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On March 2,
1863, eminent abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass
sent out this powerful message in his newspaper, Douglass
Monthly. Titled "Men of Color, to Arms!" it urged black men
to support the nation's war and the crusade to end generations
of slavery. Approximately 180,000 African American soldiers took
up the call to fight for the Union, comprising more than 10% of
all Federal forces. Knowing that a Northern loss could mean
possible reenslavement, freemen and former slaves showed
dedication to their country and a commitment to the freedom of
their people forever.
Sgt. Major Lewis
H. Douglass, one of two sons of Frederick Douglass, served
in the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer
Infantry. |
Gallant
Service | Enlistments
| Recruitment
Efforts | Acts
of Bravery
Inadequate
facilities, mistreatment | 1863
and 1864 campaigns | Petersburg
War
draws to a conclusion
Gallant
Service
Black Civil War
sailor aboard the USS New Hampshire, one of 9,000
blacks who served as seamen for the Union
Navy. |
Black
regiments, commanded by white officers and designated U.S.
Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.) were quickly raised by the War
Department following the announcement of the Emancipation
Proclamation in early 1863. Often used as assault troops, the
U.S.C.T. saw action in more than 400 engagements, 39 of which
were major battles including Port Hudson, Louisiana; Fort
Wagner, South Carolina; the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia; and
Nashville, Tennessee. More than 9,000 black seamen in the U.S.
Navy added to the Union's strength as did thousands of others
who served in military support positions. Disease and combat
wounds claimed almost 38,000 casualties in the Colored Troops, a
large portion of the total number of men enrolled. The U.S.
government awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, first
issued during the Civil War to recognize gallant service, to 24
African Americans.
Drummer Boy Jackson, former slave and then drummer
for the Union Army in the 79th U.S. Colored Troops in
Louisiana. |
Enlistments
The Federal
program to admit black soldiers during the Civil War was not
without precedent or resistance. American blacks had taken part
in the country's defense since the Revolutionary War and the War
of 1812. By the mid-nineteenth century, their earlier efforts
were all but forgotten. The government's call for 75,000
volunteers in April 1861 compelled many Northern blacks to offer
their services to a War Department opposed to arming blacks for
fear it would induce the loyal slave-holding border states to
join the Confederacy. However, by the fall of 1862, events had
changed in favor of accepting black soldiers. Declining Union
enlistments, heavy battle losses and the realization that the
war would take more time and resources than expected, confronted
President Abraham Lincoln and the Union Army. Continued pressure
by abolitionists and awareness of the potential of black labor
as the Confederacy had already discovered, also contributed to
lifting the Army's prohibition of "Negroes or Mulattoes," in
existence since 1820.
The formal
Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January, 1863, freed all
slaves in rebellious states with the exception of those in areas
already under Union control. The Proclamation also declared that
freed slaves would be officially received into the armed forces.
Lincoln's decision gave a higher meaning to a war initially
focused on preservation of the Union - abolition. "A double
purpose induced me and most others to enlist, to assist in
abolishing slavery and to save the country from ruin," wrote
Medal of Honor winner Sgt. Major Christian Fleetwood of the 4th
U.S.C.T. Frederick Douglass and other leaders saw black military
service as an opportunity to win a Union victory and to gain
equality and rights as citizens. As Douglass stated: "Once
let the black man get upon his person the brass letters 'U.S.,'
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 which
can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the
United States."
Sgt. Major Christian A. Fleetwood, 4th U.S. Colored
Troops, Medal of Honor Recipient; post-war civic leader in
Washington. |
Recruitment
Efforts
In 1862,
several black regiments were recruited by white officers in the
South and West without Presidential or Congressional
authorization. The combat actions of the 1st South Carolina, a
regiment of ex-slaves raised by Generals David Hunter and Rufus
Saxton, received notice in the Northern press. The regiment's
commander, Massachusetts abolitionist and man of letters Col.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, wrote encouraging reports about this
regiment: "Nobody knows anything about these men who has not
seen them in battle...No officer in this regiment now doubts
that the successful prosecution of the war lies in the unlimited
employment of black troops."
