On October 11, 1863 six companies of African American volunteers mustered into service as the 1st Regiment of Iowa African Infantry. Iowa recruited four additional companies of blacks in Missouri to fill out the regiment. The 1st Iowa would soon be assigned the USCT designation 60th USCT.
The 60th USCT would see limited combat experience in eastern Arkansas and would spend most of its existence in the environs of Helena, Ark.
The regiment received its 60th USCT designation in March 1864. It helped man Fort Curtis in Helena during 1864. In July 1864 it saw fighting during Shelby’s Raid, including the fight at Wallace’s Ferry. In March, 1864 the regiment was moved to Little Rock, where it stayed until the end of the war. After the surrenders, the regiment was part of the army of occupation.
Iowa was a state that had tried to prevent free African Americans from even moving there.
In 1838, Iowa’s Territorial Legislature voted to enact a law depriving African Americans of the most basic civil rights. A majority of the state’s legislators had been born in Southern states that enslaved blacks, but some Northern-born members also supported restrictions on black rights. Iowa’s new “Black Code” barred non-whites from voting, going to public schools, serving on a jury, and testifying in court. The following year a law was passed declaring invalid all marriages between blacks and whites. In 1851, the state legislature went even further. It passed a law barring free Blacks from entering Iowa. The state’s position as the West’s most racist government only began to change in the mid-1850s when anti-slavery Free Soilers and Republicans gained power in the statehouse.
Iowa’s racist legislation was effective at discouraging African American settlement in the Hawkeye State. At the time the Civil War began, Iowa was the whitest state in the Union. Out of 674,913 people living in Iowa, only 1,069 were Blacks. Only one out of every six-hundred and seventy people was of African descent. This would soon change. When the war broke out in 1861, slaves escaping from Missouri began making their way north into Iowa. Over the next ten years Iowa’s Black population grew by more than 500%.
A year after Fort Sumter was attacked in April 1861, a leader of the state’s Black community volunteered to raise a company of African American soldiers to fight for the cause of the Union. The governor ignored the offer. It was only after black troops from other states had proved their value on the battlefield in 1863 that Iowa began to recruit them into a segregated all-black regiment. The fact that every black man who enlisted relieved the state of the burden of drafting a white man to fill a Federally-imposed quota also contributed to the change of heart.
The problem for recruiters, of course, was that with only about five hundred black Iowan men living in the state, filling a thousand-man regiment would seem to be mathematically impossible. Iowa Governor Samuel Kirkwood recruited heavily among the once-despised escaped-slave refugees from Missouri who had sought shelter in Iowa after the war began. He also authorized the recruitment of black soldiers in the slave-state of Missouri. Four of Iowa’s eleven black companies of approximately one hundred men each were actually formed in St. Louis, Missouri. In all, a majority of the men in this Iowa regiment had come from Missouri. Sources
Milton Howard was one of the small number of Black Iowans who served in the 60th USCT.He had lived in Iowa as a child, but he was kidnapped by slave catchers while still a boy and sold as a slave in Alabama. In the chaos of war, he escaped from his enslavers and made his way back to Iowa. He enlisted in the new Black Iowa regiment. Military service would give him a chance to strike a blow against slavery, but even in what was becoming an army of liberation, he would not be treated as an equal to a white man. Here he poses with his family long after the war.
In October, 1863, Henry Sweeney joined his new regiment. He was one of the 7,000 white men who officered the new Black regiments formed throughout the country. Sweeney faced some of the same discrimination as his men. USCT officers sometimes endured derision from racist white soldiers in their own army. They also risked being executed if captured by the Confederates as men who had incited slaves to insurrection.
The regiment, variously called the First Iowa Volunteers of African Descent and the First Regiment of Iowa African Infantry, was renamed the 60th United States Colored Troops (“60th USCT). Captain Sweeney was given command of Company G of the new regiment.
The men Sweeney commanded came from just about everywhere other than Iowa. Nearly all were from slave states. John Hammond, recruited in St. Louis, was born in Kentucky. Eighteen year old Jasper Harris was from Missouri. Jacob Harvey was a native of Virginia. The vast majority were born in either Virginia or Missouri.
The Irish captain was not the only immigrant in his company. Sweeney’s First Lieutenant Charles Hoffman was a twenty-year old German immigrant who lived in the German enclave of St. Louis. The St. Louis Germans had been intensely opposed to slavery before the war, and they were loud voices calling for emancipation and for the enlistment of African Americans into the army from the first months of the war.
The 60th spent much of its time in service garrisoning Helena.
In December, 1863, the 60th USCT were sent south along the Mississippi River to Helena, Arkansas. The small city had been in Union hands for a year, but it had been threatened by a Confederate army as recently as in July. The 60th was to serve as part of an army of occupation of a barely subdued rebel region.
