Black soldiers in the Civil War

When President Abraham Lincolns September 22, 1862, preliminary Emancipation Proclamation went quietly into effect on Thursday, January I, 1863, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles pronounced it a broad stepa land-mark in history an extraordinary and radical measure almost revolutionary in its character. But few persons in the North or the South envisioned what historian James M.McPherson has termed the revolution of freedom the greatest social revolution in American history that ensued as the Civil war, with the preservation of the Union at stake, became a war of black liberation. On New Years Day, all persons held as slaves within any statethen in rebellion against the United States became thence forward, and forever free. In his final Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln issued on January I, the President added a new paragraph authorizing that suitable emancipated slaves will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. This passage signaled a major reversal in policy because since the start of the war the U.S. Army had turned away free black volunteers. Lincolns revised text, however, signified more than his changes in attitude and in policy during the last months of 1862. Soon after the war had commenced, he in fact had begun to move cautiously, carefully, but consistently toward emancipation and the enlistment of African American soldiers. The politics of emancipation and the politics of black enlistment always were closely entwined, and Lincolns final emancipation Proclamation underscored the vital nexus in the presidents thinking between the two policies. So too, historian Joseph P.Reidy explains, were military expediency and the Norths commitment to emancipation. It is essential to remember, Reidy insists, that without a Union victory there would be no emancipation. Lincolns decision to free and then employ blacks in the U.S. Army would rank among his boldest, most controversial, and most important measures. In August 1863, after black troops had first proven their mettle under fire, Lincoln explained to his critics that some of his commanders, including opponents of abolition and the Republican Party, believe the emancipation policy, and the use of colored troops, constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion; and that, at least one of those important successes, could not have been achieved when it was, but for the aid of black soldiers. You say you will not fight to free negroes, the president declared, adding wryly, some of them are willing to fight for you. Lincoln predicted that when the war finally ended, there will be some black men who can remember that silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well- poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while, I fear, there will be
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some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, the have strove to hinder it. In April 1864 the president recalled that he experimented with arming Northern free blacks and Southern ex-slaves with a clear conviction of duty to turn that element of strength to account; and I am responsible for it to the American people, to the Christian world, to history, and on my final account, to God. During the eighteen and nineteenth centuries, black Americans sought to serve their country despite opposition from whites in both the military and the civilian population. They served as soldiers and sailors during wartime, and in times of peace, in a few segregated militia units. The Civil War precipitated a change in their status. After the war, even though peace prevailed, blacks served in the regular army as well as in state militias. During the war, nearly 180,000 African Americans served in units of the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT). All the northern and most southern states were represented. Among the early units were the First Kansas Colored Infantry regiment and the First South Carolina Volunteer Regiment, both formed by white union officers. In Massachussetts, Rhode Island, Missouri, and Kansas, African Americans formed segregated units within state militias organized to protect the local population amid threats of violence. For a time, free blacks in Ohio were pressed into state service in order to protect Cincinnati from a Confederate attack from Kentucky. Even in the South black troops were employed; the Louisiana Native guards served in both the Confederacy and in the Union armies. During the war, almost 200,000 African Americans most of them newly freed slaves were allowed to serve in the union Army and Navy, and in 1866, Congress rewarded their loyal service by adding six black regiments to the Regular Army. About 3,000 black veterans enlisted in these new units, while others, missing the military camaraderie that they had enjoyed during the war, joined freedmen who were attracted to martial pomp and ceremony and organized segregated companies that were accepted into the militia for the first time. Virginia had one of the largest black militia contingents. For more that twenty-five years, the state provided arms and equipment to at last twenty companies, and 170 African American officers were commissioned by the governor, who was the militias commander-in-chef. Although these units primarily served a recreational and social function within the black community, like fraternal organizations, they also marched with white units in both local and national ceremonies and responded to domestic disorder on at least five occasions. Black participation in Virginias militia supports C. Vann Woodwards conclusion that there was a considerable range of flexibility and tolerance in relations between the races in Virginia from 1870-1900.

