Chapter 20: More From Before – Garrison Duty

On January fifteenth, eighteen sixty-five, I rejoined the Forty-fourth United States Colored Infantry Regiment at Dalton, Georgia, the scene of the regiment’s devastating surrender to the Confederate army a mere three months before. Now Colonel Lewis Johnson had recruited nearly three hundred new men, almost all former slaves.

The colored scout platoon, which had been detached to operate under the banner of the Fourteenth Ohio Infantry Regiment, after participating in the battle of Nashville, had also rejoined the Forty-fourth. The battle at Nashville saw the final defeat of John Bell Hood’s Confederate Army of the Tennessee, which fled south, with the Union Army of the Cumberland and the Army of the Ohio in pursuit. When, after ten days, there was no longer an effective army to chase, the Union Commanders, George Thomas and John Schofield, brought their armies back to Tennessee, where the several units were assigned garrison duty at various posts in Tennessee and Georgia. Word later reached us that Hood had resigned as that defunct army’s commander.

The Nashville battle had begun on December fifteenth, the same day I had boarded a train for home, for a month of convalescent leave as my broken arm mended.

The scouts had come through the intense two-day battle unharmed, save for Ben Smith, who had taken a minie ball through his cheek. What made him the butt of the platoon’s jests, though, was the fact that the bullet had flown into his open mouth, missing all of his teeth, and had then punched out through his cheek, confirming, his comrades told him, his reputation for a big mouth.

Fortunately, with so little tissue to penetrate, the lead projectile had not deformed, and very little tissue had been carried away. The star-shaped wound was able to be closed with stitches. While it left obvious scars, it did not deface him, not to his way of thinking, that is.

One night, as we sat eating near the fire, Ben made the comment that he was of the opinion that the scar made him look dashing, to which Jordie Tipton replied, “It do make you look dashing -- like you was dashing for d’ chow line when you got shot.” Enough merriment ensued that Ben ended up with the nickname, Dash.

There were some surprises when I returned. Digger MacTavish had been made a corporal and Jordie Tipton had been made an acting corporal. Sergeant Odette had been reassigned to help organize and train the new troopers and I found myself deemed an acting sergeant, which I found ridiculous. I had only just passed my nineteenth birthday and had not yet even a full year in uniform. Nevertheless, both Jordie and I were required to sew on the ranks’ stripes but, to keep things simple, neither of us would be advanced in pay, meaning I still earned thirteen dollars a month, the rate for corporals, and he still earned thirteen dollars a month, the rate for privates.

It was only a few months back that colored soldiers’ pay was brought up to the same pay as white soldiers. Their lower pay was a notion I still had trouble understanding. But that’s just how things were and few people considered it remarkable. Negroes were just supposedly lesser people somehow. It made no sense to me. I mean, to a degree, I could understand the enmity between whites and Indians; they’d been at war for near a couple hundred years. But what did coloreds ever do to whites? Hell, the African slaves didn’t even want to be brought here. As our Sunday school teacher used to say, “It surpasseth all understanding.”

I found I was to report to Lieutenant Robert Ainsworth, as Captain Gray was now Major Gray and held wider regimental duties.

Lieutenant Ainsworth was only twenty-three, which, frankly, made his rank seem as ridiculous as mine, but that wasn’t for me to say. I was to learn that the Lieutenant’s father had some political influence back in Columbus, Ohio’s state capital, and had insisted his son be made an officer. Which he was, but in a colored regiment.

Still, the Lieutenant had belonged to an abolitionist club in college. He was a graduate of Western Reserve College, in Hudson, Ohio, an evangelist school known for its anti-slavery sentiment. He was hoping to make a career in the army so that he could escape the ministry, the role his father had chosen for his third-born son.

As a commander, he was a bit stiff and overly cautious, but we eventually learned to get along well.

The first assignment he gave me was to bring the platoon up to a total of thirty-two men, not including myself.

In turn, I had a request. I asked for approval of buckskins and moccasins as an official uniform for the scouts. I explained the practicality of the garb in effecting scout duties. He said he’d talk it over with Major Gray, with whom he liaised for matters concerning the scout platoon.

