865–June 10, 1865) In February 1865, Turner was sent to North Carolina to help recruit newly freed slaves for the Union Army. While there, he also took the opportunity to recruit new members of the A.M.E. Church from these “great Southern fields.” On both fronts, Turner reveals the complex interplay between white and black, Northerner and Southerner, civilian and soldier. He shared the experiences of newly emancipated slaves, and also witnessed the dismay of defeated Southern whites. One highlight of this section is his account of the meeting between his regiment and General Sherman’s troops, who had plundered Georgia and the Carolinas in the March to the Sea and the March through the Carolinas. The two wings met up on March 24: of the encounter, Turner wrote, “This was a sight equally novel to both. We all desired to see Sherman’s men, and they were anxious to see colored soldiers, particularly the colored heroes of Petersburg , as they called us.” The meeting was a shocking disappointment to Turner. Sherman’s storied conquest of the South led Turner to expect a well equipped, highly disciplined force: a glistening 192 CHAPTER FOUR war-making machine. Instead, the troops were disorganized, disorderly , and sloppily dressed—many were not even in uniform. “It was hard to tell if some were white,” Turner wrote. Another black chaplain, William Waring, of the 102nd U.S. Colored Infantry, confirmed Turner’s observations, writing to the Weekly Anglo-African, “Taken altogether, Sherman’s army certainly does not come up to the common idea of a well-appointed body of troops.”1 Turner was disappointed by the lackadaisical appearance of Sherman’s army, but he was even more dismayed by their actions . Critical of his own troops for engaging in the practice of 1. Letter dated February 15, 1865, printed in the March 4, 1865, Weekly Anglo-African; reprinted in Edwin S. Redkey, A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African-American Soldiers in the U.S. Army 1861–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 76. Fig. 4. Colored troops liberating slaves in North Carolina, 1864. Harper’s Weekly, January 23, 1864, 52. North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill. FREEING SLAVES, MEETING SHERMAN 193 “foraging”—a term that became a euphemism for outright pillaging —he was utterly appalled by the destruction Sherman’s men had left in their wake. As he traveled deeper into North Carolina, Turner wrote, “And here we just began to learn what destruction was. We thought our men had been doing outrageously, but now we were convinced that we were all good fellows.” Turner concluded , “I do not regard it as the army of America. That is all I will now say. . . . So much for Sherman’s army.” Seeing the 1st U.S.C.T. side by side with Sherman’s men left him even more proud of black soldiers. He praised their valor in the skirmish at Moccasin Creek on March 24, and also noted their humane treatment of the Confederate prisoners of war, saying that “they manifested more feeling for the rebels than did the white soldiers.” The treatment of captured soldiers was a vexed issue throughout the war, and exacerbated when the Union began enlisting black troops. Early on, prisoners of war were either exchanged (the two sides returning prisoners to each other, ready for combat once again) or paroled (released with the understanding that they would not take up arms until notified that they had been exchanged). However, the Confederacy refused to return black prisoners of war, claiming that ex-slaves serving as Union soldiers were, in effect, in a state of insurrection and should be dealt with under state laws—which is to say, they would either be returned to slavery or summarily executed. Lincoln, in turn, declared that if Jefferson Davis carried out his threat, he would command his soldiers to execute Confederate prisoners-of-war in retaliation. When Davis refused to capitulate on this point, Lincoln suspended all prisoner exchanges, resulting in the creation (or expansion) of large, crowded prison camps in both the North and the South, where reports of inhumane treatment of prisoners in the periodical press outraged the nation and resulted in retaliatory treatment by soldiers on both sides. Turner’s comment demonstrates the black soldiers’ forbearance despite the fact that they knew...