Samuel M. Bowman letterbook, 1864 Feb.-Dec.

Col. Samuel M. Bowman.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

African Americans unloading vessels at City Point, Va.

African Americans unloading vessels at landing, City Point, Va. [between 1860 and 1865)

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Location: Delaware Historical Society (Wilmington, Del.)
Background: Colonel in the 84th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment; from February until mid-September 1864, he served as chief mustering and recruiting officer for the United States Colored Troops in Baltimore, Md.; from mid-September until December 1864 he was commandant of the military district of Delaware; promoted to brevet brigadier-general, 1865.
Contents: Letterbook with letterpress copies of Bowman's army correspondence; together with essays on the Civil War, African Americans, and Reconstruction.
Quotation

"The prospects of recruiting colored men increase day by day. We have to contend against influences and rascalities more powerful and numerous than I had supposed. Hitherto slaves have been confined in jails for safe keeping, but I am acting as a sort of jail deliverer all over the state. Hence the slaves now are hid in other places-some are crowded into secluded localities unapproachable by Land-others are out in boats pretending to carry on the oyster business and so on."

"I will as soon as possible send out a piratical crew to board every oyster boat, search every hold and enlist every man with a black skin on the Chesapeake Bay...."

(See the NUCMC catalog record) (PDF, 66 KB)