ULYSSES S. GRANT | Ulysses Grant directs General Philip Sheridan to achieve a racial balance among the volunteer troops under his command

ULYSSES S. GRANT

AUTOGRAPH TELEGRAM SIGNED ("U. S. GRANT LT. GN.") AS COMMANDING GENERAL, TO MAJOR GENERAL PHILIP SHERIDAN, AT NEW ORLEANS, REGARDING MUSTERING OUT OF HIS TROOPS

Half sheet of paper (4 1/2 x 7 1/8 in.; 112 x 182 mm), Washington, 30 December 1865; inlaid to a larger sheet with a typed transcription.

As General Grant acts to reduce the size of the Army to a peacetime level, he asks Phil Sheridan, commanding at New Orleans, "If practicable reduce by muster out the white troops in your Division to 10,000 White and 10,000 Colored troops. If this reduction cannot be safely reached approach it as near as possible."

Sheridan found Grant's message to be ambiguous: he didn't understand if he was supposed to reduce his troops by these numbers or to these numbers (the latter construction was the correct one). In seeking clarification from Washington, Sheridan provides evidence of just how many African American soldiers were then in service in the United States Army. In telegrams to Grant of 6 and 7 January 1866, Sheridan reported, "Your telegram of the 30th ult. read thousand 1.000 white and ten thousand 10.000 Colored troops, and the order for muster out was given accordingly, but will be changed so as to retain ten thousand 10.000 white and ten thousand 10.000 Colored troops, as per your telegram of the 5th[.] No white troops will go out under this order as I have not ten thousand 10.000 white troops in my Division … I have the honor to report that there are present in this Division of Volunteers Six thousand five hundred & fifty white and nineteen thousand Seven hundred & sixty eight colored troops."

REFERENCE:

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. Simon, 15:450−51