Elisha DeWitt’s heart must have swelled with patriotism. In August 1861, just eighteen years old, he signed on with the 7th Missouri Infantry (U.S.) at Rolla. Enlisting early in the war when the eagerness of youth and lofty patriotic ideals still ran high, DeWitt joined Company K as sergeant.

In the fall of 1862 he went to St. Louis on recruiting duty, and considering the hazards of camp life and rampant disease of the era, he appears to have been remarkably healthy – with no wartime hospitalizations. Up through the summer of 1863, most of his service had been uneventful.

In the spring of 1863, he was among a throng of men from the 7th Missouri who sought commissions as officers in the newly organizing “Colored Troops” along the Mississippi River. He received an appointment as captain of Company I, 9th Louisiana Infantry, African Descent. Like his colleagues, he soon started recruiting his regiment from the former slaves on abandoned plantations in northeast Louisiana.

He was present at the battle of Milliken’s Bend, and was captured (apparently uninjured) by the Confederates. David Cornwell, another officer in the 9th Louisiana, recalled years later that Elisha DeWitt was still wearing his old sergeant’s uniform at the time of the battle. Denying he had anything to do with the Colored Troops, DeWitt had persuaded his captors that he had merely been at Milliken’s Bend when the battle occurred, and was compelled to join in. The Confederates let him go on parole.

DeWitt spent several months at a camp for paroled prisoners at Benton Barracks, Missouri – and then returned to his old regiment, the 7th Missouri Infantry, where he served out the remainder of his enlistment period, getting discharged in 1864.

Two other officers from the 9th Louisiana who were captured at Milliken’s Bend were not as fortunate; they were executed while in Confederate hands in Monroe, Louisiana, killed for leading slaves in rebellion.