By Ronald S. Coddington
An officer in the 1st Missouri Colored Infantry recalled how recruits for the new regiment marched with “sluggish step and plantation gait” through St. Louis in late 1863. People jeered them as they shuffled down the city streets.
The officer noted why he believed they moved so haltingly: Burdened by generations of spirit-crushing slavery, they had lived in constant fear with no control over their future or destiny.
These enslaved men had arrived at Benton Barracks, the sprawling military post in St. Louis, following emancipation. Many suffered from starvation and exposure with little more than ragged clothes on their backs—and a hope for freedom.
One surgeon at the post hospital estimated that 7,000 displaced men, women and children of color drew rations and eligible for medical services following their journey out of slavery. Before the war’s end, 8,344 Black Missourians joined the Union army.
In early 1864, the War Department redesignated the 1st Missouri as the 62nd United States Colored Infantry (USCT). Three other Missouri-based USCT regiments trained at Benton Barracks: the 65th, 67th, and 68th infantries, and one raised in Iowa, the 60th Infantry.
The unidentified corporal and private pictured here likely served in one of these regiments. They posed against a background painting of a patriotic scene of a cannon, gunboat, and tent associated with St. Louis photographer Enoch Long. He and his assistants produced uncounted numbers of soldier portraits at Benton Barracks.
The journey to St. Louis was difficult for many. Just two years earlier, the city teetered on the edge of disunion as pro-secession militia clashed with U.S. troops, and rioting left scores of citizens killed and injured. White Missourians consumed by prejudice against Blacks created artificial obstacles to thwart recruitment efforts. Abuses by recruiting officers fostered an environment of systemic neglect and mistreatment. On the way to St. Louis, robbers stole shoes, hats and clothing from the recruits, compromising their health.
The situation did not improve after they arrived at Benton Barracks. In early 1864, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat published a report revealing how Black soldiers and other persons of color had been exposed to freezing conditions. Many became sick and did not receive care despite an abundance of beds and medicines in the post hospital.
About this time, the better angels of human nature stemmed the tide of abuses. One officer, Brig. Gen. William Anderson Pile, a prominent anti-slavery Methodist minister in St. Louis with the nom de guerre “Fighting Parson,” commanded the USCT brigade at Benton Barracks. On Jan. 6, 1864, he and his subordinates in the 62nd and 65th infantries met to address systemic racism. The officers passed resolutions recognizing that “the Government of the United States, by arming the colored man, has recognized his manhood, and his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and “we look forward to the time when the colored soldier shall return to the walks of civil life, to engage in its duties and meet its responsibilities, and the full blessings of the freedom conferred upon him will depend, in a great measure, upon his moral, intellectual and social condition.”
Pile and the officers acted on their words. They established a rigorous program of education within each regiment, with chaplains and other officers as instructors.
They received assistance from the nation’s major relief organizations: the Western Sanitary Commission and the U.S. Christian Commission. These charities supplied the troops with primers, spelling books, and other reading materials to feed their brains, and nurses to keep their bodies nourished and healthy.
Properly supported, the men transformed from a mass of shuffling recruits to first-class U.S. soldiers. One of the Benton Barracks nurses, Arabella Letitia Graham Tannehill “Belle” Coddington, observed, “It was especially interesting to me to watch the colored soldiers on dress parade. They realized there was a vast difference between slavery and the overseer’s lash, and freedmen in the United States uniform, standing shoulder to shoulder with the men who had fought to make them free.”
Historian Joseph Thomas Wilson, a veteran of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, compared the USCT to the powerful military formation of the ancient Greek armies in his landmark 1890 history, The Black Phalanx. Wilson highlighted the actions of men of color who exemplified the description of soldiers articulated by Capt. Adam Badeau, author of Military History of Ulysses S. Grant and a member of the general’s staff: “The troops who do what can neither be expected nor required are the ones who are victorious. The men who, tired, and worn, and hungry, and exhausted, yet push into battle, are those who win. They who persist against odds, against obstacles, against hope, who proceed or hold out unreasonably, are the conquerors.”
The USCT trained at Benton Barracks went on to distinguish themselves in Western Theater operations. They included the Battle of Palmito Ranch in Texas, where men of the 62nd USCT fired the last hostile shots of the Civil War on May 13, 1865.
When the survivors of the 62nd and its brother regiment, the 65th, mustered out in 1866, they entered civil life with reading and writing skills, and discipline rooted in their Benton Barracks experience. Many of the men, and their officers, funded the establishment of a school in Missouri to educate freedmen. Later that year, in Jefferson City, a two-room house became the first campus of Lincoln Institute. The school flourished and is now known as Lincoln University.
References: McDowell, A.W. “Hospital Observations upon Negro Soldiers,” The American Practitioner (September 1874); St. Louis Globe Democrat, Jan. 20 and 26, 1864; The Western Sanitary Commission: A Sketch; Gardner, Our Army Nurses: Interesting Sketches, Addresses, and Photographs; Wilson, The Black Phalanx: A History of the Negro Soldiers of the United States in the Wars of 1775-1812, 1861-’65; Badeau, Military History of Ulysses S. Grant, Vol. III; Foster, Historical Sketch of Lincoln Institute.
Ronald S. Coddington is Editor and Publisher of MI.
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