“The Negro soldier is the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion.”
– Abraham Lincoln
There are times in history when uncontrollable forces shift quickly and radically underneath one’s feet, and people are forced to make consequential decisions. The impact of these imperfect decisions radiate over generations, affecting not only that moment in history but shifting patterns in the tapestry of history for centuries to come. So it was when a moderate politician Abraham Lincoln was elected president, and the southern states believed their slave-holding interests were in such danger that they left the Union to form the Confederate States of America. So it was when Lincoln decided to wage war against his southern brothers to preserve his country.
Although the war was fought over the humanity of Black slaves, their reactions to the tectonic shifts of this moment in history are often left out of the record, and their contributions are not mentioned in history curriculum. A failure to consider the Civil War from an Afro-centric perspective results in a failure to understand Black history and to fully grasp American history. Let us set the record straight so that we can celebrate the freedom fighters who defended their humanity and helped preserve their country.
Let Us In, We Will Win
Before Black men could fight on the battlefield, they had to fight to convince the American public and its political leaders to grant them entry. When war first sparked its destructive flame in 1861, Black leaders saw it as an opportunity to strike for their people’s freedom. Frederick Douglass, famed abolitionist and orator, paved the way with widely circulated articles and public speeches urging the government to enlist former slaves and free men from the North.
The political and military establishment decreed early on that the conflict would be a “White man’s war.” Although they had the most to gain from a Union victory, the opinions of the Black man were not considered. In the opening years, the Union Army went as far as quelling slave rebellions. General McClellan, head of the Union Army, said, “In a war between loyal slaves and disloyal masters, I would take the side of the masters against the slaves.” This promise was kept for nearly two years of war. Two long and brutal years filled with blood-soaked battlefields and economic destabilization.
The resulting pressure on Lincoln was intense. On the one hand his advisors, abolitionists, and even some military leaders urged him to allow Black men to enlist. On the other hand, he feared Black enlistment would lead the slaveholding border states of Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri to join the Confederacy. He also shared some racist notions of the inability of Black men to fight that were pervasive in American society. This bias was checked after Lincoln met Robert Smalls, a young man from South Carolina who freed himself and 15 other enslaved Africans by stealing a Confederate supply ship in the port of New Orleans and navigating it–under cover of darkness–around the southern coastline to the Union blockade lines in the Carolinas.
Smalls’ liberating acts granted the Union a new ship, artillery, ammunition, and he offered information to the US Navy which allowed them to take a strategic base at the mouth of the Mississippi. He would later become a captain in the navy. In the summer of 1862, the national hero traveled to meet President Lincoln at the White House and receive a reward from Congress. While speaking with the President, he advocated for allowing Black men to join the war. Days later, an order from the War Department was issued to begin a project of enlisting 5,000 Black men to fight.
The Forerunning Fighters: The South Carolina Volunteers
Up until this point of the war in mid-1862, Black men participated in auxiliary roles only, for both parties. For the Confederacy, they were forced to build forts, defensive structures, and transportation infrastructure—as well as continue their forced labor on the plantations. For the Union, they served a similar supportive role which was for the most part voluntary (some runaways were given the choice to work or be sent back to the Confederacy). Their assistance as scouts and guides would prove invaluable to many Union officers, most of whom had never been to the south before. The vast majority of Black men, though, remained in the position they were before the war began—both slave and free.
The first crack in the federal government’s dam of emasculation came with the order to rally 5,000 Black troops. These men were known as the South Carolina Volunteers. The army appointed Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a White abolitionist and military officer, to train and lead the Volunteers. He wrote a diary about his experience entitled, “Army Life in a Black Regiment.” He was keenly aware that the success or failure of the Black regiments under his command would determine whether the floodgates of Black manhood would be opened to turn the tides of the war and free those in bondage. He undertook his duties with the discipline of a military man and the passion of an abolitionist.
Higginson’s first task was to recruit and organize the men into disciplined units. Recruitment was difficult due to mistrust between the men and the government over equal pay. To combat this, Higginson obtained an order directly from the Secretary of War that promised equal pay to the men. Many remained suspicious but were persuaded to enlist by officers and recruiters anyway. In the words of Higginison, “With what utter humiliation were we, their officers, obliged to later confess to them, that it was their distrust which was wise, and our faith in the pledges of the US government which was foolishness.”
