CHAPTER 3

African Americans in Arms

Minutes after Alexander T. Augusta boarded a train in Baltimore, a white teenager tore off a shoulder strap from his uniform. As Augusta scolded the boy, a man tore off his other strap, and other people menaced the distinguished thirty-eight-year-old doctor as he quietly took his seat. Augusta, educated in Canada and the first black surgeon to serve in the American army, reported the incident to provost guards elsewhere in the car once the group left. Determined that his attackers must be punished, Augusta went with one of the guard to the local provost marshal, who offered that any U.S. officer who claimed his protection would have it, regardless of race, and sent a lieutenant to assist Augusta in capturing the perpetrators.1

The lieutenant feared that the culprits would flee if he made his presence too obvious, so he reminded Augusta that the doctor had the same right as any commissioned army officer to take people into custody. As he found and arrested one of the offenders, Augusta realized the extraordinary nature of a black man arresting whites in Baltimore. While he was searching for other perpetrators, a man named Dunn struck Augusta’s face. The lieutenant immediately arrested Dunn and several others. Augusta went on to Philadelphia later that night and felt some vindication when he eventually learned that some of his attackers had been tried and imprisoned at Fort McHenry, and that the provost marshal had told the lieutenant that he should have shot Dunn. The continued racism and hostility, as well as the affirmation and respect, present in this episode encapsulated the contradictions experienced by black Civil War soldiers. Augusta directly attacked the language of Dred Scott when he asked, in writing about the incident, “What has been gained in this transaction?” and then answered, “It has proved that even in rowdy Baltimore colored men have rights that white men are bound to respect.” Augusta was later buried in Arlington National Cemetery.2

1. Company E, Fourth U.S. Colored Infantry, at Fort Lincoln, District of Columbia. The regiment was organized in Maryland and composed of slaves and free blacks. Courtesy Library of Congress.

The black military experience during the Civil War was multifaceted and complex, and included pervasive racism at the same time that it advanced African American claims to inclusion and equality. Deep-seated racism continued in the Union army, but military service nonetheless provided blacks the chance to gain self-confidence, and it assisted their conversion from slavery to freedom, and claim to the rights and privileges of a still-undefined concept of citizenship. Because military success shored up public support for Republican policies, including emancipation, blacks also fueled acceptance for an agenda they supported by helping advance the Union cause.3

Wartime experiences affected black troops in deeply personal ways, and these individual transformations comprise some of the most important fruits of black military service. As one noncommissioned officer from Louisiana told his comrades, “I has been a-thinkin’ I was an old man; for on de plantation, I was put down wid de old hands…But since I had come here to de Yankees, and been made a soldier for de United States, an’ got dese beautiful clothes on, I feels like one young man…An’ I feels dis ebenin’ dat, if de rebs came down here to dis old Fort Hudson, dat I could jus fight um as brave as any man what is in the Sebenth Regiment.”4

For tens of thousands of black men who joined the army, experiences in the military also strengthened the identity component of citizenship, heightened their political awareness, and emphasized that participation in the war had the potential to result in stunning legal changes. Especially for slaves, who likely paid little heed to questions of national allegiance while in bondage, serving in the Union military comprised a choice of loyalty. While some blacks may have enlisted for financial reasons, or because federal agents conscripted them, most joined the military for political motives, or eventually came to understand the broader significance and potential of their service. While prejudice in the armed forces persisted throughout the Civil War, serving in them also presented an opportunity for change which blacks eagerly seized, and it afforded them experiences that helped inform their evolving sense of what citizenship entailed as a concept.5

Wearing the Union Blue

In and of itself, donning the Union blue comprised a profoundly transformative moment. Colonel Robert Cowden of the Fifty-ninth USCI described slaves with “filthy rags” of crude homespun clothing hanging “slouchily” on their bodies, and who manifested “a cringing manner.” Once clothed in a “clean new suit of army blue,” Cowden noted in contrast, the former bondmen stood “completely metamorphosed, not only in appearance and dress, but in character and relations also. Yesterday a filthy, repulsive ‘nigger,’ to-day a neatly-attired man; yesterday a slave, to-day a freeman; yesterday a civilian, to-day a soldier.” Another white soldier similarly noted, “Put a United States uniform on his back and the chattel is a man.” Ex-slave Elijah Marrs exulted, “This was the biggest thing that ever happened in my life,” because, “I felt like a man with a uniform on and a gun in my hand.”6

Black soldiers cherished their rifles because, before the war, arms were routinely kept out of their reach. Even when blacks received second-rate uniforms or subpar guns, which they opposed as representing disrespect for their equality, they associated these accoutrements with their change in status. Black soldiers proudly proclaimed their manhood on accepting their equipment, as the chorus of one song popular among them emphasized:

They look like men, they look like men

They look like men of war,

All arm’d and dressed in u-ni-form,

They look like men of war.7

The sight of thousands of black soldiers wearing the eagle and uniform of the U.S. government not only validated African American manhood, it further fueled calls for complete equality. Black noncommissioned officers stood as equal in rank to their white counterparts. Moreover, the service of free blacks and former slaves side by side in regiments and brigades built connections between these formerly largely separated segments of African America. An element of cultural superiority tinged some Northern blacks who saw themselves as elevating less enlightened Southern blacks from slavery’s corruption. Life in the army now traversed geography and slave status to create a shared history among blacks of diverse backgrounds.8

