The first Civil War, African American infantry
Amanda led what I would call a hard life, though it was probably not that unusual a life for the times and areas in which she lived. She was born somewhere in Arkansas in 1837; her genealogical entry does not say where. She would end up in Bosque, Texas, where she died at the age of 66.
The little I know about her life is contained in the note attached to her entry on Family Search, written by one of her relatives. She married Thomas Womble when she was 15 and bore 14 children, five of whom did not survive to adulthood. Her first child was born the year after her marriage, and her last when she was 44. Three of her children, apparently triplets, were born and died in the same year as their birth. Another died at age 4 and the last child she bore died at age 6.
During her life, her husband, Thomas, went off to fight in the Civil War, presumably for the South, leaving her to care for five children and the family farm. Thomas and a son who carried his first name died in an accident involving a well. Amanda was pregnant with her last child at the time of his death.
Beyond these bare details of a life, the note mentioned that the Womble farm lay about 6 miles from the Battle of Poison Springs in southwest Arkansas. The unit Thomas belonged to during the war did not participate in this battle, so I was inclined to skip all this, having dealt with the history of his unit awhile back. But it turned out that the battle at Poison Springs featured the first African American infantry unit in the Civil War.
If you have seen the movie Glory you may be thinking, "Oh, yeah. I know about them. They were the troops from Massachusetts led by Matthew Broderick's character, with soldiers played by Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman." You'd be thinking wrongly.
If you look up info on the film, you'll find it represents the involvement of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, an all volunteer unit made up of African Americans under the command of a white officer. Some sites will have you believe they were the first such unit, while others will fudge a bit and call it one of the first units.
The involvement of African American troops is complicated. President Lincoln had no political will to use African American troops at all, even after the Emancipation Proclamation officially authorized their involvement. But out in Kansas, Sen. James Lane promoted the use of fugitive and emancipated slaves because they would have a will to "free themselves; and ... crush out everything that stand in the way of acquiring that freedom." Lane began recruiting men in 1862, and the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment was organized as a state unit. It would be federalized at the beginning of 1863, some months before the creation of the 54th Massachusetts.
The 1st Kansas saw its first action in Missouri near the end of 1862. A group of about 225 troops defeated a larger group, almost twice as big, of Confederate guerillas, leading Lane to crow about his perspicacity (like that word?) Several months later, in July 1863, the 1st Kansas would participate in a battle at Honey Springs in Oklahoma, which was "Indian Territory" at the time. The regiment distinguished itself in this action as well, leading the general commanding the Union forces to declare, "I never saw such fighting as was done by the Negro [sic] regiment. ... The question that the negroes will fight is settled; besides they make better soldiers in every respect than any troops I have ever had under my command."
The following year brought the 1st Kansas to Arkansas, where Union troops had recently raided the area around Poison Springs for grain supplies. The Confederate troops were understandably annoyed by this an mounted an attack to retrieve the supplies. In the pitched battle that followed, the 1st Kansas again acquitted itself well, but the whole action ended up a victory for the Confederates.
The use of African American troops angered some elements of the Confederate forces, notably Native American troops and Texas units that had been serving in Arkansas. Reports indicated that after the battle, as these troops passed through the fields where wounded Union troops lay, they paid special attention to the African Americans, killing all the wounded they came across, sometimes brutally. As far as I could find, none were taken prisoner. Those who survived did so by feigning death.
From the beginning of its service to June 1863, the 1st Kansas suffered 178 battle deaths. One hundred seventeen of those occurred at the Battle of Poison Springs.
Next time we'll look at the Native American troops involved in the campaigns mentioned here.
Image: Taken from the Only in Your State website and credited to Flicker/Stephen Conn.
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