Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience During the Civil War

9. Diggers and Drudges

9 DIGGERS AND DRUDGES During the Red River campaign only three black officers still held commissions in the Corps d'Afrique. This did not mean, however, that those who had resigned were sitting quietly on the sidelines. As the black enlisted men trudged through the countryside of central Louisiana, their former officers were busy in New Orleans organizing a fledgling civil rights movement that hoped to capitalize on the promise of emancipation and the removal of the old political power elite, which was sure to result with the collapse of Confederate resistance.1 One of the first meetings of the new movement occurred in January, 1864, when a large group of black men assembled in Economy Hall to press for the right to vote. Believingthat Lincoln would be sympathetic to their cause, they decided to send two delegates to Washington to present a petition asking that black men in Louisiana be enfranchised. The delegates they chose were Jean Baptiste Roudanez, an engineer, and Arnold Bertonneau, formerly a captain in the 2nd Regiment of the Corps d'Afrique.2 1. The political ramifications of black soldiers in the Union army had been recognized as early as September, 1862, when the 1st Regiment of the Native Guards was sworn into service (Logsdon and Bell, "Americanization of Black New Orleans," 221-22). 2. McCrary, Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction, 229-30;also Logsdon and Bell, "Amer94 D I G G E R S A N D D R U D G E S Roudanez and Bertonneau met with Lincoln in Washington on March 12, the same day the 1st and 3rd Regiments left Port Hudson to begintheir journey up the Red River to Alexandria. Although he remained noncommittal on the question of black suffrage, Lincoln wrote a brief letter to Michael Hahn, a moderate Unionist who had been elected governor of Louisiana only a few weeks before. Noting that a convention to revise the state's constitution was about to convene, Lincoln raised the question of whether blacks would be granted suffrage in the new document. "I barely suggest, for your private consideration," Lincoln wrote Hahn, "whether some of the colored people may not be let in [i.e., enfranchised], as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have foughtgallantly in our ranks. They would probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom."3 Unaware of the president's letter to Hahn, Roudanez and Bertonneau continued to press their case with other powerfulleaders in the North.While in Washington, they met with the famous antislavery advocate and senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner, and then traveled to Boston to confer with abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Frederick Douglass. On April 12 the two delegates from Louisiana attended a dinner in their honor at the Parker House, Boston's finest hotel. The host was John Andrew, governor of Massachusetts, who introduced Bertonneau to the guests and asked him to make some remarks. The former captain in the Corps d'Afrique spoke warmly of Benjamin Butler's administration of New Orleans after the city's surrender. "We felt that we were men and citizens, and were to be treated as such," Bertonneau told his audience. "We were animated by new hopes and new desires; we felt that there was a new life opened before us; so we gave our imagination full scope and play." Bertonneau then went on to chronicle the contributions black men in Louisiana had made to the war effort, particularly those in the Corps d'Afrique.Predicting that the war would not last much longer, Bertonneau drew attention to the future. "The right to vote must be secured," he asserted. "The doors of our public schools must be opened, that our children, side by side, may icanization of Black New Orleans," 226-27. When Bertonneau resigned in March, 1863, the 2nd Regiment was still designated as the Native Guards. 3. Ibid., 255-56; Lincoln to Hahn, March 13,1864, New Orleans Daily Picayune, July 6, 1865. This letter was confidential,and Hahn did not release its contents until after Lincoln's death more than a year later. 95 T H E L O U I S I A N A N A T I V E G U A R D S study from the same books, and imbibe the same principles and precepts from the Book...