Training camp for the Volunteers began in November 1862. Today, the notion of a Black man being unable to train as a soldier is nonsensical: twenty percent of the US military is composed of Black people. But in the Civil War era, racism plagued the American public, both North and South, and many were concerned about this “experiment.” Training camp, therefore, was a highly publicized affair for the first African regiments. So intense was the pressure that Higginson wrote, “A battalion of black soldiers, a spectacle since so common, seemed then the most daring of innovations, and the whole demeanor of this particular regiment was watched with microscopic scrutiny by friends and foes. I felt sometimes as if we were a plant trying to take root, but constantly pulled up to see if we were growing.”
They were growing—increasing in discipline, organization, and readiness for combat. White officers who trained the men quickly learned that Black men were more than capable of combat. They often debated the abilities of White and Black soldiers, and in those discussions none ever argued that Black soldiers were inferior. The parameters of discussion were whether Black soldiers were equal or superior to white soldiers. The officers also found that the men, most of whom were illiterate former slaves, fully understood the implications of the war they joined.
One said, “I hab lef’ my wife in de land o’ bondage; my little ones dey say eb’ry night, Whar is my fader? But when I die, when de bressed mornin’ rises, when I shall stan’ in de glory, wid one foot on de water an’ one foot on de land, den, O Lord, I shall see my wife an’ my little chil’en once more.” Another said, “I mean to fight de war through, an’ die a good sojer wid de last kick–dat’s my prayer!”
The Emancipation Proclamation: Partial Liberation and Mass Mobilization
The performance of the South Carolina Volunteers under the watchful eyes of a revolving door of military leaders, politicians, and journalists was not lost on President Lincoln. They proved the fitness of their people before ever engaging in actual combat and the fruits of their innovative representation came on New Year’s Day 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves only in the rebel states. Throughout this historic document, Lincoln repeatedly mentions “military necessity” as a reason for freeing the slaves. A short clause near the end of the executive order reads, “And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, 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 proclamation opened the doors for Black men to join the war and they answered that call en masse. Propaganda was spread across the north urging free Black men to pick up arms. The army was empowered to liberate slaves and bring them into service. The leaders who initially urged the government to let them in became the recruiters who persuaded them to fight for their freedom. The most ferocious of these was Frederick Douglass. By this time too old to fight himself, Douglass made it his mission to activate as many Black soldiers as possible. Both of his sons were quickly enlisted; he traveled the country delivering eloquent and patriotic speeches aimed at convincing men to enlist; and he was responsible for organizing the 54th Massachusetts—a Black regiment he was requested by the War Department to raise.
Douglass saw the opportunity for Black men to join the Union as a critical moment in the history of Black manhood, freedom, and human progress. He utilized the full breadth of his powerful oratory skills to convince his brothers of the same. To a large crowd of Black people in Philadelphia he said, “Such is the government you are now called upon to co-operate with in burying rebellion and slavery in a common grave (applause). Never since the world began was a better chance offered to a long enslaved and oppressed people. The opportunity is given us to be men. With one courageous resolution we may blot out the hand-writing of ages against us. Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters US, let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth or under the earth which can deny that he has earned the right of citizenship in the United States (Laughter and applause).”
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures… Young men of Philadelphia, you are without excuse. The hour has arrived, and your place is in the Union army. Remember that the musket–the United States musket with its bayonet of steel–is better than all mere parchment guarantees of liberty. In your hands that musket means liberty; and should your constitutional rights at the close of this war be denied, which in the nature of things, it cannot be, your brethren are safe while you have a Constitution which proclaims your right to keep and bear arms (Immense cheering).”
The Black Man in Battle
Almost 200,000 Black men would don the Union blue and fight under the star spangled banner in the bloody contest for their liberation. They fought in forty major battles and hundreds of often intense skirmishes–while conducting countless raids behind enemy lines to liberate slaves, obtain resources and food for Union troops, and eliminate strategic targets and infrastructure.
