Lincoln’s Grand Army

Seddon’s View of Black Southern Troops

By 1856 the new Republican party had acquired control of most northern State governments, while being denounced as the chief “disunionists” of the country for reintroducing slavery agitation as a party tactic.

Its party platform in 1860 was very clear on the territories, favoring subsidies for immigrant homesteaders, and a transcontinental railroad crossing Indian lands in the way of rail lines carrying Northern goods westward. Once Southern members departed Congress in early 1861, Republicans created a Federal corporation, the Union Pacific, which extinguished Indian titles and any defense of their land when driven off by military force. The Indian tribes were to be progressively eliminated as obstacles to settlement and industrial expansion, and before the Civil War ended this policy was in full force.

As the South’s colored population fell into their hands as plantations were overrun, they were designated “contrabands” and utilized as hard labor battalions. As US Colored Troops, they were used as prison guards or cannon fodder in futile assaults and rightly assumed they would suffer the same fate as the Indians under northern rule.

Seddon’s View of Black Confederate Troops

“Hon. James A. Seddon, Confederate Secretary of War, in his report, supplemented Mr. Davis’s message with some still stronger recommendations of his own. The slaves, he said, had an even stronger interest in the victory of the Confederacy than did the white people. The latter risked their political independence, but the former their very existence as a race.

If the eternal enemies of the South should triumph, they would extinguish the negroes in a few years, as they had already extinguished the Indians. He recommended that the States which had absolute and exclusive control of the matter, should legislate at once with a view to the contingency of negro enlistments.

On the 15^th [of March 1865] the subject of enlistments came up in the Virginia legislature . . . and on the 27^th instructed its Senators to vote for the [negro] enlistment measure in the Confederate Congress. [About this time] a letter of General Lee’s was published looking to approval, considering it “not only expedient but necessary.” If the Confederates did not make use of the slaves, the Federals would.

The vote in the Senate on the final passage of the bill, March 7, 1865, the President was authorized to ask for and accept from slave owners the services of as many able-bodied slaves as he thinks expedient; to the same to organized by the commander-in-chief under instructions from the War Department, and to receive the same rations and compensation as other troops.

Mr. Lincoln did not think much of the impressment and enlisting of slaves. He said, in a speech made at Washington on the 17^th of March, that the negro could not stay at home and make bread and fight at the same time, and he did not care much for which duty was allotted to him by the Confederate government. “We must now see the bottom of the rebels; resources.”

(Confederate Negro Enlistments. Edward Spencer. Annals of the War, Written by the Leading Participants, North and South. 1879, pp. 547-552)

Wartime Destruction at Williamsburg

Virginia’s historic colonial capital, Williamsburg, was established upon the former Middle Plantation in 1699 and named in honor of England’s King William III. In 1722, the town was granted Royal Charter as a “city incorporate” which is believed to be the oldest charter in the United States. The College of William and Mary is older than the town, founded in 1693 under royal charter issued by King William III and Queen Mary II. It is the second-oldest institution of higher learning in the US and ninth oldest in the English-speaking world.

Wartime Destruction at Williamsburg

“The early morning of February 6^th [1864] found us in line, and we marched into Williamsburg. [Our column] was comprised of 139^th and 118^th New York regiments, two regiments of colored troops, and I believe a single battery, all under command of Col. Samuel Roberts.

As we marched through the town it was plain to be seen that it had suffered from the effects of the war; few inhabitants were left, many houses deserted and many burned. William and Mary, one of the oldest colleges in America, had also been destroyed by Union soldiers in revenge, it was said, for having been fired on from its windows. Though the walls were mostly standing, it was completely ruined.

Our picket line extended from the York to the James Rivers, about four miles; and with gunboats on either flank was a strong one. The object of the expedition seems to have been making a stand at Bottom’s Bridge while the cavalry made a dash at Richmond and burning the city if possible.

One of the pickets posted at Williamsburg was at the old brick house one occupied by Governor Page of Virginia. It was built of brick imported from England. The library in the mansion was a room about eighteen by twenty feet, and the walls had been covered with books from floor to ceiling; but now the shelving had been torn down, and the floor was piled with books in wretched disorder – trampled upon – most pitiful to see. In the attic of this old house the boys found trunks and boxes of papers of a century past – documents, letters, etc.