Rather than recruit new candidates for the platoon by way of a general announcement, I sent out pairs of scouts to attend the various platoons’ meal times, taking along their own food to further pique interest, as we were still known to prepare superior food, even with the limited options afforded us. When they were talking to interested soldiers, I told them to emphasize the absolute necessity of exceptional eyesight and superior shooting, and to warn them about the constant training, practice, and exercise.

Within a week we had thirty-three candidates for the eight positions. I put Jordie and Zeke in charge of the eyesight and shooting elimination tests. The recruits would be shooting the muzzle-loading Springfield Model 1863 rifle.

We still had a set of twenty-eight Spencer repeating rifles, but we kept them hidden away unless we took them on a mission. Then we had Zeke’s and my Whitworths, and two LeMats that Digger had acquired during the Battle of Nashville, along with four sets of binoculars and two spyglasses, also from the Nashville engagement.

Captain Gray sent word he wanted to see the buckskins we were using. I had the men -- Digger MacTavish, Jordie Tipton, Zeke Saltell, Doc Fraser, Ben Smith, and Davy Maltry -- wash their ‘skins, then we touched up the bluing. When they were dry, we put them on, added our standard blue slouch caps, and accompanied Lieutenant Ainsworth to see the Major.

Even as Major Gray watched us walk up, he was nodding. “I like that,” he said. “They look serious. And I can see the practicality.” He chuckled. “The whole army should be wearing them.”

Then he looked toward the regimental headquarters building, a large house on a shady street corner. He turned back to us. “C’mon,” he said, “let’s go show the Colonel.”

Major Gray introduced me as Acting Sergeant Judah Becker, “the one they call Seneca.” Then he introduced Digger and Jordie as the platoon’s corporals. “What do you think of these outfits, sir? We’re thinking of using them as uniforms for all our scouts.”

With that, Colonel Johnson came out from behind his desk and walked over to inspect the buckskins more closely. “They do have a certain panache,” he said, “and they certainly denote the man as a scout.” He walked around behind us, where he could see that Jordie, Digger, and I had hatchets tucked into our belts. “Oh, ho,” he said, “hatchets. Now we are looking fierce.”

Then he addressed Gray. “They’ll retain their regular uniforms as well?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“The regiment will not bear the expense?”

The Major looked at me and I winked.

“No, sir,” he said. “That is understood.”

“Then, as long as they are all of the same design as these, you have my approval.”

With approval, Digger and I went to work out a deal with the Cherokee village near Chattanooga. We settled on a trade of a pound of coffee beans for each set of ‘skins and another pound per set of moccasins. That obligated us to fifty-two pounds of coffee beans.

Digger traded a Reb cavalry sword (he’d collected a dozen of them) for a copy of the manifests of the next three supply trains that passed Dalton on their way to Atlanta. The second manifest we received showed that there would be three fifty-pound bags of coffee beans in the fifth box car.

The cargo doors on loaded box cars were each sealed by a numbered metal strip. But the roof access doors weren’t, as they were for access by train crewman and not suitable for moving cargo. As the train slowed on the climb out of the East Chickamauga Creek valley, Digger and I hopped aboard the fifth box car and climbed to the attached ladder, keeping low to avoid discovery by any brakemen, but the uphill grade meant braking wasn’t called. After a quck look, we climbed from the ladder to the roof, through the roof hatch, and into the car.

We figured the coffee sacks wouldn’t be under any crates, as that would be unstable and would likely break the sacking. We did have to move five hundred pounds of potatoes, in hundred pound sacks, but then we found the coffee. We only took one of the sacks, which would leave us short, but taking another fifty pounds would be too obvious. One missing sack could be a mistake, two would draw an investigation. We stacked the potatoes back on the coffee beans and took our coffee up to the roof, with plenty of time to spare.

Jordie, Ben, Zeke, and Doc were waiting at a sharp bend, where the train would slow, again. They had a canvas tarpaulin that they would stretch between them to catch the sack as we dropped it. We figured, even if the sack broke, we’d still catch any loose beans in the tarpaulin. It worked like a charm, though. We made our escape without discovery.

