(CIVIL WAR--COLORED TROOPS.) David Hunter. Order from the Department of the South, drafting "all negroes in private service." General Orders No. 24. One page, 7¾ x 4¾ inches, signed in type by Hunter and adjutant Charles G. Halpine, on lined paper, plus integral blank; minor foxing. Hilton Head, SC, 19 March 1863 Major General David Hunter (1802-1886) was best known for his advocacy of the United States Colored Troops, and for his May 1862 General Orders No. 11, which briefly abolished slavery in Georgia, South Carolina and Florida before President Lincoln rescinded it.
Offered here is a lesser-known but important order that, essentially, all freedmen were eligible to be drafted into military service. It forbade plantation superintendents in the Department of the South from "harboring, secreting, or keeping in their employ able-bodied male negroes liable to the draft," and ordered that "all negroes in private service . . . will be immediately reported" for military service. Those already employed by the Army's Engineer Department, and those certified for disability, were exempted. It also arranges a system for redress of "negroes . . . defrauded of their just earnings, by the avarice of masters who take advantage of their ignorance." None traced at auction.