The 60th USCT fought in only one small battle during the Civil War, the Battle of Big Creek. The regiment’s men, however, skirmished with Confederate guerrillas, guarded supplies and provided security for the thousands of black refugees who crowded into Helena during the war. Captain Sweeney’s Company G finished the construction of Battery C, a fortification with large artillery pieces to protect Helena from an attack by a Confederate land forces. Like many black regiments, the 60th was often called upon to do the backbreaking work of constructing forts and strongpoints that white soldiers did not want to do.
By 1865, Henry Sweeney had become involved in the protection and relief of the black refugees at Helena. When most of the regiment marched off toward the state capital at Little Rock in March 1865, Sweeney remained behind to organize the newly created Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands office in Helena. Known more simply as The Freedmen’s Bureau, the Bureau was a vital lifeline from the Federal government to African American Arkansans. Sweeney would give the next three years of his life to the defense of freed former slaves through his work with the Freedmen’s Bureau. In an April 12, 1865 letter, written after Sweeney had begun his work with the Freedmen, Lt. Col Gardiner A. A. Deane of the 60th USCT described Sweeney in a letter as “a man of exceptional character.” He would need that “exceptional character” in his future confrontations with expropriated slave owners, ex-Confederates, and the Ku Klux Klan. Sources
https://blogs.davenportlibrary.com/sc/2012/11/30/alexander-clark-of-the-first-iowa-african-infantry/
Army of Occupation/Early Reconstruction
During late August 1865 the 60th USCTI replaced the 3rd Minnesota Infantry at Jacksonport, Arkansas. During this service company size detachments were sent to Augusta, Batesville, Franklin County, Powhatan, Salem and Searcy Arkansas, and served until end of September. During this time the Regiment was harassed by local citizens, endured deaths by disease, and had a suicide, a murder and a drowning. They were the first African American Soldiers to Guard the Little Rock, Arkansas, the first Black soldiers to serve as Security at an Ohio Military prison. They conducting patrols, foraging expeditions and security on boats and river towns, and protected precious food and supplies. Dyer described them as “Worthy and Able”.
The business of discriminatory policy in Iowa leaves out all the rest of the north who largely had the very same legislative “character flaws” without making reference to Southern legislators. What in reality was a fear that if you didn’t “protect” your state it could very well be the place ALL those eventual freed slaves would come to if anyone would open the door! As to where all the 60th US Colored Troops came from, considering all the restrictions the state had in place to keep blacks out, there still appeared to be a number who returned to Iowa and were buried here after the war. I have about 40, but some would be officers and staff who are white. Some of them claimed homes in Missouri or other slave holding places but enlisted in Iowa, that would make me think they very well could have been “bound for freedom” When the First Iowa of Colored descent was initially being organized. Many units had border jumpers lots of Iowan’s fought in Missouri, Illinois and Kansas so why would the 60th USCI be any different?
The article is about an Iowa regiment, not about exclusionary laws in other states.
Most Northern states did not have bars similar to Iowa’s though some did.
Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas did not bar white men from settling in their states.
Did not bar white men?
Mr. Hanken,
You are correct, of the 6 companies of the 60th recruited in Iowa, many of those were from other States, and border Jumpers. Iowa did not have the standard number of able bodied free blacks to fill the ranks for 10 companies, and even with the border jumpers, the Regiment sought and was given permission to recruit in Missouri. 4 companies of the 60th were recruited directly among the Contraband camps near St. Louis Missouri. Like those of Iowa, many of the soldiers who enlisted, listed residences I. Other states. Several were from Arkansas. Also during the transition from the 1st Iowa Volunteers of African descent, into the 60th, heavy recruiting was going on to replace those who died or discharged. Again, recruits from Tennessee and Arkansas were enlisted. This unit is overlooked for their service at Big Creek/Wallace’s Ferry, and for their service during Reconstruction. They were in the backwaters of the war, in the the hostile South, and were not afforded many opportunities to engage in combat, but Fredrick Dyer gave them high praise, when he stated they were a very worthy and able regiment. The were the first black soldiers to guard the Little Rock Arsenal, they were the first to guard a Military Prison, in Ohio. They were the color/honor Regiment in Little Rock for the Governor. Governor Isaac Murphy, relied heavily on them whenever a military presence was needed to keep order. They were present during elections and at the polling stations. The regiment apparently were very good at foraging, and being able to hang onto the food and supplies. The performed many of the security and escort details normally performed by US Marines. They guarded River towns, boats and supplies very well. Especially late 1865, food was in short supply in Arkansas. They endured a lot, especially when the war ended and they still had enlistment time to complete, due to the transition into the 60th required additional service time.
A lot of 60th Iowa men settled in Iowa after the war, I found them in GAR muster roles. Keokuk had a large black post and the rest scattered and were in integrated posts.
That is great to know. Thanks Barb.
EXCELLENT ARTICLE OF A LITTLE KNOWN PART OF THE WAR!!
Thanks