Like
Higginson, a number of Northern white officers, many from
leading anti-slavery families and circles, were genuinely
sympathetic to the cause of black troops, among them Robert
Gould Shaw, Edward N. Hallowell, Norwood P. Hallowell and James
C. Beecher. Kansas raised the next early regiment, the 1st
Kansas Volunteers, under the direction of Senator James Lane.
Their performance in a Missouri raid further helped dispel the
notion that blacks were unable or unwilling to fight.
In
Union-held New Orleans, military governor Gen. Benjamin Butler's
1st, 2nd and 3rd Louisiana Native Guards, the Corps D'Afrique,
were formed from existing free black militia units and
supervised by Gen. Daniel Ullmann. Major Francis E. Dumas and
Paris-educated Captain Andre Cailloux, who proudly described
himself as the blackest man in New Orleans, exemplified the
affluent freeman who commanded these units. Many were to resign,
however, because of tension in the ranks and the Army's official
policy of excluding blacks from leadership positions and officer
promotions.
Sojourner
Truth |
Southern
territory under Union control provided the largest number of
black soldiers during the war, further weakening the South's
economic base. Many were fugitive slaves or "contrabands," a
military term for seized enemy property like cotton, machinery
or other goods. The refugees sought freedom, safety and
employment behind the Federal lines where many served as
soldiers, laborers, servants, teamsters, scouts, spies, teachers
and nurses. Former slave Susie King Taylor chronicled her
experiences as a laundress, teacher and nurse for her husband's
regiment, the 1st South Carolina. Charlotte Forten, a
well-educated teacher from the North, recorded her wartime
participation in the Federal experiment to educate and prepare
slaves for emancipation along the coast of South Carolina. Noted
pre-war black activists Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth
served as spies and nurses, Tubman in the South and Truth in the
North.
Acts of
Bravery
Many blacks
were to perform acts of bravery in the name of the Union and
human liberty. Robert Smalls seized freedom for himself and his
family when he heroically captured a Confederate ship and
delivered it to the Union Navy which was blockading Charleston
Harbor in May 1862. "I thought that the Planter would be of
some use to Uncle Abe," claimed the 23-year-old slave who
went to work for the Navy and later became a U.S. Congressman
from South Carolina. The U.S. Navy had a long history of
accepting men of all colors and backgrounds due to its continual
manpower shortages. As early as September, 1861 the Union Navy
began enlisting blacks into naval service as stewards, servants
and later as seamen on integrated ships. The Navy awarded the
Medal of Honor to eight sailors for outstanding service, two of
whom were John Lawson for action at Mobile Bay, Alabama and
Joachim Pease who served aboard the USS Kearsarge.
Numerous
advances in the employment of black troops took place in 1863, a
year in which Gen. Ulysses S. Grant wrote Lincoln, "By arming
the Negro we have added a powerful ally." Colored troops
were originally restricted to labor and fatigue duties, but the
successful skirmishes of 1862 had proved their ability to fight
in combat situations. A Bureau of Colored Troops was established
in Washington to supervise national recruitment and training of
the U.S.C.T., and to oversee selection and schooling of white
officers who were in command of the black regiments. Widespread
recruitment occurred in the North assisted by leaders such as
Frederick Douglass, who acted as a government recruiting agent,
and in occupied Southern areas such as South Carolina where
abolitionist and first black field officer Major Martin R.
Delany recruited for the 104th and 105th U.S.C.T.
Bombproof
quarters of Maj. Strong at Dutch Gap, VA, July,
1864 |
Inadequate
facilities, mistreatment
Camp William
Penn near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Camp Casey near
Alexandria, Virginia and Camp Birney in Baltimore Maryland, were
some of the many U.S.C.T. draft and training centers set up for
eager new recruits. Once enlisted, black soldiers received
basic, sometimes inadequate preparation for field service.
Inferior firearms and equipment poor camp conditions and
hospital facilities, and a shortage of doctors were not
uncommon. Only eight black surgeons served in the Union Army,
one of whom was Lt. Col. Alexander T. Augusta, a physician
trained in Canada. After the war, Dr. Augusta settled in
Washington, D.C. and served on the Howard University Medical
School faculty. Black chaplains, 14 in all, provided spiritual
guidance and educational instruction to black soldiers.
