Fifty-first United States Colored Troops

The Fifty-first United States Colored Troops was a Civil War regiment consisting primarily of formerly enslaved men from Mississippi and Louisiana. While the regiment saw most of its service east of the Mississippi River, a detachment was the victim of an 1864 racial atrocity in Arkansas.

The recruiting of African American military units to serve in the Union army was approved with the creation of the U.S. War Department’s Bureau of Colored Troops on May 22, 1863, but the First Mississippi Infantry Regiment (African Descent) had already been organized at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana, and Vicksburg, Mississippi, six days earlier. As with the other regiments of Black troops, all of the officers were white, though Black men could serve as noncommissioned officers. Originally stationed at Milliken’s Bend as part of the African Brigade, the First Mississippi saw its first combat in the Confederate attack on that post on June 7, 1863.

The regiment moved to Vicksburg the following month, and it was while they were posted there that Companies E, F, and G boarded the steamboat J. S. Pringle on February 9, 1864, and headed across the Mississippi River to Ross’ Landing in Chicot County to gather corn at the Tecumseh Plantation south of Lake Village (Chicot County) and Lakeport Plantation.

On February 14, a large group of “half bushwhackers” under Captain Tuck Thorp from Confederate brigadier general Joseph O. Shelby’s brigade learned that some of the Black soldiers were at the Tecumseh Plantation. Those men were from First Lieutenant Thaddeus K. Cock’s Company G. When the Confederate Missourians attacked, the African American troops fired one volley before scattering. The attackers killed fourteen men and wounded six, and a Union officer later wrote that “the men were captured and most of them brutally murdered.”

Two white men, Cock and Sergeant James S. Spenser, “were made to strip off all their clothing to drawers and stockings and were then being shot, both being left for dead.” Cock “was shot through the mouth after surrendering,” a Company G officer wrote. Spenser died on the field, while Cock lingered until February 24 before dying of his wounds. A Confederate wrote years later that the corpses of the dead Federals were pinned to the ground with their own four-sided bayonets. A Company E officer wrote that his men headed to the Tecumseh plantation after hearing the firing, but “the enemy however, being mounted, executed their bloody work and retired on our approach.”

Not long afterward, on March 11, 1864, the First Mississippi was designated as the Fifty-first United States Colored Infantry. The regiment was stationed at Lake Providence, Louisiana, until May 1864 after which it was transferred to Goodrich Landing, Louisiana, serving there until December. Later transferred to Florida, the regiment marched to Fort Blakely, Alabama, and took part in the successful Union assault on that Confederate stronghold on April 9, 1865.

The regiment was stationed at Mobile and Montgomery, Alabama, until June 1865, after which the men were sent to New Orleans, Louisiana, and then detached to serve at various locations in Texas. The Fifty-first United States Colored Troops mustered out on June 16, 1866.

For additional information:
Dyer, Frederick. A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion. Des Moines, IA: Dyer Publishing Co., 1908, pp. 1344, 1732.

Hewett, Janet B., et al., eds. Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. 78. Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing Co., 1998, pp. 163, 183–189.

Marshall, Weed. “Fight to the Finish near Lake Village, Ark.” Confederate Veteran 19 (April 1911): 169.

Pettus, Emily Wagster. “Black Soldiers Are Honored, Name by Name, at a Civil War Battlefield.” Associated Press, February 29, 2024. https://apnews.com/article/black-history-civil-war-vicksburg-military-park-72df46a6761c7b3504b1a5ebd3edb211 (accessed March 4, 2024).

Simons, Don R. In Their Words: A Chronology of the Civil War in Chicot County, Arkansas and Adjacent Waters on the Mississippi River. Sulphur, LA: Wise Publications, 1999, pp. 100–101.

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System