Major General Benjamin F. Butler was in a tizzy. He had received a deposition from the provost marshal bearing incredible news, a note he had forwarded to General Grant. The deposition was from the orderly sergeant of Company D, 2nd United States Colored Cavalry (USCC), Samuel Johnson. Johnson claimed that he was in Plymouth, North Carolina, with a “Sergeant French.” French was a recruiting officer and was in Plymouth “to take charge of some recruits.” Johnson claimed to have witnessed the April 1864 battle of Plymouth, the most successful combined Confederate army-navy venture of the war. On learning that the Federal garrison was going to be surrendered to the Confederate command under Brig. Gen. Robert F. Hoke, Johnson
Pulled off
my uniform and found a suit of citizen’s clothes, which I put on, and when
captured I was supposed and believed by the rebels to be a citizen. After being
captured I was kept at Plymouth for some two weeks and was employed in
endeavoring to raise the sunken vessels of the Union fleet.
From Plymouth I was taken to Weldon and from
thence to Raleigh, N.C., where I was detained for about a month, and was
forwarded to Richmond, where I remained until about the time of the battles
near Richmond, when I went with Lieutenant Johnson, of the Sixth North
Carolina, as his servant, to Hanover Junction. I did not remain there over four
or five days before I made my escape into the lines of the Union army and was
sent to Washington, D.C., and then duly forwarded to my regiment in front of
Petersburg.
Upon the capture of Plymouth by the rebel
forces all the negroes found in blue unforms, or with any outward marks of a
Union soldier upon him, was killed. I saw some taken to the woods and hung.
Others I saw stripped of all their clothing and then stood upon the banks of
the river with their faces riverward and there they were shot. Still others
were killed by having their brains beaten out by the butt end of muskets in the
hands of the rebels. All were not killed the day of the capture. Those that
were not were placed in a room with their officers, they (the officers) having
previously been dragged through town with ropes around their necks, where they
were kept confined until the following morning, when the remainder of the black
soldiers were killed.
The regiments most conspicuous in these
murderous transactions were the Eighth North Carolina and, I think, the Sixth
North Carolina.[1]
Johnson’s account is
often used as an example of the brutality of Confederate soldiers toward Black
Federal soldiers captured during the war. Yet, Johnson’s account has numerous
problems. First and foremost, there is no Orderly (or First) Sergeant Samuel
Johnson in the 2nd USCC.[2] Maybe
the regiment was wrong. There was a Samuel Johnson in the 3rd USCC.
He did not enlist until July 11, 1864, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Another
Samuel Johnson enlisted in the 4th USCC in New Orleans on March 1,
1864. Yet another Samuel E. Johnson enlisted in Columbus, Ohio, on December 20,
1864, in the 5th USCC. This soldier was appointed sergeant on
February 1, 1865.[3]
Maybe the provost marshal in his deposition got the first name wrong. There was
a corporal Berry Johnson, but he was in Company G; Corp. Henry Johnson served
in Company B; Sgt. Joseph Johnson served in Company L, but did not actually
enlist until March 9, 1865; Pvt. Kuggs Johnson is the only Johnson in Company
D, but he did not enlist until March 14, 1865; Richard Johnson enlisted on
December 24, 1864 in Prince Anne County, Virginia. He was also a private, and
his compiled service record states he was in various engagements like
Petersburg, Virginia, on May 9, 1864; Richard R. Johnson was a sergeant in
Company C but is reported present from March to June 1864. Maybe his service
record was lost. But why not a pension record?[4]
If Johnson’s service cannot be substantiated in the Company D, 2nd United States Colored Cavalry, then that should end the conversation right there. Digging a little further, there is a record for a George N. French somehow connected to the 2nd USCC. He does not seem to have been officially mustered into the regiment until March 18, 1866, at the rank of second lieutenant. In July (25th or July 2, ‘65?) a B.H. French writes to the government asking about a son who was a lieutenant in the 2nd USCC, stating he had been captured at Plymouth. B.H. French was living in Chicago at the time she wrote. There appears to be no prison record, no parole record, and no pension. What became of French?
Johnson stated that after
two weeks in Plymouth and a month in Raleigh, he was sent to Richmond, remaining
an undisclosed time, when he was sent to be the servant of a “Lieutenant
Johnson, of the Sixth North Carolina.” There is no Lieutenant Johnson/Johnston
in the 6th North Carolina. By the time that Samuel Johnson arrived
with the 6th North Carolina, that regiment had been ordered to the
Shenandoah Valley. From the vicinity of
Hanover Junction, Johnson stated he escaped into Federal lines.