Random
public assaults on men of color in uniform, violence towards
blacks in Northern cities, and mistreatment by white comrades
and the enemy afflicted the black troops. The fact that black
soldiers were paid less was a particularly offensive issue;
black enlisted men and officers received only $7 per month
whereas white privates earned $13. Due to the intervention and
protests of Frederick Douglass, the Governor of Massachusetts
and commanding officers such as Col. Higginson and Col. Robert
Gould Shaw, the unequal pay issue was amended by mid-1864. In
spite of the injustices, the Colored Troops demonstrated their
determination and bravery in a number of engagements in the
final two years of the war.
Lt. Col. Alexander T. Augusta, medical doctor and the
highest ranking black soldier in the Civil War; Howard
Medical School faculty. |
1863 and 1864
campaigns
The Storming of Fort Wagner by the 54th Massachusetts
Volunteer Infantry, Morris Island, Charleston, S.C., July
18, 1863. |
The earliest
major offenses in which black troops participated were in
Louisiana, at Port Hudson and Milliken's Bend, in May and June
of 1863. By far, however, the most famous was the assault on
Fort Wagner at Charleston, South Carolina by the 54th
Massachusetts Infantry. John A. Andrew, Massachusetts'
influential abolitionist governor, directed the organization of
this distinctive unit, the first black regiment of the North.
Col. Robert Gould Shaw and Lt. Edward N. Hallowell, two young
Northern men with anti-slavery and humanitarian backgrounds,
were chosen to lead the proud men of the 54th. Shaw had studied
at Harvard and in Europe, and served at Antietam before
accepting command of the black unit.
In May 1863,
with great confidence and high expectations, Col. Shaw's
regiment departed Boston for the South in a jubilant parade
attended by many dignitaries and well wishers. A few days later,
Shaw reflected, "...if the raising of colored troops proves
such a benefit to the country and to the blacks...I shall thank
god a thousand times that I was led to take my share in it."
Once in South Carolina, Shaw pressed for his anxious men to take
part in the operations against Charleston's fortifications.
Their chance came on the evening of July 18, 1863 when some 600
tired and hungry, but ready men of the 54th led the charge
against Fort Wagner on Morris Island. Outnumbered by a larger
Confederate force inside the fort, the Massachusetts regiment
suffered many losses including the 25-year old colonel who was
buried by the opposition in a common grave with his men. His
final words had been "Onward 54th!" Confederate officer Lt.
Iredell Jones admired the courage of the 54th in the
unsuccessful assault, "The Negroes fought gallantly and were
headed by as brave a coronel as ever lived."
Sgt. William
H. Carney of Co. C characterized the valor for which the unit
became so well known. Suffering multiple wounds, Carney managed
to keep the flag flying during two advances, earning both the
Medal of Honor and the Gilmore medal for gallant and meritorious
conduct at Charleston. Lewis Douglass, 22-year-old son of the
noted abolitionist, served as a Sgt. Major in the 54th and
survived Fort Wagner. He wrote his future wife two days after
the attack,"Remember if I die, I die in a good cause. I wish
we had a hundred thousand colored troops we would put an end to
this war." The spirit of the 54th Massachusetts, which went
on to fight in other engagements including Alist, Florida, is
remembered in their regimental song:
So rally boys, rally, let us never mind the
past;
We had a hard road to travel, but our day is coming
fast;
For God is for the right, and we have no need to
fear,
The Union must be saved by the colored
volunteer.
The war's
single most brutal incident involving black troops took place at
Fort Pillow, Tennessee in April, 1864. Publicized Congressional
inquiries determined that many Colored Troops in the Union fort
were massacred after having surrendered to Confederate
attackers. Some black units responded with the avenging battle
cry, "Remember Fort Pillow" in subsequent retaliations. The
atrocities committed at Fort Pillow and several other sites
reflected an action of Confederate Congress in May, 1863, which
declared that black men bearing arms and white officers
"inciting servile insurrection" would be turned over to
state authorities - which meant punishment by death. The
complicated prisoner of war situation lingered, but the Lincoln
administration did approve strong measures to deter inhumane
practices which denied basic rights to black troops and their
white officers if captured. The Union government also notified
Confederate officials that equally harsh treatment of rebel
captives would occur if threats of murdering or enslaving black
soldiers did not cease. Black troops and white officers were
well aware of their common fate which sometimes served to affirm
their mutual goals.