Among the latter were those bearing the signatures of such men as Jefferson, Madison, Richard Henry Lee; and one more signed by Washington.”

(25^th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion. Samuel H. Putnam. Putnam, Davis and Company, Publishers. 1886, pp. 245-250)

Lincoln Chooses War

“The interval of eighty days between [Sumter] and the assembling of Congress gave Lincoln a virtual monopoly on emergency powers. Between his attempt to reinforce and resupply Fort Sumter – the latter odd since its garrison obtained food from Charleston markets – and the meeting of Congress in July, Lincoln had a virtual monopoly on assuming claimed “emergency powers.” After several States solemnly withdrew from the 1789 Constitution, Lincoln declared an “insurrection” to exist in seven States and called forth 75,000 militia to suppress this claim. On April 19, 1861, Lincoln proclaimed a naval blockade – an act of war – of all States bordering the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, including North Carolina which remained within the Union at that time. In his July 1861 message to Congress, Lincoln explained his clearly unconstitutional actions while asserting that “this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic or democracy . . . can . . . maintain its territory against its own domestic foes.” It is clear that he was not familiar with Article III, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, for “waging war against Them [the States] or aiding and abetting their enemies.”

Lincoln Chooses War

“. . . the South considered secession a peaceable act, while according to the [Northern] point of view such secession was null and required a defensive attitude on the part of the federal government with a readiness to strike in retaliation for any act of resistance to the national authority. This drifting policy, accompanied by conditions in the social mind which can only be described as pathological, had led to the Sumter crisis; and war was upon the country with each side protesting that its actions were purely defensive, and that the opponent was the aggressor.

Lincoln took many other war measures. He issued two proclamations of blockade . . . He decreed an expansion of the regular army on his own authority [with] a further call on May 3^rd for recruits to the regular army beyond the total authorized by law. Increasing the regular army is a congressional function, with Sen. John Sherman stating that “I never met anyone who claimed that the President could, by proclamation, increase the regular army.”

Lincoln’s message to Congress on July 4^th, 1861, stated: “These measures, whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon, under what appeared to be a popular demand and public necessity; trusting . . . that Congress would readily ratify them.” In a word, the whole machinery of war was set in motion by Lincoln, with all that this meant in terms of federal effort, departmental activity, State action and private enterprise.”

(The Civil War and Reconstruction. James G. Randall. D.C. Heath & Company. 1937, pp. 360-366)

Bounties Produce Bounty-Jumpers

By May of 1862, Lincoln demanded more troops from Northern governors who responded that their citizens “had developed an immunity to patriotic appeals,” and some other inducement than oratory was required. This was to begin the North’s descent into the hiring of well-paid mercenaries with which to subdue the truculent American South. During the war, the US government would pay – with its fiat money greenbacks – roughly $750,000,000 in recruitment bounties for soldiers.

Bounties Produce Bounty-Jumpers

“[Northern] governors were finding that Lincoln’s threat of a draft a compelling reason to raise men. An exception, however, was found in Ohio, where blunt Governor John Brough did not face the problem of reelection in 1864. Freed from the political anxieties that weighed upon his colleagues, Brough had time to think of the costs of the recruiting program.

Under the threat of Lincoln’s draft, States, counties and townships had been giving bounties, bidding higher and higher for the lives of men, until it was possible for a potential soldier to obtain a thousand dollars for joining the army. The local communities were bankrupting themselves to avoid the draft of their citizens. The system, as Brough saw it, was destroying the confidence of the people in the government, was compounding corruption and undermining patriotism.

Brough’s solution, however, was political suicide: Let the States fill their quotas by their own drafts and let them agree to a common bounty policy. When Stanton reported to Congress that the governors asked for delays in drafting, Brough hastened to disclaim any such intention. The financial situation was bad, and recruiting had ceased: Brough wanted the draft made promptly.

But more than he wanted a draft, Brough wanted an end to the war. The bounty-bought enlistments did not produce soldiers; they only contributed bounty jumpers.”