A harbinger of radical racial change, the freeing and arming of the slaves elicited a mountain of comments from both supporters and opponents of emancipation. For example, General john White Geary, a brigade commander in the Union army, remarked that the Presidents proclamation is the most important public document ever issued by an officer of our Government, and although I believe it, in itself, to be correct, I tremble for the consequences. Responding to newspaper reports of Lincolns proclamation, another officer of antislavery convictions, Lieutenant John Quincy Adams Campbell of the 5th Iowa Infantry, proclaimed January 1 -1863, the day of our nations second birth. God bless and help Abraham Lincoln help him to break every yoke and let the oppressed go free. In a pamphlet circulated widely in the North in 1863, George H.Boker proclaimed: We are raising a black army. We thus incurring a solemn obligation to abolish slavery wherever our flag flies When we do this, we shal have taken the last step in our difficult path, and shall have reached the goal, the natural, inevitable, fitting and triumphant end of the war, emancipation the one essential condition to peace and Union. Not surprisingly , abolitionists, African American, and other sympathetic to the slaves welcomed Lincolns final proclamation. But many expressed disappointment, disillusionment, and frustration because the presidents edict only freed slaves in territory still under Confederate control. According to historian Russell F. Weigley, Lincoln freed only the slaves it was not in his power to free. To be fair to the president, however, his proclamation in fact fif free many slaves along the Mississippi River, in eastern North Carolina, on the Sea Islands along the Atlantic coast, and in pockets throughout the Confederacy. Nonetheless, Lincolns cristics interpreted the restrained, legalistic wording of the Emancipation Proclamation as indicative of his overall lethargy in freeing and arming the slaves, and they complained that he followed the lead of others and rarely defined policy himself. Indeed, historian Michael Vorenberg notes correctly, in all matters concerning slavery, Lincoln was more restrained that most of his Republican colleagues. The presidents critics struggled making the transformation from what historian George M. Fredrickson has correctly termed the celestial politics of moral reform to the early politics of President Lincoln. Sergeant George E .Stephens of the all black 54th Massachusetts Volunteers, the first black regiment recruited in the North, shared Conways skepticism of Lincolns commitment to black freedom. Though on New Years Eve, 1862, Stephens predicted that the Emancipation Proclamation would wash away the sorrows, tears, and anguish of millions and necessitate a general arming of the freedmen, Lincolns actions quickly soured him on the president. Like other critics, black and white, Stephens chided Lincoln for moving too slowly to emancipate the slaves, for doing so on military not humanitarian grounds, and for leaving the peculiar institution untouched in the loyal slave states. In letters to the Weekly Anglo-African,

published in New York, Stephens denounced the false and indefinite policy of the Administration for allowing slavery to continue in the border states. Ironically, by 1864, Adams was in command of the all-black 5th Massachusetts Cavalry. While he considered the African American competent enough to serve as an infantryman, Adams judged him unacceptable as cavalryman. he has not the mental vigor and energy, Adams informed his father, the U.S. diplomat Charles Francis Adams; he cannot stand up against adversity. A sick nigger at once gives up and lies down to die, the personification of humanity reduced to a wet rag. He cannot fight for life like a white man In infantry, which acts in large masses, these things are of less consequence the in cavalrywhere individual intelligence is everything, and single menhave only themselves and their own nerve, intelligence and quickness to rely on. He continued: Of the courage in action of these men, at any rate when acting in mass, there can no doubt exist; of their physical and mental and moral energy and stamina I entertain grave doubts. Retreat, defeat and exposure would tell on them more than on the whites. Generally Adams found the black troops deficient, lacking the pride, spirit and intellectual energy of the whites. He has little hope for them in their eternal contact with a race like ours. Like Adams, many white Northern soldiers doubted the blacks abilities to fight and protested against freeing and arming the slaves. Some were ambivalent about Lincolns policies. Others expressed feelings of anger and betrayal. While willing to sacrifice their lives to suppress the rebellion, they had not joined the army to liberate blacks or to serve alongside them. The pioneer African American historian George Washington Williams, an army veteran, wrote in 1888 that the black soldier entered the war surrounded by prejudice and bad faith, persistently denied public confidence. At best, white troops damned him with faint praise with elevated eyebrows and elaborate pantomime. The good words of the conscientious few who felt that he would fight were drowned by a babel of wrathful depreciation of him as a man and as a soldier. In addition to emptying slaveholders, Lincolns emancipation policy smoothed the way for the first large-scale use of black as combat soldiers in American history. According to veteran white abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson, one of the first to command a black regiment, the presidents decision to arm African Americans was a momentous experiment, whose ultimate results were the reorganization of the whole American army and the remoulding of the relations of two races on this continent. After 1863 blacks rushed to join the U.S. Army and don the Union blue, determined to bury slavery, to defeat the Confederates, to prove their manhood, and to earn full citizenship. We came out in 1863, a black soldier recalled, as Valent hearted men for the Sacke of our Surffring Courntury. Many, like Georgian Hubbard Pryor of the 44th USCT, escaped from slavery, entered Federal lines, and enlisted in the
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Federal service. Captured in Dalton, Georgia, in October 1864, Private Pryor spent the remainder of the conflict working on Confederate labor gangs in Alabama, Mississippi, and southwest Georgia. With General Robert E. Lee's manpower reserves quickly draining, on March 23, 1865, General Orders #14 was issued which allowed for the enlistment of Blacks into the Confederate service. Shortly thereafter, a notice was posted in Petersburg's The Daily Express, "The commanding General deems the prompt organization of as large a force of negroes as can be spared, a measure of the utmost importance, and the support and co-operation of the citizens of Petersburg and the surrounding counties is requested by him for the prosecution to success of a scheme which he believes promises so great benefit to our cause...To the slaves is offered freedom and undisturbed residence at their old homes in the Confederacy after the war. Not the freedom of sufferance, but honorable and self won by the gallantry and devotion which grateful countrymen will never cease to reward." The recruitment effort did bear fruit in Richmond where Majors James W. Pegram and Thomas P. Turner put together a "Negro Brigade" of Confederate States Colored Troops. The Richmond Daily Examiner noted of the unit "the knowledge of the military art they already exhibit was something remarkable. They moved with evident pride and satisfaction to themselves." As the Confederate army abandoned Richmond on April 3rd, apparently these Black Confederate soldiers went along with General Curtis Lee's wagon train on its journey. They would move unmolested until they reached the area of Painesville on April 5. Here they were attacked by General Henry Davies' cavalry troopers. A Confederate officer, who rode upon this situation as it was transpiring, recalled: "Several engineer officers were superintending the construction of a line of rude breastworks...Ten or twelve negroes were engaged in the task of pulling down a rail fence; as many more occupied in carrying the rails, one at a time, and several were busy throwing up the dirt...The [Blacks] thus employed all wore good gray uniforms and I was informed that they belonged to the only company of colored troops in the Confederate service, having been enlisted by Major Turner in Richmond. Their muskets were stacked, and it was evident that they regarded their present employment in no very favorable light." On April 10th, as Confederate prisoners were being marched from Sailor's Creek and elsewhere to City Point (present day Hopewell) and eventually off to Northern prison camps, a Union chaplain observed the column. This incident along the retreat to Painesville, seems to be