Shaw Memorial, dedicated to the 54th Massachusetts
Volunteer Infantry, by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Boston,
1897. |
Petersburg
U.S. Colored
troops were used extensively in several 1864 campaigns. Of
particular note in the West was the Battle of Nashville, fought
on December 15-16, in which eight black regiments played a key
role in the Federal defeat of the Confederate Army of Tennessee
by the Army of the Cumberland. The greatest number of U.S.C.T.,
however, served in the Virginia theatre as part of Gen. Grant's
operations against Petersburg and Richmond in the last two years
of the war. Black units were especially active in the fighting
around Petersburg during the summer of 1864. Referring to
several combat missions which occurred near this city, Secretary
of War Edwin Stanton asserted, "The hardest fighting was done
by the black troops. The forts they stormed were the worst of
all."
The Colored
Troops figured prominently in the ill-fated Battle of the Crater
fought on July 30, 1964 as part of the Petersburg Campaign. In
utter confusion, black and white Federal units poured into a
crater which resulted from a planned mine explosion set off by
Union soldiers under the small Confederate fort. Northern
soldiers were cut down in the chaos with blacks experiencing the
heaviest single-day casualties of the war.
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.
Picket guards near Petersburg, VA
1864 |
War draws to a
conclusion
Many black
troops engaged at Petersburg, notably the 28th and 29th
U.S.C.T., were transported to Alexandria, Virginia for medical
treatment. Alexandria served as a major military center for the
Union in close proximity to the Federal capital. Hospitals and
barracks for black soldiers, such as Slough and L'Ouverture, had
been set up to accommodate the sick and wounded. More than 200
African-American U.S. troops from the Civil War were buried in
Alexandria's National Cemetery, many of whom died in the city's
hospitals after succumbing to disease or wounds received at
Petersburg. Black units were also attached to the camps and
fortifications that comprised the Defenses of Washington. The
28th and 29th U.S.C.T., raised in Indiana and Illinois, had
trained briefly at Camp Casey, near Fort Albany not far from
Alexandria, before being dispatched to the Virginia front.
Several black regiments were recruited and trained in the
Washington, D.C. area - the 1st U.S.C.T in D.C., the 2nd
U.S.C.T. sin Arlington, the 23rd U.S.C.T. at Camp Casey and
several Maryland regiments raised in Baltimore. At the close of
war, several veteran black units returned to Washington to serve
guard duty in the city's defense system, notably the 107th
U.S.C.T. at Fort Corcoran and Christian Fleetwood's Regiment,
the 4th U.S.C.T, at Forts Slocum and Lincoln.
The final
participation by blacks in the Union war effort amounted to 120
infantry regiments, 12 heavy regiments, 10 light artillery
batteries, and seven cavalry units. Several regiments, not
placed under direct Federal authority, retained their state
designations in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Louisiana. Black
troops were present at the surrender at Appomattox and the
entrance to Richmond. They also participated in the pursuit of
Lincoln's assassin and in some of the funeral activities for the
slain president.
Once the
nation was at peace, a number of black regiments stayed in
service until 1867, especially in the South where they assisted
the Army of Occupation and Reconstruction efforts. Many black
soldiers and veterans cooperated with the Freedmen's Bureau,
created in 1865 to help with education, employment and the
overall transition of newly-freed slaves into society.
The
contributions of black soldiers to the Union during the Civil
War was not unrecognized. Gratitude for their services was
acknowledged by President Lincoln himself:
"And then there will be some black men who can
remember that with silent tongue and clenched teeth and steady
eye and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to
this great consummation."
Band of the 107th U.S.C.T., Arlington, VA (Fort
Corcoran?) November, 1865. |
History of Colored Troops
Dred Scott
Frederick Douglas
American Civil War Exhibits
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