Records, 1862-1866.

ArchivalResource

Records, 1862-1866.

Chiefly printed general and special orders deal primarily with the organization and administration of the military command of Brig. Gen. Rufus Saxton of the sea islands of South Carolina; orders generally deal with management of both the soldiers and the large population of African American freedmen; General Order No. 26, 15 Mar. 1862, re formation of Department of the South in areas under command of Brig. Gen. W.T. Sherman, "South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida... "will constitute a military department"; orders conscripting freedmen, issued, 1 and 11 May 1862 (Beaufort, S.C.), requiring that the Provost Marshall and "the several Overseers of plantations of Ladies, St. Helena, and Coosaw Islands" to send to Beaufort "every able-bodied negro... capable of bearing arms." On 18 Oct. 1862, General Orders No. 10 decreed "the 1st Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers will be organized as soon as possible." Encouraging enlistments, the order states that by an act of Congress "all slaves of rebel masters who enter into the service of the United States, are forever free." Recruits were to report to the regimental headquarters at Smith's plantation. However, General Orders No. 17, dated 8 March 1863, revealed a lack of volunteers and invoked a draft of "every able-bodied freedman in this department, between the ages of eighteen and fifty years." Circulars, 20 Oct. 1862 and 12 Nov. 1864, Beaufort and Hilton Head, S.C., re deaths of Rev. F.E. Barnard, "Superintendent of Plantations and Teacher" and Samuel Dunn Phillips, including a resolution of his Harvard classmates, tributes, and an elegy by "E.M." and instructions for conducting a census ordered by G.O. 154; General Orders No. 7, 22 Aug. 1862, addresses "the hope of correcting a deplorable evil," bigomy among the freedmen. "Any negro claiming to have, or charged with having more than one wife, is required to confine himself to, and, if need be, support that one to whom he has been lawfully married. If no such marriage has ever been celebrated, he will select that one of his so-called wives who is the mother of his children, if any he have; and, after a marriage service duly performed by some Minister of the Gospel, take her to himself as his own sole lawful wife." Thereafter, all infractions "will be liable to arrest and imprisonment." Confidential circular letter, 25 Feb. 1863, instructing regiments and batteries scheduled for embarkation; General Orders No. 17, 6 Mar. 1863, for drafting all black males in the area under Departmental control between the ages of eighteen and fifty. General Orders No. 24, 19 Mar. 1863, exempting from military service any African American men employed by the Engineer Department, cautioning employers including "All plantation superintendents, tradesmen, sutlers, and others... against harboring, secreting, or keeping in their employ able-bodied male negroes liable to the draft" and implementing an appeals system for freemen who suspected they had been defrauded of their wages; General Orders No. 53 (29 June 1863), Hilton Head and Port Royal, S.C., re true meaning of desertion. General Order No. 93, 26 Oct. 1863, Folly Island, S.C., re charges, findings, and sentence of a military commission to try merchant seamen Bradford Boiland for larceny and aiding and corresponding with the enemy, for which he was found guilty of several of the charges and sentenced to one year of hard labor. Proceedings, 21 Dec. 1863, Morris Island, S.C., re court-martial of Maj. B. Ryder Corwin of the Second S.C. Volunteers on charges brought by Col. James Montgomery including testimony of [Thomas Wentworth] Higginson and information re the attack on Fort Wagner and encounter of Gen. [Montgomery Cunningham] Meigs' transports with the Confederate enemy forces at Palatka, Florida, with letter, 28 Apr. 1864, Quincy Adams Gillmore, transmitting the proceedings to Lorenzo Thomas, Adjutant General of the U.S. Army. General Order No. 31 (29 Feb. 1864, Hilton Head, S.C.), re the charge, specification, and sentence of Second Lieutenants Charles Whittaker and James Sweeny; announcement, 29 Apr. 1865, Hilton Head, S.C., re the death of Pres. Abraham Lincoln with directions from Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, for "appropriate funeral honors" to be observed on every post. By 16 Aug. 1864 "great numbers of unemployed colored men and deserters hiding about to avoid labor or service" would cause General Orders No. 119 to be published. It outlined punishment for shirkers and provided provisions for plantation superintendents placing such persons under arrest. and General Orders, 8 June 1865 (Hilton Head, S.C.), reporting findings of a Court of Inquiry re charges of "employment of soldiers as servants, who were not noted on the muster rolls as such." Other topics include the procedures for cotton harvests and proclamations of thanksgiving. This collection also includes sundry General Orders of the Headquarters, Bureau for Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands for South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

225 items.

Related Entities

There are 17 Entities related to this resource.

Meigs, Montgomery C. (Montgomery Cunningham), 1816-1892

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w63880w6 (person)

Montgomery C. Meigs was an army officer and engineer. He was born in Augusta, Ga. on May 3, 1816. Meigs graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1836, where he studied civil and military engineering. Meigs was engaged in several federal engineering and surveying projects from 1836 to 1851. Between 1852 and 1860, he was supervising engineer for the Washington Aqueduct and for the U.S. Capitol dome and wings. Meigs served as a brigadier general during the Civil War and parti...