(Lincoln and the War Governors. William B. Hesseltine. Alfred A. Knopf, 1955. Pp. 349-350)

The Irish Brigade

Ironically, New York’s Irish Brigade was led by Thomas Meagher, a rebellion leader in the 1848 drive for Irish independence. Captured and sentenced to death – though commuted to life in prison – he escaped to America and organized a unit of New York Irishmen. Many Irish emigres served in the Southern armies, greatly concerned that northern victory would bring a flood of emancipated slaves northward to obtain the low-paying jobs on which they depended.

His brigade was decimated at Fredericksburg in December 1862 while advancing on Lee’s well-defended position at Marye’s Heights with 1600 men and soon retreating with barely 1000 able to walk. After further decimation at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, Meagher’s brigade was reduced to well-under regimental strength with 600 men.

Postwar, Meagher was appointed Secretary of State for the Montana Territory by Andrew Johnson, and later as Territorial Governor. He fell off a steamboat and drowned in 1867 under mysterious circumstances, believed to be intoxication, suicide or possibly a political murder.

Irish Brigade

“At Fredericksburg the Irish Brigade was almost wiped out. When it became apparent to [its] leader that there was no prospect of being allowed to recruit new members for the New York regiments of the brigade, it was decided to consolidate the three regiments with perhaps 300 effective men into a battalion of six companies and muster out [unneeded] officers. General Meagher had previously asked leave to resign, as his brigade no longer existed except in name.

Meagher thought it a mockery to keep up a brigade with the few men left and great wrong to consolidate regiments that had attained great renown. Although its 63^rd Regiment served through the Wilderness Campaign – its ranks being recruited by the addition of three new companies and by augmentations – as a distinctive Irish organization it may be regarded as nonexistent after Meagher’s resignation.”

(Foreigners in the Union Army & Navy. Ella Lonn. LSU Press, 1951. p. 122)

Not a War of Oppression

Gen. Henry Halleck told his invasion forces in 1861 that Southerners “have been warned that we come to oppress and plunder. By our acts we will undeceive them.”

In November 1861, Gen. John Dix prepared his invasion of Virginia’s eastern shore and spoke of “giving [Virginians] them the strongest assurances of kind treatment and protection . . . they may be gained over without bloodshed.” Dix added that Virginians “have got it in their heads that we want to steal and emancipate their Negroes.” Despite these pronouncements of deliverance from despotic “rebel” rule, the reality told a different story.

A colonel of the 20^th NY Volunteers at the Outer Banks of North Carolina wrote his commanding officer: “I regret to be compelled to state that the conduct of the men and some officers of my command has been that of vandals.” The descent into total war had begun.

Not a War of Oppression

“Few northerners sought the overthrow of slavery, for although most considered the institution morally corrupting and economically stifling and wanted to halt its spread, they deemed blacks unfit for freedom in a republic.

The northern-dominated U.S. Congress of July 1861 affirmed the narrow goals of the Crittenden Resolution, which it passed with hardy a dissenting vote. It declared “that this war was waged, on our part, in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of these States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union, . . . as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.”

These last twelve words reflected a fear that a prolonged war might rage out of control, burst its bonds and devour the very ideals and institutions it was meant to preserve. Lincoln himself worried that an extended conflict would “degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle.”

(When the Yankees Came: Conflict & Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861-1865. Stephen V. Ashe. UNC Press, 1995, pp. 25-27)

Grant’s Theory of Attrition

Grant took command of Lincoln’s Army of the Potomac on March 17, 1864, now massed on Virginia’s Rapidan River and numbering 141,160 men. To oppose this invasion of Virginia, General Robert E. Lee’s strength was 50,403 muskets. His cavalry, artillery and supplies were all depleted, and his numerical strength in all arms did not exceed 64,000 as Grant began his march southward on May 4, 1864.

Grant’s Theory of Attrition

“General Grant’s theory of war was, “to hammer continuously against the armed force of his enemy, until, by mere attrition, there should be nothing left.”

Military genius, the arts of war, the skillful handling of troops, superior strategy, the devotion of an army of men, the noble self-denial of commanders, all must give way before the natural forces of “continuous hammering” by an army with unlimited reinforcements, an inexhaustible treasury, a well-filled commissariat, and all directed by a unanimous people.

The work of Lincoln’s war department was based upon the need for an army of a million men. Vast stores were accumulated. The US Congress, with reckless prodigality, continued to pass the most extravagant appropriations for organizing armies, and for maintaining the countless forces which constituted an invasion so vast, that it was hoped it would be invincible.

At the Wilderness, Grant’s onslaught overpowered two divisions and drove them back until Lee himself rode among his troops to rally them and reestablish his lines. In early June, Grant ordered an assault at Cold Harbor which was repelled with extraordinary slaughter, though he ordered a second attack in the afternoon which his men sullenly refused to obey.

Grant then pivoted toward the James River below Richmond to surprise and capture Petersburg, but was thwarted by Generals Beauregard and Wise, who had been reinforced with local militia and home guards. At this point Lee’s aggregate strength had increased to 78,400 men with which to oppose Grant, who had been reinforced and was now up to 192,160 troops.

Mr. Swinton, in his ‘History of the Army of the Potomac,’ estimates Grant’s losses at the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna and Cold Harbor battles at “above 60,000 men’ which included 3,000 officers, ‘while the loss of Lee did not exceed 18,000 men, of whom few were officers). This result would seem an unfavorable comment upon the choice of route by Grant, as McClellan two years prior attained the same point with trifling losses.

Grant had achieved no signal victory nor important success to offset his losses and had not defeated Lee on any of the campaign’s battlefields. The Army of Northern Virginia, not reinforced until it had reached Hanover Junction, and then only by 9,000 men, had repulsed every assault, and in the final trial of strength with a force vastly superior, had inflicted upon the enemy, in about an hour, a loss of 13,000 men.”

(Jefferson Davis: A Memoir by His Wife, Volume II. Varina Davis. Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America. 1990 (original published 1890), pp. 487-493)

Puritan Slaveholders

The author below writes that “Most Puritans sought a homogenous society that made any kind of stranger generally unwelcome,” and “their efforts to expunge untrustworthy members with white skin were legendary.” Those with white complexions from different cultures posed a “complicated dilemma” for Puritans, but the vast gulf between their own and Indian and African cultures made the latter unwelcome except as slaves.

Puritan Slaveholders

“Slavery began in New England during the first years of settlement in Massachusetts, and thus, the Puritans learned how to be slaveowners immediately on arrival. As white New Englanders established their new settlements, they enslaved Indian populations both to control them and draw upon them for labor. Although John Winthrop did not immediately see Indians as slaves, it dawned upon him that they could be used as such.

Winthrop recorded requests for Indian slaves both locally and in Bermuda. Wars with the Narragansett and Pequot tribes garnered large numbers of slaves, and the trading of Indian slaves abroad brought African slaves to Massachusetts shores. In 1645, Emmanuel Downing, Winthrop’s brother-in-law and a barrister, welcomed a trade of Pequot slaves for African slaves.

However, the enslavement of Indians had a different tenor than the enslavement of Africans. The indigenous slaves represented an enemy, a conquered people, and a great threat to Puritan society. African slaves represented a trade transaction, laborers without strings attached. Moreover, Indians slaves were part of peace negotiations and control of the region. They served as collateral with which to negotiate with local Indian leaders. Further, Puritan colonists could expel troublesome Indians out of the colony or simply control them as slave property.”

(Tyrannicide. Forging an American Law of Slavery in Revolutionary Massachusetts and South Carolina. Emily Blanck. UGA Press, 2014. p. 12-13)

Bounty Money in Buffalo

The bloody carnage of 1862, capped by the north’s bloody Fredericksburg defeat in late December of that year, brought voluntary enlistments to an end. But rather than ending the war between Americans, Lincoln’s Republican party resorted to a conscription law in March of 1863 to fill their depleted ranks This was in practice a “whip” to gain those attracted by the generous bounty monies from federal, State, county and towns to satisfy Lincoln’s quotas. Recent immigrants, especially unskilled laborers, were a prime target of bounty monies or substitution.

Bounty Money in Buffalo

“I was born on the 16^th day of November 1843 in the province of Brandenburg, district of Potsdam, Kreis (county) Prenzlau in the Uckermark. I emigrated with my parents (Phillip and Auguste Albertine Schultze Milleville) to this country in the year 1847, landing in Buffalo on the 4^th of July 1847. My parents settled in the town of Wheatfield, Niagara County, in a German community called Neu Bergholz.