Then I showed them how to make a travois, and we took turns dragging the beans the five miles back to the barn. We collected the other two pounds of coffee beans from our own rations.

Within ten days, we had selected the new men. With their addition, we organized ourselves based on four eight-man squads which were further subdivided into four-man teams. The new men were spread among these groups.

We resumed a training regimen. In order to keep the Spencers from being discovered, our shooting practice was mostly with the rifled muskets. After the new men had been with us a month, we increased the weight of our hiking packs to sixty-five pounds.

Digger actually located a supply of hatchets that had been more-or-less forgotten in the stores. We were able to have Major Gray requisition three dozen of them. I showed the men the dozen basic attack and defense moves that Uncle Sammie had taught me, including the best places to strike an enemy, emphasizing the risk of the blade becoming wedged into the opponent’s bones. Then I added a new wrinkle to the shooting practice: taking shots immediately after running a mile. Of course, we continued with the fox and hounds games, by way of practicing tracking and stealth skills.

One day in mid-March, Lieutenant Ainsworth found me supervising the new men at shooting practice. Dash (Ben Smith) was with me and I asked him to supervise while I talked to the Lieutenant.

The Lieutenant said, “There appears to be some bushwhackers operating out of the swamps down along Talking Rock Creek. We had foot patrols chase them twice, but they’re on horseback and disappear into that swamp. When we took a company to search the swamp, they couldn’t find anything. So we think they use the swamp to hide their tracks and are being protected by some of the locals out there.”

“How many of them are there, sir?”

“We’re not sure. We’ve seen as many as a dozen, but suspect there are more.”

“Who reported the dozen, sir?”

“A guard picket from Company D.”

“Where was the sighting, Lieutenant?”

“Over on Ball Ground Road, two nights ago, or really, it was early morning, about three o’clock. Some group had set fire to our haystacks and to the hay barn that night and Major Gray figures it was the men our picket saw.

“Did he give chase?”

No. He didn’t know about the fires and the riders were too far off to challenge without firing on them, which seemed ill advised without a good reason.”

“But they were headed east, sir?”

“Yes.”

I paused to consider what little we knew. Then I asked, “Sir, how often are these raiders making an appearance?”

“We know of three times so far, beginning about three weeks ago, maybe a week after you returned.”

“And the last time, sir, was late Saturday and the picket saw them early Sunday?”

“That’s right.”

“And the dates of the raids before that, Lieutenant?”

He looked at the paper he was carrying and read, “February twenty-fifth and March fourth.”

I caught something from the dates, but decided to check it later.

“Sir, has anyone attempted to back-track them, to discover where they come from?”

“They use the local roads, so their tracks are mixed in with the general traffic. Could you back-track them on a road like that?”

“Given the right conditions, sir, but more than likely, yes. However, I have another plan. With your permission, Lieutenant. I’ll take the platoon out on a field maneuver, down to the Talking Rock swamp. We’ll leave tomorrow night, after dark, and be out for a week.”

“That swamp is more than thirty miles from here. You’ll be operating without support. I don’t like that.”

“If you can get me a key and sounder set, Lieutenant, we can check in daily.”

“You know how to send a telegraph message?”

“My sister works as a telegrapher, Lieutenant. While I was on convalescent leave with my broken arm I was useless on the farm, so I went to town with her and learned about her work and about the equipment. I’m not very fast, but I am accurate. I know the code and how to use a portable set. I’ll send a brief message every day, unless we have trouble. In that event, I’ll report the situation.”

He thought for a long minute. “Fine. But if I don’t hear from you two days running, I’ll send a company. And I’d better clear all this with Major Gray.”

The weather had been warming, and even the dogwoods were starting to bloom, but it was still chilly at night. Fires at night might have alerted our quarry, so we warmed rocks on fires during the day and used them in our bedrolls to keep warm at night.

I had another trick for keeping warm at night: my six-mile round trip to the nearest telegraph line. We’d agreed on a simple message: “On post,” plus an authenticator which was the date plus one on odd dates, plus two on even dates.

