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

Chapter 2. Petersburg

119 Chapter Two Petersburg (June 25, 1864–December 17, 1864) Turner was appointed chaplain of the 1st U.S.C.T. in the fall of 1863, and joined his regiment on November 15. However, he was soon sidelined by several serious illnesses, including smallpox, which prevented him from accompanying them to the Virginia front until the spring of 1864. He was clearly missed by the soldiers: in the April 9, 1864, issue of the Recorder, correspondent Thomas Hinton wrote, “We hear that Rev. H. M. Turner is coming soon. I hope it is true. The chaplain lives in the hearts of his countrymen here, I can tell you. Some one is asking about him every day.” Turner resumed his chaplaincy—and almost immediately after, his correspondence with the Recorder—in late May 1864. He witnessed his first battle at Wilson’s Landing, Virginia, on the twentyfourth of that month. The 1st U.S.C.T did Turner proud on this occasion , defying predictions made by both Northern and Southern whites that black troops would quail in the face of battle. “The coolness and cheerfulness of the men, the precision with which they shot, and the vast number of rebels they unmercifully slaughtered, won for them the highest regard of both the General and his staff, 120 CHAPTER TWO and every white soldier that was on the field,” he wrote. From Wilson ’s Landing, the 1st U.S.C.T proceeded to Petersburg, where they faced Confederate troops at the Second Battle of Petersburg (June 15–18) and settled into a protracted siege. Turner clearly found it difficult to describe the scenes of battle. On a practical level, it was extremely difficult to collect one’s thoughts—or even find pencil and paper—on the battlefield. In his July 9, 1864 column describing the 1st U.S.C.T.’s assault on Petersburg, he commented wryly, “A man thinks very little about the niceties of literature when bombs and balls are flying around his head.” But he also had difficulty describing the magnitude of the carnage he witnessed. In the same column, he wrote, “Nothing less than the pen of horror could begin to describe the terrific roar and dying yells of that awful yet masterly charge and daring feat.” Turner, perhaps fortuitously, was sent to Washington during the summer of 1864 and missed the momentous Battle of the Crater (July 30, 1864). In this battle, Union forces successfully blew a hole through Confederate defenses by detonating nearly 4,000 tons of explosives under the front lines, creating a large crater over 30 feet deep and 100 feet around. However, after this successful maneuver, miscommunication and a lack of training resulted in white troops being sent into the crater, at which point they were fired upon by will by the Confederate troops who surrounded it. Black troops were sent in afterwards. A humiliating number of casualties were suffered by the Union, and heated reprisals were subsequently issued by members of both white and black regiments. Black Quarter-master Sergeant James H. Payne, of the 27th U.S.C.T., wrote that the black troops “drove the enemy from their breastworks, and took possession of the blown-up fort; but while they did all, the white soldiers lay in their pits, and did nothing to support our men in the struggle: they lay as though there was nothing for them to do. . . . PETERSBURG 121 How easily Petersburg could have been taken . . . had the white soldiers and their commanders done their duty! But prejudices against colored troops prevented them.”1 Despite the heavy losses suffered in the catastrophe, however, black soldiers throughout the Petersburg campaign had demonstrated their courage and their willingness to die for their country. Sgt. John Hance, for example, wrote that black soldiers’ actions in these battles “have proved to the world that we are men. Soldiers, not slaves!”2 The Recorder during this period, it should be noted, exists only in tatters: the front pages of both the July 2, 1864 issue (following the Second Battle of Petersburg on June 15) and the August 13, 1864, issue (following the July 30 Battle of the Crater) are no longer extant. These issues were likely “read to pieces” by subscribers ; the absence of these pages from the historical record, while frustrating, can also be read as a marker of the Recorder’s historical importance in the African American community...