Gillmore, Quincy Adams, 1825-1888

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6718rh6 (person)

Army officer and engineer. From the description of Signature of Quincy Adams Gillmore, undated. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 79450480 American army officer. From the description of Autograph letter signed : New York, to William W. Belknap, 1874 July 22. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 269577129 From the description of Autograph letter signed : Hilton Head, S.C., to Gen. J.H. Wilson, 1865 May 7. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 269570477 From the ...

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 1823-1911

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6jb6wr4 (person)

Higginson was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on December 22, 1823. He was a descendant of Francis Higginson, a Puritan minister and immigrant to the colony of Massachusetts Bay. His father, Stephen Higginson (born in Salem, Massachusetts, November 20, 1770; died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 20, 1834), was a merchant and philanthropist in Boston and steward of Harvard University from 1818 until 1834. His grandfather, also named Stephen Higginson, was a member of the Continental Congre...

Saxton, Rufus, 1824-1908

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6k17tkn (person)

Saxton was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts. His father, Jonathan Ashley Saxton, was a Unitarian and a Transcendentalist whose feminist and abolitionist writings were heard on the lyceum circuit. He descended from a family of Unitarian ministers (Ashley, Williams, Edwards). His father attempted to secure a place for Rufus Saxton at Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, a transcendentalist community started by George Ripley and attended by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Rufus Saxton's brother Samuel ...

United States. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6dv5fmh (corporateBody)

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. federal government agency that aided distressed freedmen (freed slaves) in 1865–1869, during the Reconstruction era of the United States. The Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which created the Freedmen's Bureau, was initiated by President Abraham Lincoln and was intended to last for one year after the end of the Civil War. It was passed on March 3, 1865, by Congress to aid former slaves ...

Barnard, F. E.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6wm1n0b (person)

Sweeny, James T.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w61v5nn1 (person)

James Sweeny worked as a policeman in the Kimberleys at the time of the Hall's Creek gold rush during the 1890s. From the description of Papers. (Libraries Australia). WorldCat record id: 221375987 ...

Boiland, Bradford.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6db88xf (person)

Thomas, Lorenzo, 1804-1875

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6s46stw (person)

Thomas was born in New Castle, Delaware. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1823, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Infantry. He fought in the Seminole War in Florida and, during the Mexican–American War, he was the chief of staff to General William O. Butler. He received a brevet promotion to lieutenant colonel for Monterrey, which was made permanent in 1852. From 1853 to 1861, he served as chief of staff to the commanding general of the U.S. Army, Wi...

United States. Army

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6km312r (corporateBody)

The United States Army is the largest branch of the United States Armed Forces and performs land-based military operations. It is one of the seven uniformed services of the United States and is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution, Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 and United States Code, Title 10, Subtitle B, Chapter 301, Section 3001. As the largest and senior branch of the U.S. military, the modern U.S. Army has its roots in the Continental Army, which wa...

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6tz44c1 (person)

Abraham Lincoln (born February 12, 1809, Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky-died April 15, 1865, Washington, D.C.) was the sixteenth President of the United States from 1861 until his death by assassination. He was the son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Thomas Lincoln, and Nancy Hanks. In 1816, Lincoln moved to Pigeon Creek, Indiana, where he worked on his family's farm. Following his mother's death two years later, he continued working on farms until moving with his father to New Sa...

United States. Army. Dept. of the South.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6hx5h2s (corporateBody)

Military department consisting of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, with the expedition and forces under Brigadier General Sherman. The U.S. Army constittuted this Dept., 15 Mar. 1862, defined as the states of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida; placed under Division of the South in 1869, and under the Atlantic Division in 1876; merged into Dept. of the East in 1883. From the description of Records, 1862-1866. (University of South Carolina). WorldCat record id: 43557115 ...

Corwin, B. Ryder.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6nv9s8v (person)

Phillips, Samuel R., 1824-1880

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w60k2hjt (person)

Whittaker, Charles E. (Charles Evans)

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6qj7qtz (person)

Montgomery, James, 1814-1871

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6sq97dw (person)

James Montgomery came to Mound City (Linn County) Kansas from South Carolina. He was a pioneer, soldier, and military officer. He served during the Civil War in the 2nd Carolina Colored Infantry on the Union side. He was with the 3rd Kansas Infantry when they opposed General Sterling Price's raid into Kansas during the Kansas-Missouri border troubles, 1855-1861. From the description of James Montgomery papers, 1859-1906. (Kansas State Historical Society). WorldCat record id: 51989306...

Stanton, Edwin McMasters, 1814-1869

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6959grd (person)

American jurist and politician. From the description of Letter signed : "War Department," to William Pitt Fessenden, 1862 May 19. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 270580939 U.S. secretary of war 1862-1868. From the description of Telegram (draft) : ms. : Washington, D.C., to Ulysses S. Grant, Appomattox C.H., Va., 1865 Apr. 9. (Rosenbach Museum & Library). WorldCat record id: 122380613 Secretary of War; Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. ...