John W. Phelps - Organizing of Black Troops

Organizing of Black Troops

General Phelps was afterward stationed at Camp Parapet in Carrollton, seven miles from New Orleans. Many fugitive slaves arrived at the camp seeking refuge. General Phelps organized the black men of military age into companies. He then formally asked his commanding officer, General Butler, for arms for the blacks. General Phelps thought he could organize three regiments of Africans to help defend his camp. General Butler ordered Phelps to put the Negros to work cutting down trees around the camp, and instead of furnishing guns, ordered his quartermaster to send axes and tents for the fugitive slaves. General Phelps was unwilling to employ the Africans as mere laborers, becoming what he viewed as their slave-driver, "having no qualification that way," and offered his resignation on August 21, 1862. General Butler refused to accept it. Later that August, General Phelps returned his commission to President Abraham Lincoln.

David Dixon Porter who had assisted Commodor Farragut in capturing New Orleans, branded General Phelps "a crazy man," and Butler called him "mad as a March Hare on the 'nigger question'.

After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, the federal administration adopted a policy of organizing Negro troops. The President offered General Phelps a Major General's commission. General Phelps wanted the commission backdated to the day of his resignation the prior year. The President could not allow the implied contravention of General Butler's original orders, which were in good standing for that time, and would not agree to General Phelps' terms.

At New Orleans, Phelps had organized a few squads of Negroes and drilled them daily. . . . Not knowing what to do with so many Negroes, Butler at first returned the runaway slaves to their masters. But still the contrabands came. Some of them were employed as cooks, nurses, washwomen, and laborers. . . . Butler ordered . . . the exclusion of all unemployed Negroes and whites from his lines."

For his organization of and attempt to arm escaped slaves, Confederate President Jefferson Davis issued an order on August 21, 1862, declaring Phelps an outlaw, for having "organized and armed negro slaves for military service against their masters, citizens of the Confederacy." Black Federal soldiers were condemned by the Confederacy as robbers and criminals, punishable by death. Many were warned by their officers before going into battle that they would be executed if captured.