Ceremonies honoring black regiments before they departed for war operated to contradict the Dred Scott exclusion of blacks, and emphasize instead their American identity and allegiance. Frequently, local authorities or fellow African Americans presented an American flag to black regiments and made speeches that proclaimed the important elevation to citizenship and manhood that had taken place, even though blacks still were not American citizens in the eyes of the law. In the North, parades of black regiments down major city streets emphasized newly opened access to public space. Such rituals, similar to those conducted for departing white units, including Irish American regiments, made a visible statement of black equality and agency in shaping the destiny of both the African American community and the United States as a nation. White participation in such ceremonies emphasized the potential at that moment for blacks to earn a measure of acceptance through military service.

While training at Readville, Massachusetts, the men of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts felt self-respect at their evolution, under public scrutiny, from civilians to soldiers. George E. Stephens recorded that on a sunny May 1, 1863, hundreds of Bostonians “stirred with admiration” as they watched the unit drill “with the regularity and precision of Regulars.” On May 18, 1863, Governor John A. Andrew, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, and hundreds of others, including black women who made a flag for the regiment, traveled to Readville to present the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts with its colors. Andrew recognized that, although dozens of Bay State units had carried out similar ceremonies, this moment held unique significance because it occurred for blacks for the first time. “Today,” Andrew announced to his multiracial audience, “we recognize the right of every man in this commonwealth to be a MAN and a citizen.” According to Andrew, “devoted patriotism and regard for their brethren of their own color,” inspired “noble” black soldiers who intended to “strike a blow which, while it shall help to raise aloft their country’s flag—their country’s flag, now, as well as ours—by striking down the foes which oppose it, strikes also the last shackle which binds the limbs of the bondmen in the Rebel States.” Acknowledging the dawn of a new legal structure in the United States, Andrew presented the unit with an American flag donated by the women of Boston, a banner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts given by the black women of Boston, and another insignia with a cross on a blue field and the Latin phrase, In Hoc Signo Vinces (“In this sign, you will conquer,” the motto adopted by the Roman Emperor Constantine just before his victory in battle at Milvian Bridge in AD 312).9

A mood of excitement and apprehension filled Boston’s air on May 28, 1863, as the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts became the first black regiment to parade through a major city. Some officers in the regiment feared that simmering racial tensions might boil over into violence. Governor Andrew even ordered the issue of six rounds of ammunition per man to the regiment, and its rearguard marched with fixed bayonets. As the black soldiers formed at Park Square that morning, white abolitionist Henry I. Bowditch broke a nervous tension within the gathering civilian crowd by shouting, “Three cheers for Col. Shaw.” Suddenly, applause rose from the throng, and the rest of the day passed largely in accord with approving sentiments. Merchants closed their businesses as a multiracial crowd gathered along a parade route bedecked with flags, watching as the unit wound through the city’s streets behind an escort of black children and a band, led by Irish-born Patrick Gilmore, playing the “John Brown Song.” Even Irish American women waved handkerchiefs in greeting, although the offices of Boston’s Irish Catholic newspaper, the Pilot, remained shuttered.10

The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts passed the spot where Crispus Attucks suffered his mortal wound during the Boston Massacre, and William Lloyd Garrison observed the regiment’s march from the balcony of Wendell Phillips’s house, his hand resting atop a bust of John Brown. Governor Andrew, Senator Henry Wilson, state legislators, and other dignitaries reviewed the regiment from the steps of the State House. After drilling on Boston Common, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts continued through Boston, with family members charging into the ranks to say final good-byes. One woman traveled from Chicago to bid farewell to her two sons, kissing them while tears streamed down her face. Some onlookers muttered epithets or hissed at the passing regiment, and the day did not end without violence: street toughs beat a son of Frederick Douglass, and policemen narrowly averted an assault on the regiment’s rear as the Fifty-fourth reached the wharf to board its transport steamer. Complimentary newspaper reports, however, and a rush to the recruiting office of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts, indicated the general spirit of the day.11

Shortly afterward, a black private of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts wrote a song revealing the pride and hope he felt at this moment, and it soon became popular in other black units:

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.