We headed out Wednesday night, March fifteenth, just four days past the full moon, and arrived at Talking Rock Creek early Thursday morning. We went to ground until mid-day, then, when we knew we could operate without being observed, we waded into the swamp and set up a camp on high ground in a remote spot well away from the road.

What I had noticed in Lieutenant Ainsworth’s report was that the raids were taking place on Saturday nights, with the escape to the swamp early on Sunday mornings. My bet was that these were local men, possibly some former Reb soldiers, who had farms or jobs and were only free on Sundays. So, instead of going out drinking on Saturday night, they mounted a raid. Likely they did some drinking, too.

We found the place where they left the road and entered the swamp. That area had been trampled by Union infantry brogans, but we were able find other tracks and follow them through the swamp. It was easy enough if the bottom silt was not churned up. The water was fairly clear otherwise, though it was stained the brown color of tannin, common to swamp water in most wooded places. But it was shallow, and the bottom easily visible.

The trick was to either make use of a lucky shaft of sunlight or else shade the surface of the water to eliminate reflection. But two or three days later, once the silt had either flowed away or settled out, it became fairly easy to see where the bottom had been churned up and the plants and algae destroyed by a bunch of horses, when compared to areas where the bottom showed little irregularities and growth was undisturbed. Troops entering the swamp in pursuit of the raiders would have encountered only silt-muddied water, so had given up hope of tracking the brigands.

Eventually, we found that their trail split into three branches, with the horses exiting the swamp a mile or more apart, probably whichever trail led closest to their various homes.

But rather than chase all over the countryside, I proposed we let the raiders come to us.

To that end, we had brought along several spools of cordage, which we began to weave into crude, narrow nets about two feet wide, but ten to fifteen yards long. Then we left them soaking, to darken in the tannin-stained water.

Late Saturday night, we strung the nets in predetermined positions, creating a chest-high pocket about ten yards wide and fifteen yards deep, designed to stop the horses from forward or lateral escape. They would also briefly stop a man on foot, though going under them would be simple enough, once their narrow dimensions were discovered. However, we intended to intervene before that occurred.

As I had further suspected, the raiders had not used the swamp as an assembly point; there really wasn’t any need to and it wasn’t the most hospitable meeting place. The swamp was used only as an escape route to hide their tracks.

We took positions outside the perimeter of the net and waited in silence.

Just after two in the morning, a group of fifteen riders on trotting horses came along, loud in their conversation:

“Wished we could a’ caught some a’ them pigs ‘stead a’ jis’ shootin’ ‘em.”

“That nigger garrison smelled worse than those hog wallows.”

“That’s ‘cuz them darkies can’t find their asses to wipe after they shits.”

“I heard Forrest is comin’ back to return those niggers to their masters, like he did that last batch.”

“Better he sends ‘em to their masters in hell, like he did them at Fort Pillow.”

“God bless Nathan Bedford Forrest.”

“You be at church this week, Angus?”

“What the hell!” A man exclaimed, as he fell from his stumbling horse.

“What is this?” another man demanded as his horse shied.

“There’s some rope here,” another called.

I stepped out from behind a wide cypress, barely visible under its canopy, despite the waning full moon. Digger emerged from behind another bole, his Spencer in firing position at his shoulder.

“Gentlemen!” I shouted. “You are surrounded and outnumbered by sharpshooters carrying repeating rifles. Scouts, fire one shot in the air to show they are surrounded.”

We raised our rifles and, at my signal, fired a single shot into the air. Except we’d closed our eyes and looked down, so as to protect our night vision, whereas the raiders were watching, wide-eyed, and were effectively night-blinded as a result. Then the scouts behind the raiders went down to a low crouch on one knee, allowing those of us in front a free field of fire at our shoulder height, should we have to shoot at the raiders.

“Gentlemen, if you resist, you die, and likely your horses will die.” Some men prized their horses, so I threw that in.

One man fired a pistol at me from the back of his horse. He died as the two closest scouts shot him from the saddle.

“Who’s in charge?” I shouted, then demanded.”Do you surrender or do you die?”