the only documented episode of "official" Black troops serving the Confederacy in Virginia as a unit under fire.

African-Americans also accompanied the Confederate army on the retreat with the First Regiment Engineer Troops and provided yeoman service. One member of this unit remembered that they mounded roads, repaired bridges and cut new parallel roads to old ones when they became impassable. When this was not possible, an engineer officer would post a group near the trouble spot to extricate wagons and artillery pieces. When Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox, thirty-six African-Americans were listed on the Confederate paroles. Most were either servants, free blacks, musicians, cooks, teamsters or blacksmiths. A Black woman was to become the only civilian casualty in the final fighting at Appomattox. Hannah stayed behind with her husband in the home of Doctor Coleman located on the battlefield and was mortally wounded by an artillery round. A Union chaplain remembered: "she was sick with fever and unable to be moved. As she lay upon her bed, a solid shot had passed through one wall of the house at just the right height to strike her arm, and then passed out through the opposite wall. Two months after the tragic Petersburg episode, black soldiers displayed their worth at the Battle of New Market Heights (Chaffin's Farm) near Richmond on September 29, 1864. Fourteen men, including Christian Fleetwood, who later became an active community leader in Washington, D.C. were presented the Medal of Honor for valor at New Market Heights. Several were awarded to men who took charge of their units after all white commanders had fallen. Soldiers of distinction were also given the Army of the James or "Butler" medal, designated by champion of the black troops, Gen. Benjamin Butler and the only medal created solely for the U.S.C.T.

Reference list

Edited by Bruce A. Glasrud, Brothers to the Buffalo Soldiers: Perspective on the African American Militia and Volunteers, 1865-1917, United States of America, University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri. 2011, Page range. 1-36.

Ed. John David Smith, Black Soldiers in Blue, United States of America, The University of North Carolina Press, 2002, Page range 2-20.

http://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records/about-service-records.html last accessed Thursday, 29th of March, 2012. About Military Service Records and Official Military Personnel Files http://www.nps.gov/index.htm last accessed Friday 30th of March, 2012 http://www.loc.gov/index.html last accessed Friday 30th of March, 2012 http://alexandriava.gov/ last accessed Thursday 29th of March, 2012