Foot soldiers were less mobile than cavalry. An infantryman, though, wrote one of the few surviving reports that describes the black Regulars’ field service in their own words. When Sergeant Joseph Luckadoe led three 25th Infantry privates in defending a Texas mail station against attack on New Year’s Eve, 1873, his company commander praised his’soldierlike conduct.’ Luckadoe’s report eventually reached the War Department in Washington:

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‘While sitting in the Station our attention was attracted by the dogs barking at what we at the time, supposed to be a Cayote, to be sure, I told [Private Joshua L.] Newby to get his gun and see what they were barking at. When he got near the Haystack, he was fired upon by some one, the ball merely passing him and imbeded itself in one of the Corral posts. We seized our guns, and rushed out of doors when they discharged some 8 shots at us, the balls striking the stone and flatt[en]ing out with the exception of two, one is imbeded in one of the uprights for our Arbor, the other, as I turned around, struck my Cap brim, cutting away a portion of the cloth and pasteboard but did not hurt me … . I told [Private Henry] Williams to fire on them, this he done, when one of them fell at the second shot — at daybreak we found that he had bled all over the stones at least a half gallon of blood, they taken him off with them …. I do not think they were Indians they were to[o] bold and defiant although there are plenty of Moccasin tracks in the gulch. I think that more than one of the party was hurt. I think we killed the one that bled so much — we did not sleep any on the 31st, we are all well, and on the lookout. Please ask the Col. To send some more ammunition we have 130 rounds…and please send those Beans to the station keeper and some vegetables, if you have some to spare.’

Sergeant Luckadoe had given a concise sketch of outpost duty in Texas during the 1870s–the men had provided for their comfort by building an arbor, or ramada; they had fought off a night attack by parties unknown and reconnoitered afterward; they needed more ammunition and rations. ‘The Col.’ in Luckadoe’s report was his company commander, Captain Charles Bentzoni, who had been colonel of the 56th U.S. Colored Infantry during the Civil War. Luckadoe himself had served nearly three years in the 4th U.S. Colored Infantry before taking his discharge in the spring of 1866 and enlisting again a few months later in the 40th U.S. Infantry, which was organizing at a camp outside Washington, D.C. His career was pretty typical of NCOs in the new black regiments; at least 36 of the 40th Infantry’s sergeants and corporals were USCT veterans. At the end of his first enlistment, Luckadoe returned to New York City and tried civilian life for a few weeks before signing on again and serving two consecutive enlistments. He left the Army in 1880, five years before Congress enacted retirement for enlisted men with 30 years’ service, and settled in San Diego. This, too, was pretty typical; although most black veterans returned to the towns they had called home — New Orleans and Washington, D.C., headed the list — many others settled in the West.

Few black veterans left a record of their reasons for serving more than one enlistment. Security and simple material comforts may have kept some from returning to civilian life. Veteran soldiers, especially NCOs, enjoyed considerable prestige and power in their companies — rewards that would have been difficult, if not impossible, for a black man to attain as a civilian. When 1st Sgt. Augustus Smith, in his 15th year of service, remarked during court-martial testimony, ‘I went to my room having some work to do,’ he referred not only to the paperwork that literate NCOs handled but also to the privacy of his quarters. The first sergeant was the only man in the company with a room of his own. When third-time enlistee Sergeant John F. Ball matter-of-factly told a general court-martial in 1885, ‘I received a telephone message at 3 o’clock that two of the convicts had made their escape,’ his statement was one that few men of any color could have made — the telephone was an invention only nine years old. The black regiments’ high re-enlistment rate tells as much about the benefits the Army offered as it does about race relations in 19th-century America.

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