Freedom by the Sword by William A. Dobak

Author:William A. Dobak
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781616088392
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

Railroad bridge over Elk River, between Nashville and Chattanooga, where the 12th U.S. Colored Infantry stood guard in September 1863

By late November, the 13th USCI had moved its camp to Section 49, “the most advanced post” on the Nashville and Northwestern, Col. John A. Hottenstein reported. The end-of-track stood nineteen miles west of where it had been on 19 October. Construction gangs had managed to lay only half a mile of track a day for thirty-eight days, even though the 13th USCI finally had enough men to help in the work. On 27 November, Hottenstein asked for the last one hundred recruits needed to fill the regiment, explaining, “I have to work the men very hard. … It is impossible to recruit here and the country is full of the enemy.” Local whites were likely to kill any potential recruits who tried to reach the regiment’s camp on their own. Despite the colonel’s complaints, the regimental adjutant was optimistic, even cheerful, nine days later when he reported, “Everything ‘goes bravely on’ [one half of the regiment] is detailed to work on R.R. for the ensuing week, the other does guard, foraging and other duties. No enemy of any consequence in the vicinity.”12

Harassment from Confederates was not the only impediment that track crews faced. Early in January 1864, Col. Charles R. Thompson of the 12th USCI reported that about one hundred of his men lacked shoes. “If there is any prospect of our getting a supply of shoes we can help on the work here materially,” he told Brig. Gen. Alvan C. Gillem, who commanded all troops on the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad. Thompson had to threaten to relieve his regimental quartermaster, but the men got their shoes. By the end of January, thirty-four miles of track had been laid, and by late March, the chief quartermaster in Nashville was ordering construction of storehouses and a levee at Reynoldsburg, at the other end of the line. The Nashville and Northwestern track was completed to the Tennessee River well before shallow water barred steamboats from the Cumberland.13

Although the ranks of both regiments finally filled, recruiting of Colored Troops in the Department of the Cumberland lagged. In October 1863, one of Stearns’ civilian agents wrote from Clarksville, about forty-five miles northwest of Nashville, that previous commanders of the Union garrison had always turned away escaped slaves who sought refuge there. Since the new colonel approved of attempts to recruit black soldiers, the agent said, “There is now here about one hundred thirty [who] are anxious to enlist. … I think they will come in now fast.” At Gallatin, the same distance northeast of Nashville, 203 recruits were waiting for tents and overcoats. Besides shelter and clothing, the agent there requested blank forms for certificates of enlistment that the former slaves could leave with their wives. The documents would entitle soldiers’ families to federal protection “if their masters abuse them.” A third agent wrote from a federal garrison twenty-five miles south of Murfreesborough that “no men can be got outside [the Union lines] without a military escort for protection.

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