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The shootout at Chaffin's farm: black soldiers helped save the union

Ebony, Nov, 1996 by Lerone Bennett, Jr.

More than 1,000 Americans gathered in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the first stage of a national effort to erect a long-overdue national effort to the Black Union soldiers without whose help, Abraham Lincoln said, the Civil War could not have been won. This excerpt from Great Moments in Black History is a tribute to these soldiers and the organizer of the proposed national memorial. The 200,000 Black soldiers in the Union Army, according to the Black history classic, Before The Mayflower, were organized into 166 all-Black regiments (145 infantry, 7 cavalry, 12 heavy artillery, 1 light artillery, 1 engineer). Largest number of Black soldiers came from Louisiana (24,052) followed by Kentucky (23,703) and Tennessee (20,133). Pennsylvania contributed more Black soldiers than any other Northern state (8,612). Black soldiers participated 449 battles, 39 of them major engagements. Sixteen Black soldiers received Congressional Medals of Honor for gallantry in action. Some 37,638 Black soldiers lost their lives during the war. Black soldiers generally received poor equipment and were forced to do a large amount of fatigue duty. Until 1864, Black soldiers (from private to chaplain) received $7 a month whereas White soldiers received from $13 to $100 a month. In 1863 Black units, with four exceptions (Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Volunteers and Twenty-ninth Connecticut Volunteers), were officially designated United States Colored Troops (USCT). Since the War Department discouraged applications from Blacks, there were few commissioned officers. The highest-ranking of the 75 to 100 Black officers was Lt. Col. Alexander T. Augustana, a surgeon.

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The name was deceptive. Chaffin's Farm was no farm or, to be more precise, it was no longer a farm. A former producer of the raw materials of life, the farm on the outskirts of Richmond, Va., had been transformed formed in the course of the Civil War into a producer of the raw materials of death. The land where cattle and swine once grazed was now honeycombed with foxholes and fortifications. The fields that once yielded harvests of grain and vegetables now yielded harvest of corpses.

Geography defined this death farm. It lay athwart the main approaches to the Confederate capital and was the key to the defense of the city. Whoever controlled the fortifications in and around Chaffin's Farm controlled Richmond.

By a quirk of fate, these fortifications so vital to the war effort of the defenders of Black slavery, became the focal point of perhaps the greatest thrust by Black soldiers in any war. In some 30 minutes of fighting on New Market Heights on a bloody Thursday morning in September, 1864, and in succeeding operations, Blacks captured the outer defenses of the Chaffin fortifications and won 13 Congressional Medals of Honor (more Medals of Honor than were awarded to Black soldiers in all the wars and years between the Spanish-American War and the Korean War).

The charge at New Market Heights and the subsequent thrust and parries at other Chaffin's Farm entrenchments [Fort Harrison and Fort Gilmer] grew out of and reflected the ambiguities of the Civil War which, by the fall of 1864, was grinding to a bloody climax. By this time, the Army of the James was stymied on the Petersburg fine. By this time, too, Black soldiers, who had fought splendidly in hundreds of battles, had been relegated to support roles and suicidal charges. This bothered a number of men and women, including a controversial and crafty Union general named Benjamin Franklin Butler. Butler was a New England lawyer with an instinct for dramatic gestures. He had no previous battle-field experience, and it was widely said that he was a political general who couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag. Partly to meet this charge, and partly, he said, to vindicate Black soldiers, Butler conceived the idea of a surprise attack on the supposedly impregnable fortifications on Chaffin's Farm. In drawing up his plans, Butler was not unmindful of the fact that a White force commanded by General W S. Hancock had just been repulsed at New Market Heights. Butler intended to succeed where others had failed, and he intended to succeed with an integrated force. As Butler saw it, he had everything to gain and nothing to lose. If his plan succeeded, he would establish the first Union toehold in the Richmond suburb. If he got a little luck, he would capture the Chaffin forfications and march into the Confederate capital. Either way, he would have a laugh on critics who said he could talk but couldn't fight. Beyond all that, Butler wanted to deal with the Black-White issue. He told his superior, General Ulysses S. Grant, that "the Negro troops had had no chance to show their valor or staying qualities in action" on the Virginia front. "I told him," he added, "that I meant to take a large part of my Negro force, and under my personal command make an attack upon New Market Heights, the redoubt to the extreme left of the enery's line .... I said I want to convince myself whether, when under my own eye, the Negro troops will fight; and if I can take with the Negroes, a redoubt that turned Hancock's corps on a former occasion, that will settle the question." That question, of course, had long since been settled, but in this war, as in every other war, Black soldiers were called upon to prove, over and over again, that they were human.

The shootout at Chaffin's farm: black soldiers helped save the union

Ebony, Nov, 1996 by Lerone Bennett, Jr.

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