Historian Chronicles Black Soldiers' Role in Civil War

A new book of essays edited by a North Carolina State University historian tells the mostly forgotten story of the role played by African-Americans - including large numbers of free or newly freed blacks fighting hand-to-hand against Confederates - in the victory of Union forces over the Confederacy in the American Civil War.

Dr. John David Smith's book, "Black Soldiers in Blue: African-American Troops in the Civil War Era," points to Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in Jan. 1863 - and the subsequent federally institutionalized arming of black troops on the Union side - as an important turning point in the war effort.

The Emancipation Proclamation declared that "all persons held as slaves within any state ... then ... in rebellion against the United States" become "thenceforward, and forever free." It also authorized that suitable emancipated slaves "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." Prior to this time, free black volunteers were turned away by the Union army, Smith writes.

Unidentified sergeant, U.S. Colored Troops. (Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University)

"The Civil War was an extraordinary crucible in transforming African-Americans in an institutionalized way into active participants in destroying slavery," Smith says. He adds that the Emancipation Proclamation sent the official signal that the Civil War, which began as a constitutional struggle, would evolve into a struggle for black liberation. "Emancipation and the opportunity to fight was a lynchpin in blacks" transition from being marginalized persons. The decision by Lincoln to free and arm African-Americans launched blacks into an active role in effecting their emancipation.

Smith's essay delves into Lincoln's slow but steady orchestration of the process leading to emancipation, the mobilization of blacks as fighting troops and some of their combat experiences. Smith writes that Lincoln was slower to realize the importance of emancipating and recruiting blacks to the military than others - Frederick Douglass and other critics had called for Lincoln to emancipate blacks and accept black volunteers into the Union army from the onset of the war - but by late 1862 Lincoln became convinced of the necessity to allow blacks to become Union soldiers in order to repress the Southern rebellion.

"This was a change from lukewarm support to enthusiastic support for emancipation," Smith says. "The fact that Lincoln was a lawyer and was ingrained with the belief that personal property was paramount could have had something to do with his initial reticence," he argues.

By war's end, the Union army raised 178,975 African-American soldiers, organized in 133 infantry regiments, four independent companies, seven cavalry regiments, 12 regiments of heavy artillery and 10 companies of light artillery, Smith says. Though most of the black soldiers in blue were ex-slaves, more than 15 percent of the 1860 northern free black population joined the Union army. Black troops participated in 449 separate fights with Confederates. Of the approximately 38,000 blacks who died serving in the United States Colored Troops (USCT), about 2,870 died in combat-related action, Smith says. Most succumbed to disease.

Blacks fought hard for the Union despite the discrimination they experienced. Smith chronicles numerous examples, including lower wages, inferior medical care, poor weapons, and insufficient training and rations. That doesn't include, Smith adds, the repeated insults and brutal punishments from white officers, or the prospect of being enslaved or executed if captured by rebel troops.

Of the remaining 13 essays in the book, most deal directly with Civil War battles, including the first significant assault by black troops at Port Hudson, La., in May 1863 and a hotly debated massacre of black troops at Fort Pillow, Tenn., in April 1864.

"The book is really the first to include intensive treatment of individual battles containing black soldiers," Smith says.

One of the book's essays looks at the experiences of black troops stationed in the cradle of secession - Charleston, S.C. - late in the war, and finds the biggest problems stemming not from skirmishes with white South Carolinians resentful of armed black troops in their city, but from northern whites in the Union army. Another essay reports the postwar experiences and readjustment of black veterans from North Carolina who fought in the USCT but then had a number of problems assimilating back into society. "The essay relates how proud these black veterans were to have been part of the freedom effort, but also how they were not rewarded for their service," Smith says.

"Black Soldiers in Blue," is published by the University of North Carolina Press.