But the pistol bullet had nicked my ear and -- damnation -- I had felt my bladder let go. Thankfully, we were in a swamp and I was already wet nearly to my waist.

“I’m the leader,” one man said. “We surrender.”

“Leave your weapons with your horses. I will have you dismount one by one. When you’re dismounted, put your hands on your head, and move to the rear, back the way you came. You will be met by our men, who will tie your hands behind your back. If you cooperate, you will not be harmed or abused, only taken into custody.”

And so the process was begun.

“Damn, these here are nigger troops,” the first prisoner called to his fellows.

We led the men and their horses out of the swamp and closer to the road, settling in a copse of cypress. I jogged to the telegraph line, made the connections, and sent:

Need wheeled transport for 15 prisoners at place of lost trail. 20

Just under four weeks later, Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant in the village of Appomattox Court House, in Virginia, some ninety miles west of Richmond.

Unexpectedly, the end of The War made things worse in northern Georgia.

With the dissolution of several armies -- the Army of Northern Virginia, the Army of Tennessee, and several other Confederate forces -- former Rebel soldiers, many destitute, returned to their homes. Many of those homes had been destroyed, often by the action of both northern and southern forces either foraging or acting to deny resources to the opposition.

Beyond that, the south’s cotton- and tobacco-based plantation economy, which had flourished on the backs of slaves, was now in tatters, and doubly so as its products and support structures had often been a specific target of Union strategists with the intent to cripple the Confederate economy. Men who were returning from war with virtually nothing often found even less at home.

To make matters worse, they returned to an occupied homeland, with garrisoned Union troops throughout the failed Confederacy, troops who regarded them with a harsh disdain borne of the bitter war now ended, a war in which each side felt betrayed by the other.

And seen as a final insult by many a southerner, the occupying armed troops were often the very same “nigra” slaves who so recently groveled in fear at the very glance of a white man. It was the worst nightmare of southern slaveholders now realized. The world was not just turned upside down, but for many it had been split open and gutted, as well.

The bitterness and hostility of the desperate gave rise to outlawry and wanton destruction.

The scouts were kept especially busy.

The scout platoon had gained a reputation for unit effectiveness, which I credited to our continuous practices and exercises. We were better prepared for coordinated action than most infantry platoons. At the same time, we were known to carry out our assignments with minimum bloodshed. As a result, we were given an increasing number of missions.

It came to the point, in mid-June, that we were assigned horses so that we could act as a mounted infantry, as we had been assigned to deal with an outlaw gang who were active in a rough triangle between Harrison’s Chapel, Talking Rock, and Ellijay. Much of the area was in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the bushwhackers apparently had a camp. They were robbing banks, stage-coaches, stores, farms, and individual citizens, and if their victim was a northerner, that unfortunate usually did not survive the encounter, and it was worse for Negroes.

A platoon of colored infantry from the Chattanooga garrison had been ambushed by the raiders when the troops had been searching for the hideout. Two of the infantrymen had been killed and several wounded. It was reported that the brigands used cavalry tactics.

While the mobility that horses would afford was not to be denied, our problem was that most of our number had never sat a horse; a few of the men were even afraid of horses. In most southern states, it had been against the law for a slave to ride a horse. It had created a problem we had only one day to solve.

So I went out on a limb.

I announced, “I will personally purchase the pork ribs for a barbecue on our next free Sunday for any man who can ride a horse continuously for a half hour. That time begins in five minutes.”

“How many ribs?” Dash called, though he was already mounted and riding.

“Eight per man.”

I figured, if I couldn’t cover the cost out of pocket, Digger would have a “creative” solution.

I wasn’t rolling in dough, but I had accumulated some, and a little more from playing blackjack. Pa had told both Amos and I to keep our pay and not send any more home, as they were doing well. That part of Ohio was undergoing a surge in population and business.

