U.S. War Department General Order 143 Establishing the Bureau of U.S. Colored Troops

About the Author

General Order 143 was a directive issued by the War Department and as such does not have an author of record. However, the army's adjutant general, Lorenzo Thomas, most likely had a hand in authoring the order. In March 1863, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton ordered Thomas to the Mississippi Valley to recruit and muster regiments of African American troops.

Lorenzo Thomas was born in New Castle, Delaware, in 1804. An 1823 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Thomas was a career army officer who was appointed adjutant general of the army in the early months of the Civil War. In this post he was the person primarily responsible for recruitment and staffing of the army. It was under his watch that large-scale recruitment of Black troops began. He was not known as an abolitionist or Radical Republican, who were critical of Lincoln's slowness in freeing the slaves and supporting their legal equality. Instead, as a moderate he was able to convince many of the necessity of enlisting African Americans in the army. Although Thomas did not favor Black officers for the new regiments, he was a firm believer that the African American troops should not be relegated to general labor but rather should be given combat assignments. It was during his recruitment drive through Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee in 1863 that Thomas came to realize that a new organizational system was required, resulting in General Order 143 creating the U.S. Colored Troops.

Following the Civil War, Thomas remained in the adjutant general's post, although his relationship with Secretary Stanton was somewhat tenuous and the secretary reportedly doubted Thomas's loyalty. Perhaps Stanton's concern had some foundation. In 1868, President Andrew Johnson briefly appointed Thomas interim secretary of war to replace Stanton. It was this action that led Congress to declare Johnson in violation of the Tenure of Office Act, resulting in his impeachment. During the impeachment proceedings both Thomas and Stanton claimed to be the secretary of war. After successfully avoiding conviction, Johnson failed to appoint Thomas permanently to the post. Thomas retired from the army with the rank of major general in February 1869. He died in 1875.