What of the murder of Black
Union soldiers so graphically described in Johnson’s affidavit? One challenge is this: there were no Black regiments
stationed in Plymouth during the battle. There were some recruiters and Black
recruits for Black regiments. And it is possible that some were killed.
However, one Richmond newspaper reported on April 27, 1864, that “two negroes
in Yankee uniforms,” arrived with General Wessells (the Federal commander) and
the other federal officers in Richmond.[5] Obviously,
not all Black men found in uniform were executed in Plymouth.
Black men, women, and
children were held for some time in Plymouth. One newspaper reported that
citizens from the surrounding area were “hastening” to Plymouth to “to reclaim
the property stolen from them by the Yankees. Besides a large number of
negroes, horses and other articles identified by their owners.”[6] On
April 23, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard telegraphed Gov. Zebulon B. Vance, instructing
him to send “the slaves captured” at Plymouth “to Wilmington,” to work on the
fortifications.[7]
It is interesting that
Samuel Johnson never mentions James Dearing. Dearing’s ad hoc cavalry command plays
a role in hunting down both Blacks and local unionists in many other accounts
(many post-war, or contemporary to our time) of the battle. Many had escaped to
the swamps where Dearing was sent to hunt them down. One report stated that 300
to 400 actually gave themselves up, and Lt. Charles French, with the U.S.S. Miami,
picked up “many escaped soldiers . . . who had taken to the swamps.”[8] Yet
Johnson never brings those in the swamps up in his affidavit.
After the war was over,
the members of the 101st and 103rd Pennsylvania Infantry,
who fought at Plymouth and were captured, considered the matter at one of their
reunions. They came to the conclusion that men like Samuel Johnson, and the
veterans who wrote about the “massacre” after the war, were “mistaken.” They
believed that “many negroes and native North Carolina Union soldiers were
killed, and perhaps an occasional one brutally murdered, by individual soldiers,
but the victims, apprehending cruel treatment, were attempting to make their
escape, when by the laws of war, the victors are justified in shooting even an
unarmed man.” They believed that Union soldiers, placed in the same situation,
might enjoy the “same kind of sport.” They believed that Wessells, who was
still in Plymouth when this supposedly took place, “would have instantly taken
issue with the Confederates, had he any suspicion of such atrocities.” Considering
that the 101st and 103rd finished the war in
Andersonville Prison and had every right to be embittered against their foe, they
declined to endorse the idea of a large-scale massacre of Black soldiers
following the battle.[9]
It is interesting to note
that Samuel Johnson claimed to belong to the 2nd USCC. Just a few
weeks prior, the 2nd USCC ambushed portions of Ransom’s brigade near
Suffolk, Virginia, killing and wounding several. When Confederates discovered
the house the sharpshooters were using, they set fire to it, with the Black
soldiers inside, later declaring that “Ransom’s brigade never takes any negro
prisoners…”[10]
On passing along Johnson’s affidavit, Butler told Grant that “something should
be done in retaliation for this outrage.” He had several prisoners from the 8th
North Carolina and, if in independent command, “I should take this matter into
my own hands.” Grant ignored him and the testimony of Samuel Johnson.[11]
It is entirely possible that Confederate soldiers, in the heat of the moment, killed fellow combatants after they had surrendered. It happens in all wars and not just with Confederate soldiers. Federal officers lost control of their soldiers at the battle of Fort Gregg in April 1865 (read more here). But the idea that Wayne Durrill advanced that “roughly six hundred U.S. soldiers, most of them black, whom the Confederates failed to take prisoner,” were killed, along with the testimony of Samuel Johnson, should be seen as unsubstantiated myth.[12]
[1] OR,
Ser. 2, 7:459-460.
[2] Both
compiled service records on Fold3 and Ancestry were checked, along with pension
records. I also had someone else double check this.
[3] Various
compiled service records.
[4] CMSR,
Roll 0024, M1817, RG94.
[5] Richmond
Whig, April 27, 1864.
[6] Richmond
Examiner, quoted in the Memphis Daily Appeal, May 9, 1864.
[7] Papers
of Vance, 3:185.
[8] The
Daily Confederate, Apr. 30, 1864; ORN 8, 641.
[9] Dickey,
History of the 103d Pennsylvania, 269-70.
[10] Charlotte
Daily Bulletin, March 18, 1864.
[11] OR,
Ser. 2, 7:459-460.
[12] Durrill,
War of Another Kind, 206-8.
