Five and a half months later on October 29 (1862), Brigadier General Rufus Saxton in Beaufort informed Secretary of War Stanton, " When the colored regiment was first organized by General Hunter no provision was made for its payment, and the men were discharged after several months' service (Union Army), receiving nothing for it. In the meantime their families suffered...This failure to pay them for their service has weakened their confidence in our promises for the future and makes them slow to enlist."
G.W. Cozzens, Superintendent of Plantations, Office Supervising Special Agent, Treasury Department, Plantation Bureau, New Orleans, on September 26 (1863), wrote to Benjamin F. Flanders, Supervising Special Agent, Treasury Department, New Orleans, " I ... call your attention to...letters received from...overseers on the Payne and Taylor plantations worked by this department; nor are these acts confined to these places alone - the Le Blane, Hermitage, Ashland, Point Houmas, and other Government places have suffered severely from having able-bodied hands forced at the point of a bayonet from the plantations for conscription." (In Union Regiments)
Flanders on the same day sent these letters to General N.P. Banks, Department of the Gulf, and indicated that this conscription was "on the part of Colonel [Matthew C.] Kempsey [Sixth Infantry, Corps d'Afrique]."
Banks' chief of staff, Brigadier General Charles P. Stone, wrote in a memorandum about "the oppression of these negro recruiting officers...The cases of cruelty are reported daily."
'Major General John A. Logan, Fifteenth Corps, Army of the Tennessee, on February 26, 1864 in Huntsville, Alabama, sent a message to U.S. Grant in Nashville, "A major of colored troops is here with his party capturing negroes, with or without their consent...They are being conscripted."
'In South Carolina, Brigadier General Rufus Saxton, Military Governor, U.S. Forces at Beaufort, on December 30, 1864, reported to Secretary of War Stanton:
"I...report my doings for the current year. ...The recruiting [into the U.S. Army of former slaves] went on slowly, when the major-general commanding (General [John G.] Foster) ordered an indiscriminate conscription of every able-bodied colored man in the department...The order spread universal confusion and terror. The negroes fled to the woods and swamps...They were hunted to their hiding places. ...Men have been seized and forced to enlist who had large families of young children dependent upon them for support.
Three boys, one only fourteen years of age, were seized in a field where they were at work and sent to a regiment in a distant part of the department without the knowledge or consent of their parents. A man on his way to enlist as a volunteer was stopped by a recruiting party. He told them where he was going and was passing on when he was again ordered to halt. He did not stop and was shot dead, and was left where he fell. ...The soldiers desired to bring him in and get the bounty offered for bringing in recruits. ...
I found the prejudice of color and race here in full force, and the general feeling of the army of occupation was unfriendly to the blacks. It was manifested in various forms of personal insult and abuse, in depredations of their plantations, stealing and destroying their crops and domestic animals, and robbing them of thier money.
The women were held as legitimate prey of lust. ...Licentiousness was widespread. ...The influences of too many [officers and soldiers] was demoralizing to the negro, and has greatly hidered the efforts for their improvement and elevation. There was a general disposition among the soldiers and civilian speculators here to defraud the negroes in their private traffic, to take the commodities which they offered for sale by force, or to pay for them in worthless money.' - All the above excerpts are taken from 'The Uncivil War, Union Army and Navy Excesses In The Official Records'-By Thomas Bland Keyes (Copyrighted 1991)
I just wanted to set the record straight so you will know that the Northern Invaders were not the saints you're making them out to be!