Commanding Seventeenth Army Corps:
GENERAL: No
enlistment of the negroes captured in Vicksburg will be allowed for the
present. All the male negroes we want collected and organized into working
parties for the purpose of policing the grounds around the city, unloading
steamers, and fitting up the fortifications for our use.
In regard to rebel
officers taking their servants with them is one of the conditions, I expressly
refused them. After the city was surrendered, however, one of the officers on
General Pemberton's staff asked me what I was going to do about servants who
were anxious to accompany their masters, remarking that many of them had been
raised with their servants, and it was like severing families to part them. I
remarked that no compulsory measure would be used to hold negroes. I want the
negroes all to understand that they are free men. If they are then anxious to
go with their masters, I do not see the necessity of preventing it. Some going
might benefit our cause by spreading dissatisfaction among the negroes at a
distance by telling that the Yankees set them all free. It is not necessary that
you should give yourself any trouble about negroes being enticed away from
officers. Every one that loses a negro will insist that he has been enticed
off, because otherwise his negro would not leave. As I said before, it was
positively refused that the privilege of carrying off private servants should
be granted, because I said afterward coercion would not be used to retain
servants. It is no reason that the strength of the garrison should be used in
preserving a neutrality between our men and the negroes that would enable the
Confederate officers [to carry] away their negroes by force.
Forage cannot be
issued, at least not more than for one day, to Pemberton’s forces when they
leave. A thousand horses, too, looks much more than they could reasonably take
under the terms of capitulation.