The Battle of Milliken’s Bend displayed the tenacity of Black troops. Tasked with defending a key supply station on the Mississippi, poorly trained Black regiments had to face a Confederate attacking force that outnumbered them by a 6-1 ratio. When the rebels attacked their position, they fired one volley of shots but most of the men were unable to reload their rifles after that. Once the rebels reached them, the battle became fierce hand-to-hand combat in which rifles were used as blunt instruments. After hours of fighting, the rebel forces retreated and the supply line to General Ulysses S. Grant’s Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi was protected.
The Confederate general leading the attack, Henry McCulloch, later wrote that during the battle, “The line was formed under a heavy fire from the enemy, and the troops charged the breastworks, carrying it instantly, killing and wounding many of the enemy by their deadly fire, as well as the bayonet. This charge was resisted by the negro portion of the enemy’s force with considerable obstinacy, while the white or true Yankee portion ran like whipped curs almost as soon as the charge was ordered.”
Black troops became renowned for their ability to remain steady under heavy fire and continue their attacks while taking heavy casualties. In the failed Union attack on Fort Wagner, a fortified confederate island protecting Charleston Harbor, the 54th Massachusetts volunteered to be the first unit in the attack. They advanced and advanced while taking direct musket fire and artillery shells from above their position. The unit reached the Confederate position before finally being driven back by bayonets and close range artillery fire. The 54th lost its commanding officer and fifty percent of its manpower in this assault. The rebel troops were so impressed that the men from the unit were treated as prisoners of war and not executed, as was their policy.
Above all, Black troops showed remarkable restraint and grace to their former owners. When liberating slaves from the plantations, Black soldiers refused to ransack the mansions paid for by their labor or to destroy the properties—viewing this as dishonorable. Only the most dehumanizing buildings would be destroyed by Black troops, such as slave torture quarters. Black troops only stole from the rebels what the military required of them for combat purposes.
Hardship, Difficulty, and Discrimination in the Ranks
Black history often reads as a lament. This piece is focused instead on Black heroics and perspectives during the Civil War. But one would be remiss to ignore the unfairness and discrimination that Black soldiers had to endure in order to offer their assistance to the cause. Black soldiers were paid less than White soldiers: White soldiers were paid $13 a month. Black soldiers were paid $10 minus $3 for clothing and supplies. Their $7 payment often arrived late or not at all, while White soldiers and even White officers in Black units would be paid on time.
Frederick Douglass visited the White House frequently to advocate for equal pay and even threatened to stop recruiting Black soldiers for the Union over this issue. Many Black troops refused pay until it would be equalized. One Sergeant, William Walker, led his troops in a non-violent protest wherein they laid down their arms to advocate for equal pay. He was court-martialed and executed for insubordination. Congress would eventually pass a law in 1864 retroactively equalizing pay only for Black troops who were free before the Emancipation Proclamation.
Black units were mostly led by White officers. At the onset of war this was understandable as no Black men were trained to be in these positions, but throughout the conflict Black soldiers were often passed over for promotions to these positions of leadership. Black troops were also often assigned to non-combat support roles as cooks and laborers due to the racist attitudes of military leaders, and were robbed of many opportunities to fight.
Even robbed of the opportunity to fight on equal grounds, Black men in the ranks still faced higher rates of death due to illness, disease, and other preventable causes because of a lack of medical support for Black regiments. If they were allowed to fight and were captured by the rebels, Black men would be executed immediately while White soldiers were treated with respect as prisoners of war. Many Black soldiers saw this as a badge of honor. Frederick Douglass urged Lincoln to execute a Confederate prisoner for every Black man executed, but Lincoln adamantly refused. The President did threaten the Confederacy that he would do exactly that though, which resulted in less executions of Black POWs.
Conclusion: The Slave’s Imposition of His Manhood and His Legacy of Liberation
The Civil War was an era of extremes. The United States vacillated between oppression and freedom on a daily basis. In this volatile and reactionary time, Black men stood up and figured out what they could do to best serve the interests of their brothers and sisters in bondage–the interests of humanity. Many found a new sense of manhood and self-respect that bondage and cruelty had stolen from them. Their actions would earn new respect for African people in America and abroad and would bring their enslavement to a permanent end. There is truly room enough in heaven for the soldier.
Louisville Political Review 
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