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CHAPTER 6 The Effects of Occupation on Union Soldiers
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123 Chapter 6 The Effects of Occupation on Union Soldiers On the oppressively hot afternoon of July 11, 1862,CaptainWilliam Augustus Walker of the 27th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, an avowed abolitionist , sat inside a house in downtown New Bern and witnessed a “great buck nigger, very black and very fragrant,” with “bare feet, tattered shirt and knotted hair,” fanning the flies away from a lieutenant as he wrote. Though Walker agreed that “the flies are really tormenting and the heat is intolerable ,” he declared: “I had ratherendure both, than to have one of those confounded dirty niggers anywherewithin twenty feet of me.” He believed that “as a class they are lazy, filthy, ragged, dishonest and confounded stupid.” Ironically,Walker had strong convictions against slavery.Though hewas devoted to “destroy[ing] from off the face of the country every vestige of this enormous crime,” and would sacrifice his life for it at the battle of Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864, he still could not abide the actual physical beings who personified the abstract institution of slavery.1 General Ambrose E. Burnside’s personal secretary, Daniel Read Larned, who was also in New Bern, shared the captain’s antipathy. He remarked to a friend, “The negroes are niggers all over.Theyare ignorant, lazy, [and] thievish .” Larned told Burnside’s wife that “they are the laziest, and the most degraded set of beings I ever saw.” To his sister, he admitted: “It seems as if all my letters have been ‘nigger, nigger’ since I came here, but if you could see them you would not wonder. They are amusing, yet disgusting.” Even U.S. Treasury agent John A. Hedrick, an antislavery Unionist as well as a native North Carolinian, held a low opinion of blacks in general. On his way to Beaufort, Hedrick described one of the contrabands on board his steamer as being of “the pure Guinea nigger style, full of talk and I think a little impudent .” These attitudes reveal that even well-meaning Yankees had a dif- 124 The Effects of Occupation on Union Soldiers ficult time coming to grips with the massive influx of African Americans who sought refugewithin the safetyof Union lines. Manyof thosewhowelcomed freedom for the slaves could not get beyond theirown preconceived ideas of slaves as filthy, simple-minded, dissembling dependents.2 The majorityof Union soldiers in the region werevolunteers who sought to preserve the republic their founding fathers had created. However, their experience along the coast of North Carolina exposed them not only to the petty tyrannies of army life, but also to a foreign environment, one whose climate, inhabitants, and culture shocked their sensibilities.Their unhappiness led to much grumbling about the weather, the land, the people, army rations, fellow soldiers, and officers. Ultimately, the experience of occupation tested their convictions—weakening some while strengthening others. Union troops serving in the occupied region suffered from sagging morale caused both by military defeats elsewhere and by their own sense that their government was not using them in the most efficient manner to end the war. But despite their personal denunciations of their own particular circumstances and even the policies of the Federal government, the majorityof soldiers remained motivated to accomplish their mission—sustain the war effort until its conclusion.Their letters reveal that most Union troops managed to suppress their inward despair in order to fulfill their strong sense of duty.3 During the course of the Federal occupation of New Bern and Beaufort , soldiers from more than four dozen regiments served in the region for varying periods. These men came from the northeastern states—fifteen regiments were from Massachusetts, while several hailed from Pennsylvania , Rhode Island,Connecticut, NewYork, and New Jersey.When they enlisted , they answered no specific call to go to the North Carolina coast to work with refugee slaves and local Unionists. Instead, they answered the same siren song that attracted hundreds of thousands of their brothers in arms in the spring and summer of 1861. Many of these men appreciated the privileges that camewith enlistment. Private HenryWhite, of the 21st Massachusetts Infantry, who enlisted on July 5, 1861, was struck by the deference shown to the troops by political officials. When Massachusetts governor John Andrew, Secretary of War Simon Cameron, Secretary of State William Henry Seward, and Secretaryof the Navy GideonWelles reviewed his regiment outside the nation’s capital in November 1861, “with head[s] bared,” this hardscrabble, thirty-five-year-old shoemaker and father of four [3.141.47...