Organization of Negro Regiments in the Regular Army—First Move in the War—Chickamauga and Tampa—Note.
Altogether the colored soldiers in the Civil War took part and sustained casualties in two hundred and fifty-one different engagements and came out of the prolonged conflict with their character so well established that up to the present hour they have been able to hold an important place in the Regular Army of the United States. No regiment of colored troops in the service was more renowned at the close of the war or has secured a more advantageous position in the history of that period than the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry. Recruited among the free colored people of the North, many of them coming from Ohio, it was remarkable for the intelligence and character of its men, and for the high purpose and noble bearing of its officers. Being granted but half the pay per month given to white soldiers, the regiment to a man, for eighteen months refused to receive one cent from the Government. This was a spectacle that the country could not longer stand. One thousand volunteers fighting the country's battles without any compensation rather than submit to a discrimination fatal to their manhood, aroused such a sentiment that Congress was compelled to put them on the pay-roll on equal footing with all other soldiers. By them the question of the black soldier's pay and rations was settled in the Army of the United States for all time. Every soldier, indeed every man in the army, except the chaplain, now draws the pay of his grade without regard to color, hair or race. By the time these lines reach the public eye it is to be hoped that even the chaplain will be lifted from his exceptional position and given the pay belonging to his rank as captain.
(February 2, 1901, the bill became a law giving chaplains the full pay of their grade.)
More than 185,000 blacks, all told, served in the army of the Union during the War of the Rebellion, and the losses from their ranks of men killed in battle were as heavy as from the white troops. Their bravery was everywhere recognized, and in the short time in which they were employed, several rose to commissions.
Perhaps the most notable act performed by a colored American during the war was the capture and delivery to the United States forces of the rebel steamer Planter, by Robert Smalls, of Charleston. Smalls was employed as pilot on the Planter, a rebel transport, and was entirely familiar with the harbors and inlets, of which there are many, on the South Atlantic coast. On May 13, 1862, the Planter came to her wharf in Charleston, and at night all the white officers went ashore, leaving a colored crew of eight men on board in charge of Smalls. Smalls hastily got his wife and three children on board, and at 2 o'clock on the morning of the 14th steamed out into the harbor, passing the Confederate forts by giving the proper signals, and when fairly out of reach, as daylight came, he ran up the Stars and Stripes and headed his course directly toward the Union fleet, into whose hands he soon surrendered himself and his ship. The act caused much favorable comment and Robert Smalls became quite a hero. His subsequent career has been in keeping with the high promise indicated by this bold dash for liberty, and his name has received additional lustre from gallant services performed in the war after, and in positions of distinguished honor and responsibility in civil life. The Planter, after being accepted by the United States, became a despatch boat, and Smalls demonstrating by skill and bravery his fitness for the position, was finally, as an act of imperative justice, made her commander.
With the close of the Revolutionary War the prejudice against a standing army was so great that the army was reduced to scarce six hundred men, and the Negro as a soldier dropped out of existence. When the War of 1812 closed sentiment with regard to the army had made but little advancement, and consequently no place in the service was left for Negro soldiers. In the navy the Negro still lingered, doing service in the lower grades, and keeping up the succession from the black heroes of '76 and 1812. When the War of the Rebellion closed the country had advanced so far as to see both the necessity of a standing army, and the fitness of the Negro to form a part of the army; and from this position it has never receded, and if the lessons of the Cuban campaign are rightly heeded, it is not likely to recede therefrom. The value of the Regular Army and of the Black Regular were both proven to an absolute demonstration in that thin line of blue that compelled the surrender of Santiago.
In July, 1866, Congress passed an act adding eight new regiments of infantry and four of calvary to the nineteen regiments of infantry and six of calvary of which those arms of the Regular Army were at that time composed, thus making the permanent establishment to consist of five regiments of artillery, twenty-seven of infantry, and ten of cavalry. Of the eight new infantry regiments to be formed, four were to be composed of colored men; and of the four proposed for the calvary arm, two were to be of colored men. The President was empowered by the act also to appoint a chaplain for each of the six regiments of colored troops. Under this law the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry Regiments were organized.
In 1869 the infantry suffered further reduction, and the four colored regiments organized under the law of 1866, numbered respectively the 38th, 39th, 40th and 41st, were consolidated into two regiments, and numbered the 24th and 25th—the 38th and 41st becoming the former, and the 39th and 40th the latter. Previous to this consolidation the numbers between the old 19th and the 38th, which was the lowest number borne by the new colored regiments, were filled in by dividing the old three batallion regiments in the service, and making of the second and third batallions of these regiments new regiments. The whole infantry arm, by the law of 1869, was compressed into twenty-five regiments, and in that condition the army remains to the present, to wit:[9] Ten regiments of cavalry, five of artillery and twenty-five of infantry.
The number of men in a company and the number of companies in a regiment have varied greatly within the past few months. Just previous to the breaking out of the war a regiment of infantry consisted of eight companies of about sixty men each, and two skeletonized companies and the band—the whole organization carrying about five hundred men; now a regiment of infantry consists of twelve companies of 106 men each and with the non-commissioned staff numbers twelve hundred and seventy-four men.