SILAS CASEY,
Bvt. Major-General U.S. Army.'"
Of course this did not apply to regiments raised at the North, generally. They were officered by the elite, such as Col. R. G. Shaw, of the 54th Massachusetts, a former member of the 7th New York Regiment, and upon whose battle monument his name is carved. Cols. James C. Beecher, Wm. Birney and a host of others, whose names can now be found on the army rolls, with the prefix General, commanded these regiments. Of those who commanded Southern regiments this is equally true, especially of those who served in the 9th, 10th, 18th and 19th Corps. Col. Godfred Weitzel, who in March, 1865, had been promoted to Major General of Volunteers, commanded the 25th Corps of 30,000 negro soldiers. The select corps of officers intended to officer Gen. Ullman's brigade of four regiments to be raised at New Orleans by order of the War Department, dated January 1863, as well as the battalion, which he was also ordered to raise for scouting purposes, the following March, included many men of rank. To command a negro regiment or company was at this date a coveted prize, for which men of wealth and education contended. The distinction which they were continually winning for their officers, frequently overcame the long-cherished prejudice of West Point, and the graduates of this caste institution now vied for commissions in negro regiments, in which many of them served during the Rebellion and since.
CAPT. O. S. B. WALL, U. S. A.
It was the idea of Gen. Banks when organizing the Corps d'Afrique to appoint even the non-commissioned officers from the ranks of white regiments, and he did so in several instances. His hostility to negro officers was the cause of his removing them from the regiments, which Major General Butler organized at New Orleans in 1862. In organizing the Corps d'Afrique, the order, No. 40, reads:
"The Commanding General desires to detail for temporary or permanent duty, the best officers of the army, for the organization, instruction, and discipline of this Corps. With them he is confident that the Corps will render important service to the Government. It is not established upon any dogma of equality or other theory, but as a practical and sensible matter of business. The Government makes use of mules, horses, uneducated white men in the defence of its institutions; why should not the negro contribute whatever is in his power, for the cause in which he is as deeply interested as other men? We may properly demand from him whatever service he can render."
At first it was proposed to pay the officers of negro troops less than was paid the officers of white soldiers, but this plan was abandoned. Toward the close of the war nearly all the chaplains appointed to negro regiments were negroes; non-commissioned officers were selected from the ranks, where they were found as well qualified as those taken from the ranks of white regiments. In the 10th and 18th Corps it was a common thing for the orderly sergeants to call their company's roll from memory, and the records of many companies and regiments are kept at the War Department in Washington, as mementoes of their efficiency.
Such were the men who commanded the Black Phalanx. The following are the names of the negro commissioned officers of the Butler Louisiana Regiments: