The lives of many of the men in the African Brigade had been significantly and permanently altered even before they volunteered. Unlike most white troops, the men filling the ranks around them were less likely to be kin or old friends. Extended family ties had been broken by the war, and little in the way of contact with absent family members could be hoped for until the conflict was over. Of course, some of the soldiers' families were already behind Union lines. For those men service in the army was one of the best ways to ensure that family members were provided with at least some care, as the men of Wild's regiments had been promised, upon their enlistment, that their family members would receive adequate rations while they were in the service. ⁸¹

The descriptive books of the first regiment provide some limited insight into the prewar occupations of the soldiers. Most, of course, had worked as agriculturalists, and some company clerks, such as in Companies B and K, simply listed all men as "laborers." Three companies listed no occupations. In those cases where a number of occupations were given, a consistent pattern emerged. About 90 percent of the men apparently indicated that they were farmers or laborers, and only a handful claimed other occupations. The most common of the latter were servants and carpenters, followed by drivers and sailors. A scattering of men reportedly worked as caulkers, masons, blacksmiths, and teamsters (see appendix B). The information recorded by the company clerks also allows a minimum assessment of the mulattoes in the regiment. The clerks described 7.5 percent of the men as having a "light" complexion. ⁸² The soldiers recorded as light complexioned made up about 40 percent of the men in non-farm occupations. The same body of men made up a disproportionate share of the first noncommissioned officers. Three of Company A's sergeants were typical of this group. All were light and engaged in a skilled prewar occupation. Their ages ranged from eighteen to twenty-seven, probably below the company average, while their heights were slightly greater than the norm. It is not clear whether the selection of these men was a result of a white bias in favor of mulattoes, an indication that most may have been free before the war, or a reflection of their position among their fellow African-American soldiers. In the case of at least one sergeant, John Monroe of Company A, rank was very likely a result of literacy; by 1864 Monroe was handling a portion of the company's paper work. ⁸³ Alternatively, previous occupation rather than skin color may have been the crucial determinant.

Almost as soon as recruiting officers began enlisting men, the site for the camp of the First NCCV was selected on the south bank of the Neuse River just outside New Bern. The site was quickly laid out, the brush cut down, hundreds of stumps removed, and a parade ground set up. By June 7 seven companies were in camp, two were uniformed, and all had started to drill. Regimental commander Colonel James C. Beecher reflected the attitude of most, if not all, of the officers of the African Brigade on the necessary and crucial role of religion. Camp grubbing and drill were important but so too, he believed, was religious instruction. Initially Beecher served in the role of regimental chaplain as well as commanding officer, and he was very much moved by his own preaching. When the nearly seven hundred newly uniformed men of the First NCCV knelt down and bowed their heads without instruction,"[i]t affected me beyond measure," Beecher wrote, "and I prayed for them in faith.... I know not that I ever felt the reality of prayer more deeply." ⁸⁴ Whatever doubts Beecher initially had about the quality of his soldiers, by the time the troops had been in camp for a few weeks he confided to a friend in the North that he wished that "doubtful people at home could see my three week regiment. They would talk less nonsense about negro inferiority. Our discipline is today better than that of any regiment I know of, and I believe, by the blessings of God, our efficiency will be second to none." ⁸⁵

By mid-July, just before the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Volunteers arrived at New Bern, Beecher contended that his regiment could make a fair fight if necessary. He knew that the New England regiment would be better clothed and equipped and was more fully officered, but as far as the "soldierly efficiency" of his regiment was concerned, he had no apprehension. ⁸⁶ Military effectiveness is always difficult to assess, but the quartermaster returns for Company A of the First NCCV, the only records remaining, suggest that at least that company received adequate arms and training through 1863. The company received ninety-six "Enfield rifled muskets, calibre .577," including accoutrements and cartridges, on June 11, 1863. Not until July 1864 did they receive another sixty-four Enfields. ⁸⁷ The last-quarter returns of 1863 for the company of about one hundred men indicate that they fired four thousand practice rounds, or about forty rounds per man. That was twice what they used in action over the same period and suggests that they entered combat with much better marksmanship training than many of the other new regiments, black or white. Yet, like many other black regiments, the First NCCV found that it had received much substandard equipment. Senior regimental officers condemned large parts of the regiment's equipment. "The Arms (Springfields, Enfields, & Swivel Bore)," Major Archibald Bogle wrote, "being mostly second hand and many of them more or less imperfect are hardly suitable for Field Service." Most of the equipment was used previously, he believed, and in very poor condition. ⁸⁸ His concerns were justified. In the midst of the regiment's first battle, a number of soldiers found their muskets unserviceable, "[m]any bursting in action." ⁸⁹

Despite the range of difficulties confronting black enlistment in North Carolina, by June 25 General Wild was able to announce that the first regiment had been completed and that he had begun to raise a second one. ⁹⁰ In fact, the first soldiers in the new regiment had been enlisted on June 13 at New Bern. The Second NCCV was in many ways very similar to the first regiment. Wild appointed all of the regimental officers on July 3, with two exceptions, but not until August did most begin to muster in. As with the First NCCV, Wild drew heavily from his home state to staff the Second NCCV. Sixty percent of the captains whom Wild commissioned in the new regiment, and all of the lieutenants, had been promoted from the ranks, including nine privates and eight corporals. ⁹¹ Excluding Lieutenant Joseph Hatlinger, all those men had soldiered in Massachusetts regiments, and fourteen of the officers had been previously stationed in North Carolina. ⁹² Wild explained that he selected them for what they had "done in camp and field" rather than for any performance before an examining board. He claimed that "there are no two regiments in the service, more uniformly well-officered than my first and second." ⁹³ One of the few captains selected with a previous commission was Wild's son, Walter, who had been a lieutenant and who would become the general's aide-de-camp. Not surprisingly, given the entire family's sentiments, Walter had held his commission in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers. He was, however, the only officer in the African Brigade to transfer from either of Massachusetts's black regiments. The young colonel of the second regiment, Alonzo G. Draper, had been a journalist and a city official in Lynn, Massachusetts. When Wild selected Draper, he was serving as a major in the Fourteenth Massachusetts Volunteers. The only black commissioned officer in the Second NCCV was the chaplain, David Stevens, a Methodist minister from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, whose muster was later suspended. ⁹⁴

The soldiers who made up the rank and file of the second regiment were in most ways identical to those in the First NCCV. The average age of the recruits was the mid-twenties, with the extremes ranging from sixteen to fifty-one years. ⁹⁵ As with the First NCCV, the largest group by age were the nineteen and twenty-year-olds (see appendix C). Most of the soldiers were originally from the coastal counties, but a number came from inland counties such as Bertie, Duplin, Edgecombe, and Halifax. One man had been born as far west as Raleigh. Most of the soldiers were ex-slaves who had worked the land, but about 10 percent indicated that they had previous trades. Among them were a few carpenters, coopers, teamsters, fishermen, and lumberers, plus the occasional steward, barber, or brakeman. The one man listed as an engineer, Ansom Farrier, remained a private from his enlistment in July 1863 until his final discharge in March 1865.

One difference between the first two regiments of the brigade arose from their varying rates of enlistment. Black enthusiasm for enlistment remained evident when the Second NCCV began recruiting, and Wild played on it. He personally visited the town of Washington to encourage recruitment. "He remained only two days," the local newspaper, the New Era, reported, "but such was the willingness manifested by the negroes to become soldiers that he carried back with him to Newberne some two hundred sable volunteers."⁹⁶ Despite that case, the companies in the Second NCCV filled much more slowly than the first. Many companies had only one-half to three-quarters of their establishment by the end of August. The regiment would continue to fill its ranks after it left the state in late 1863. The result was that a few companies had up to 45 percent of their soldiers drawn from Virginia, although the average was much lower. The Second NCCV was significantly less a North Carolina regiment than was the First NCCV.

Long before the second regiment had been filled, soldiers from the first regiment had seen their initial service in the field. Twenty men had taken part in a raid on the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad in early July. The expedition, led by Lieutenant Colonel George Lewis of the Third New York Cavalry, left New Bern on July 3, occupied Trenton, and two days later cut the railroad line at Warsaw. It then retreated to New Bern. In that raid, the African-American soldiers were used as pioneers to build bridges and to destroy the railroad tracks. The tasks assigned them, as laborers and not combat soldiers, reflected the current attitude among many of the white Union troops. Nevertheless, the engineer in charge of the black unit, Captain H.W. Wilson, praised his soldiers. They were, he wrote, "more efficient than any colored men I have taken out on former expeditions." ⁹⁷ That contrasted sharply with Wilson's description of the usefulness of Lewis and his white cavalry gangs, who performed poorly. Recruiting agent Joseph Williams accompanied the raiders to encourage slaves in the area to flee to New Bern and enlist in the African Brigade. ⁹⁸

Although events occurring in Pennsylvania overshadowed this raid and others like it, the expedition generated considerable concern in North Carolina, in large part because it involved the black population. Although the first rumors in state newspapers that half of the raiders were black were quickly corrected, the reports made clear that hundreds of slaves were taking advantage of the raid to try to escape to Union-occupied areas. ⁹⁹ The Wilmington Journal estimated that about 200 slaves left with the raiders. In another raid a few weeks later aimed at destroying the railroad bridge at Rocky Mount, even more African Americans were involved. Conflicting newspaper accounts indicate that 500 slaves had left with the Union cavalry, that 150 had been intercepted at Burney Place, twenty-two miles northeast of Kinston, and that elsewhere Confederate troops "succeeded in capturing and killing four hundred negroes." ¹⁰⁰ The paper tried to play down the obvious disaffection of so many slaves by relating an anecdote concerning a free black named Jackson, "an enlisted Bugler in Cummings'Battery" who was detailed and acting in the Confederate commissary department. The enraged Union soldiers, the paper claimed, placed a bounty of five hundred dollars on his head and destroyed much of his property in his absence. ¹⁰¹

81. Sgt. Richard Etheredge and Wm. Benson to General Howard, [May or June 1865], Unregistered Letters Received, Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands for North Carolina, Record Group 105, National Archives; Frank James to Gen. A.G. Draper, June 4, 1865, and Endorsements, Unregistered Letters Received, RG 105, both printed in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, B1ack Military Experience, 729-730.

82. The imprecision of this assessment is aggravated by the fact that in some units, such as Company B, all men were listed as "dark," while in others men were described as "black" and "dark" or as "dark" and "brown." In this study only those men listed as "light" are considered to be mulattoes, and therefore the figure 7.5 percent represents only a minimum number. An added complication arises from the fact that a large number of the men described as "light" were recruited in Virginia after September 1863.

83. By late in 1864, if not earlier, Monroe had taken over witnessing of the clothing issuing, a function previously handled by 2nd Lt. George P. Guerrier. "Returns of Clothing, Camp, and Garrison Equipment," November 1863, October 1864, Clarke H. Remick Papers, Duke Special Collections.

84. The History of a Gallant Regiment (Boston: New England Loyal Publication Society, 1864), Broadside (copy in Massachusetts MOLLUS Collection).

85. History of a Gallant Regiment.

86. History of a Gallant Regiment.

87. The quartermaster returns are part of the Remick Papers.

88. Maj. A. Bogle to Lieutenant Robinson, December 30,1863, Order Book, Thirty-fifth Regiment USCT, RG 94.

89. Muster Rolls, February 1864, Company I, Thirty-fifth Regiment USCT, RG 94.

90. Official Records, ser. 1, 28, pt. 2:73; Cornish, Sable Arm, 95-96; E.A. Wild to Maj. T.M. Vincent, June 25, 1863, Letters Received, Colored Troops Division, RG 94.

91. The ranks of these men are not cited to suggest that they were unlikely officer material. Certainly one of the men Wild requested, Pvt. Hiram W. Allen of the First Massachusetts Volunteers, had already been recommended for a commission as adjutant by several individuals, including Gen. Henry M. Naglee. E.A. Wild to Maj. T.M. Vincent, June 25, 1863, Letters Received, Colored Troops Division, RG 94.

92. "Roster, Wild's African Brigade," 1863, Letters Received, Colored Troops Division, RG 94.

93. E.A. Wild to Maj. Thomas M. Vincent, September 4,1863, Letters Received, Colored Troops Division, RG 94.

94. "Roster, 2nd North Carolina African Volunteers," Massachusetts MOLLUS Collection.

95. Company A's men averaged 26.8 years of age, while Company B's soldiers were significantly younger at an average of 23.7 years old. Descriptive Books, Thirty,sixth Regiment USCT, RG 94.

96. New Era (Washington, N.C.), June 25,1863.

97. Official Records, ser. 1, 27, pt. 2:863.

98. Redkey, Grand Army of Black Men, 92.

99. Wilmington Journal, July 9, 1863.

100. Wilmington Journal, July 30, 1863.

101. Wilmington Journal, July 30,1863. The man involved was almost certainly James H. Jackson, a mason from New Hanover County who had enlisted at age thirty-eight as a bugler in First Company C, Second Regiment North Carolina Artillery. He was discharged for medical reasons in January 1864. Louis H. Manarin and Weynouth T. Jordan, Jr., comps., North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, 12 vols. to date (Raleigh: Division of Archives and History, Department of Cultural Resources, 1966-- ), 1:222,572.

Source: "Raising the African Brigade: Early Black Recruitment in Civil War North Carolina", by Dr. Richard Reid, Dept. of History, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada; in North Carolina Historical Review, 70 (1993), pp. 266-301.

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