The 20th Maine raids a black regiment’s sutler, part 1

Did latent racism and a need to blow off steam trigger a 20th Maine mini-riot two weeks past Robert E. Lee’s surrender?

Whether “yes” or “no,” the incident drew blood and cost the army several expensive horses.

Let me set the stage and introduce certain characters.

Commissioned a colonel on March 13, 1865, Ellis Spear commanded the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment until it mustered out in early summer 1865. The same day Spear made “bird colonel,” the army promoted Walter G. Morrill to lieutenant colonel and Atherton W. Clark to major.

Promoted to colonel on March 13, 1865, Ellis Spear commanded the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment during the Appomattox campaign and afterwards. (Maine State Archives)

Thus three heroes of Little Round Top led the 20th Maine in its final months.

Clark was a 36-year-old Waldoboro farmer when he mustered with the 20th Maine on August 29, 1862. Standing 5-11½, he had gray eyes and a light complexion and a light hair. With the regiment desperately short of field officers during the Gettysburg campaign (Lt. Col. Charles Gilmore had typically turned up “sick” as battle loomed),1 Clark commanded the 20th Maine’s right flank on LRT.

Among the privates in Co H, 20th Maine was Theodore Gerrish, an 18-year-old Falmouth farmer when he mustered on August 29, 1862. Tall (5-11), he had blue eyes and a light complexion and light hair. What made Gerrish famous (at least among 20th Maine buffs) was his Army Life: A Private’s Reminiscences of the Civil War, published in 1882.

By then a minister, Gerrish penned the book’s preface in Bucksport in April 1882. Clark died on April 13, 1882. Within weeks the story emerged of a violent April 1865 incident involving some 20th Maine soldiers. Both Gerrish’s and Clark’s accounts share similar language in places, but sufficient evidence exists that Gerrish was an eyewitness (and hopefully not a participant) to the incident’s onset and that Clark was eyewitness to its bloody finale.

Let’s get started.

Lingering at Appomattox Court House until April 15, 1865, the 1st Division (V Corps) tramped east toward Farmville on rain-flooded roads. The V Corps’ commander, Maj. Gen. Charles Griffin, had given Brig. Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain nominal command of the division.

The division camped at Farmville, where news arrived about Lincoln’s assassination. According to Clark’s account, the 20th Maine then left Farmville and “marched in the direction of Burkeville, which we reached after a hard days’ march, and we thus continued our way back toward Petersburg.

At some points we halted several days at a time, so that our march was a comparatively easy one, and there were but few incidents of interest,” he recalled. However, “there was one which we cannot forget from the fact that it was the last that we ever ‘rallied on a Sutler.’”

Atherton W. Clark was promoted to major of the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment on March 13, 1865. He was in charge when some 20th Mainers tore down a sutler’s tent near Petersburg in late April. (Maine State Archives)

Private Theodore Gerrish remembered the incident occurring after the 20th Maine and its parent 3rd Brigade “went into camp at Sutherland station” on the Southside Railroad, “a few miles from the city of Petersburg,” on Sunday, April 23.

The 1st Division “halted to rest near where a regiment of Massachusetts colored [black] cavalry was encamped,” Clark said. New to the army, the black troopers had just reached that part of Virginia “and in their new uniforms were quite airy.”

This regiment likely was the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry, organized at Readville, Massachusetts from January 9-May 5, 1864. Dismounted, the regiment was assigned as infantry at City Point until June 16, participated in the Petersburg siege until June 28,and then went to Point Lookout, Maryland (probably to guard the prison camp there).

Afterwards the 5th Massachusetts was remounted and assigned to XXV Corps from March through June 1865. The regiment was “near Petersburg” in April, which could possibly account for the black troopers being in close proximity to the 20th Maine.

If this outfit was the 5th Massachusetts, then its current colonel was Charles F. Adams Jr.

The colored soldiers had not seen much service, but put on many airs, being, evidently, quite proud of their new uniforms,” commented Gerrish. He spoke out of ignorance; the black troopers had apparently received new cavalry uniforms upon reaching Virginia in March, and they had already lost seven comrades in combat at Petersburg. Another 123 troopers would die of disease before the 5th mustered out in the Department of Texas (of all places) in October.

Eminent 20th Maine historian John J. Pullen thought the 20th Maine’s veterans “were apparently far from ready to accept them [black troopers] as equals.” He also indicated that “ragged soldiers” from the 1st Michigan Infantry and 118th Pennsylvania (“Corn Exchange Regiment”) were present with the 20th Mainers during what happened next.

Next week: Angry 20th Mainers attack a sutler and black Union cavalrymen, part 2

Sources: From “Sketches of Army Life,” Lincoln County News, June 23, 1882; Theodore Gerrish, Army Life: A Private’s Reminiscences of the Civil War, Hoy, Fogg & Donham, Portland, ME, 1882, pp. 272-274; Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Maine, 1864-1865, Appendix A, Stevens & Sayward, Augusta, ME, 1866, pp. 1128-1130; Atherton W. Clark and Theodore Gerrish, soldiers’ files, Maine State Archives; Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, Dyer Publishing Co., Des Moines, IA, 1908, p. 155; www.civilwararchive.com; John J. Pullen, The Twentieth Maine: A Volunteer Regiment in the Civil War, Morningside House Inc., Dayton, OH, 1991, pp. 278-279; Alice Rains Trulock, In the Hands of Providence: Joshua L. Chamberlain and the American Civil War, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1992, p. 170

1 The army had promoted Gilmore to colonel on July 11, 1864, but he was on detached duty until October and missed the summer 1864 fighting.

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Brian Swartz can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net. He enjoys hearing from Civil War buffs interested in Maine’s involvement in the war.

Brian Swartz

About Brian Swartz

Welcome to "Maine at War," the blog about the roles played by Maine and her sons and daughters in the Civil War. I am a Civil War buff and a newspaper editor recently retired from the Bangor Daily News. Maine sent hero upon hero — soldiers, nurses, sailors, chaplains, physicians — south to preserve their country in the 1860s. “Maine at War” introduces these heroes and heroines, who, for the most part, upheld the state's honor during that terrible conflict. We tour the battlefields where they fought, and we learn about the Civil War by focusing on Maine’s involvement with it. Be prepared: As I discover to this very day, the facts taught in American classrooms don’t always jibe with Civil War reality. I can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net.