I lived at home until the age of 16, and then apprenticed to tailor Friedrich Parchart for three years for room and board. All the cash money I had during the three years was 75 cents which I received from a political candidate for delivering a letter.

In April 1862 I went to the city of Buffalo and got a job with tailor Adam Sipple on Main Street. I worked for $6 a month and board; after 6 months I asked for more pay, he let me go. Then I got work at nearby Fort Erie, Canada, at $8 a month with board for about 4 or 5 months. Then I got a job again in Buffalo, but my boss was a drunkard. He would work all day Sunday, and Sunday night he would go to a saloon and often not come home until Tuesday morning while his family suffered. Then I got a job at 32 Main Street with tailor Jacob Metzger.

There I stayed until the 20^th day of January 1864 when I enlisted in Company I, 2^nd New York Mounted Rifles. For enlisting I got $300 government bounty, $75 State bounty, and $110 County Bounty. Of the government bounty we got $50 every six months – the State and County money we received immediately.

As recruits we were taken to Fort Porter on the banks of the Niagara River. After a few days a fellow enlistee asked to borrow my overcoat to go into town for tobacco but forgot to come back. I guess he was a Bounty jumper. We then needed a pass to go into the city, but the boys would arrange with the guards to walk in opposite directions in order to slip through.

In early June 1864 we had our first battle at Petersburg, Virginia. The Rebels were following us and attacked in the rear. They then went around our left flank. We lost 13 men out of our company; some of the boys threw away everything and ran. The next day the Rebs had us bottled up and we barely slipped out.”

(Excerpt, Civil War Diary of Herman Henry Milleville: Historical Society of North German Settlements in WNY, Winter 2025 Issue. Eugene W. Camann Collection)

GAR War Upon “Disloyal History”

Despite their formerly-invincible political influence waning in the early 1890s, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) took aim at school textbook authors who suggested that the American South may have fought for the same independence and liberty their forefathers had in 1776 – branding it “disloyal history.”

School book authors mentioned below are John Fiske (1842 – 1901), born in Hartford, Connecticut; and Daniel H. Montgomery (1837-1928), a graduate of Brown University in Rhode Island. Both States dominated the colonial transatlantic slave trade.

GAR War Upon “Disloyal History”

“Another phase of their patriotic campaign was the Grand Army’s intensified textbook warfare, in which the Confederate Veteran’s finally took up cudgels for the authors and point of view of their own section. Union veterans, feeling the general public reaction against liberality to old soldiers after the pension gift of 1890, sought some explanation for their declining prestige.

The GAR veterans concluded that it lay in the growing tendency of literature and textbooks to minimize the American South’s “crime.” The Boston Grand Army Record asserted:

“It is often spoken of in [Grand Army] Post meetings and at Camp Fires and on other public occasions that the general public opinion is not so favorable to the surviving Union soldiers as it formerly was . . . voters who have studied School Histories since 1865 have no idea what the Union Army contended for, what sacrifices they endured . . . [and] the present emasculated public opinion regarding the Right and Wrong of the Rebellion is the natural fruit of these emasculated School Histories. The indifference regarding the duties of the present generation to the surviving Union soldiers is the legitimate product of False School histories written by Professor Fiske and Reverend Montogomery imported from England. Englishmen helped the Rebels when the United States was in what seemed its death throes. We do not now need the services of Englishmen to write up the Rebellion in our School History.”

While national and State GAR headquarters showered educational institutions with angry complaints, local GAR committees paid grim calls upon school superintendents. These committees made scathing reports on textbooks by Southern writers and wrote even more bitter reviews of those produced in the north for national sale.

A typical expression was that of the Massachusetts GAR that many histories were “open to the suspicion that that they had “soothed the wounded spirit of secession for the sake of Southern trade.” They give over-prominence and over-praise to the leaders and movements of the secession forces, and so treat the events of the war period as to leave the impression upon the youthful mind that the war was merely a quarrel between two factions, in which both were equally to blame.”

(Veterans in Politics: The Story of the GAR. Mary R. Dearing. LSU Press, 1952. p. 480-481)