The growth was bolstered by the Miami and Erie Canal, which ran from Toledo, on Lake Erie, and alongside the Maumee River all the way to Defiance, then south, eventually connecting with the Ohio River at Cincinnati. Considering that New York’s Erie Canal connected Lake Erie to the Hudson River, it meant that Ohio’s Miami and Erie Canal provided a water route from Defiance to the Atlantic Ocean and to the Gulf of Mexico. The two-hundred seventy mile canal was the commodities lifeline of the region, as shipping on the few available rail connections was considerably more expensive. Agriculture was booming in western Ohio.

For that matter, the canals provided a slow but comfortable passenger service, too. Towed by large draft horses, passenger barges moved along at five miles an hour. By barge, it was a one-day trip from Defiance to Toledo.

The one big limitation with the canals was that they froze over in winter. But that was a northern problem. The south had many others.

The South was plagued by rising prices and a shortage of cash. Bartering had become more prominent. However, I was in possession of one thing that nearly every southern farmer needed desperately: greenback dollars and shiny coins. I calculated that, if I drove a hard bargain, I had enough stashed away to provide a real feast for the whole platoon, including a potato for each man and some greens cooked with ham hocks.

Not surprisingly, each man had mounted a horse and was riding, in some fashion, about the paddock.

That same afternoon, I had everyone, including myself, ride for two more half-hour periods, separated by one hour of some hiking.

The next day, we didn’t set out until noon.

Adjusting one’s body to extended horse riding was usually a painful experience. This was due, due, in large part, to the unusual demands placed on few otherwise well-functioning muscles and an unaccustomed posture, position, and movement pattern that resulted in the abrasion of some previously-tender skin.

Riding a horse properly requires more than just sitting in the saddle. In order to take full advantage of the horse’s capacity to exceed human walking speed for extended periods of time, the rider has to allow the horse to trot, which is the animal’s most economical gait for the purpose of prolonged, deliberate maneuvers. The catch was that a trot set the rider into a rhythmic bounce that was both spine-jamming and teeth-rattling. In order to mitigate that effect, the rider had to, in some fashion, post.

Essentially, posting involved supporting your weight in the stirrups and with the grip of your thighs on the horse in order to counter the jarring that would otherwise result from the horse’s gait. For the inexperienced or infrequent rider, the first few days of controlling your own bearing while in the saddle resulted in very sore leg muscles and painfully chafed thighs, among other possibilities.

I was hoping to keep that experience to a minimum, thus our start after dinner, limiting us to a half day of riding.

For the remainder of that afternoon, we’d ride twenty minutes, then walk the horses for ten minutes. Even so, by sunset we were all sore.

I had designs on a campsite on a creek Lieutenant Ainsworth had pointed out on the map. My intent was that we could all sit in the cool water for the sootihing benefits. We arrived there just after five o’clock.

But first, we took care of the horses. We unsaddled our mount, arranged the McClellan saddle to expose the underside to the drying air, draped the saddle blanket over the saddle for the same purpose, or over a convenient branch or fence rail, led the horse to the creek for a drink, picked out any stones caught under the horse’s shoes, brushed the horse down, led it to the creek for another drink, then tied it out in a nearby grassy field fifty feet apart, on twenty-foot leads fastened to an anchor stake you cut from a branch and drove deep into the ground using your hatchet, and finally bringing some oats to provide the extra nutrition needed by a horse in steady use.

Only then did we take ourselves to the creek, most of us seated in the shallows, our legs spread, facing upstream, allowing the cool water to soothe the inflamed skin on our inner thighs. And we all bathed, as long as we happened to be sitting there bare-ass naked, anyway.

Digger had brought along a generous supply of a salve that Major Gray had recommended and it got liberal use.

Of course, posting wasn’t the only skill the novice rider had to learn. There was saddling and tack, directing the horse in required movements, and basic equine health and hoof care. We had four experienced riders, if you can count my seat-of-the-pants knowledge. But Digger knew some of the formal stuff, which I quickly picked up, as did two of the new men, Peter Davis and Rafael Gomez, free Negroes who had answered Col. Johnson’s appeal.

Gomez was an immigrant from Cuba and Davis was from Steubenville, Ohio. Both knew the finer points of riding. Between some on-the-ground training and some in-the-saddle coaching as we traveled, we began to organize the platoon into a mounted unit.