Casting blacks as the saviors of the country, the soldier’s lyrics reveal anticipation to prove African American valor in combat as well as an uplifting faith that, by participating in the preservation of the nation, blacks controlled their own destiny.12

Comparable events occurred in Philadelphia. Black artist David Bustill Bowser designed the colors that black civilians presented to the Sixth USCI at its training center at Camp William Penn in the late summer of 1863. The banner featured a female personification of Liberty holding aloft a flag and exhorting a black soldier, armed and uniformed, while a black child applauded in the background. On October 3, 1863, the regiment paraded without incident through Philadelphia on a cloudless day, and its men became the first blacks served by the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon. From that day forward, the saloon served both black and white soldiers.13

In contrast to the racist violence that ripped through Manhattan during the Draft Riots less than eight months earlier, the Twentieth USCI marched down Broadway behind a band and in front of thousands of cheering spectators on March 5, 1864. In front of the Union League Club, Columbia University’s president Charles King saluted the men “as fellow-countrymen” and presented to the regiment a flag donated by the wives and sisters of club members, emblazoned with the symbols of a conquering eagle, a broken yoke, and the armed figure of Liberty. “When you put on the uniform and swear allegiance to the standard of the Union,” King reminded his audience, “you stand emancipated, regenerated, and disenthralled—the peer of the proudest soldier in the land.” King assured the troops that “prejudice…may still throw obstacles in your way, but that way is upward and onward, and your march in it cannot be stopped, cannot be much delayed, unless by your own want of faith and want of work.” The men of the Twentieth USCI then enjoyed food and refreshments before marching down Fifth Avenue, Lexington Avenue, Madison Avenue, and Broadway, to board the steamer that took them to New Orleans.14

A black newspaper, the Christian Recorder, reported that “some of the same rabble” who committed racist violence during the July 1863 Draft Riots “shed tears of repentance on beholding the Twentieth regiment…in glorious array, onward to the defence of their country, God, and the right.” Recounting that white businessmen and twelve hundred “prominent colored men” marched alongside a thousand uniformed black troops, who carried individual flags donated to them by white women, the periodical rhetorically challenged, “Ain’t that a victory?” These events do not imply a universal change in white attitude—prejudice against blacks ran so great among some elements in New York City that the Union League earlier chartered a special steamer to ferry hundreds of relatives to the Twentieth USCI’s training camp on Riker’s Island—but the parade provided a stark contrast to racism and exclusion, and emphasized an American identity for blacks.15

Albeit in very partisan tones, white periodicals covered the parade as well. The New York Herald implied the threat of race-mixing as “daughters of Fifth Avenue” presented regimental flags to the Twentieth USCI, while the Workingmen’s United Political Association feared that armed black troops would someday deploy against white laborers. On the other hand, the New York Times described the Twentieth USCI’s “splendid appearance” as it marched through the city’s “most busy and aristocratic streets,” and deemed the parade a “noble vengeance” for blacks who had been hunted down in the Draft Riot. The Tribune observed how gratifying the ceremonies must have been to blacks, “near where sundry sable citizens were massacred last summer, for the crime…of appearing in the color bestowed by the Almighty.”16

2. The Twentieth United States Colored Infantry receiving their colors on Union Square, New York City, on March 5, 1864. Harper’s Weekly, March 19, 1864. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Some black regiments endured violence against them in Northern cities: a mob assaulted the Second USCI as it passed through Philadelphia in November 1863, and people threw stones at the train on which the regiment traveled. In other instances, however, black troops noted complimentary attitudes toward them. Sergeant William McCoslin related that, en route to the Army of the Potomac, his regiment of Illinois blacks arrived to find a “fine breakfast” waiting for them at the Soldiers’ Rest in Chicago, and a “splendid supper” on reaching Pittsburgh by rail thirty hours later. McCoslin and his regiment felt “proud of the treatment we have received, being the same, if not better than some of the white soldiers received.” McCoslin reported that even in the border state of Maryland, “all the citizens” treated the black soldiers “with some respect.”17

This process of arming black troops also fueled a nationalist impulse. Black soldiers enlisted from all parts of the country and, with few exceptions, mustered into service as U.S. troops without a state designation. Speeches delivered to blacks before they assumed active duty further emphasized that the war had to do with allegiance to a national Union. While presenting a flag inscribed “Unconditional Loyalty” to the Twenty-sixth USCI, recruited in New York, John Jay (grandson of the man who served as the first Chief Justice and negotiated the 1794 Jay Treaty), declared that the men of the regiment offered their “lives for the defense of our common country and our common freedom. Organized by the National authority, you are henceforth a permanent part of the army of the Republic.” In offering the flag to the men, Jay challenged them, “Bring it to us again—tattered, it may be, and stained with the life-blood of your brave soldiers; but bring it, the emblem of a nationality unbroken.”18

Dignity through Service

Both the idea and the execution of military service encouraged greater self-awareness of black manhood and American identity. The privations of war served as a vehicle for the Northern white upper class to tangibly affirm their manhood and physical abilities. Similarly, blacks of all classes and regions used military service as a badge of their manhood, countering racist conceptions of them as children or as little different from animals. In contrast to competing ideas of blacks as inferior, and the lives many had experienced as slaves up to that point, military service helped to energize a sense of black equality in public and personal ways. This sense percolated not only through soldiers but the civilian black community as well. Soldiers’ letters published in newspapers, coverage by war correspondents such as African American Thomas Morris Chester, and the simple oral recounting of wartime experiences by veterans to family and friends all advanced the argument that black military service and bravery earned citizenship and validated manhood.19

As USCT regiments gathered in the field, John C. Brock of the Forty-third USCI reported, “What a glorious prospect it is to behold this glorious army of black men as they march with martial tread across the sacred soil of Virginia.” Brock understood both the political and personal meanings of military service, noting that black soldiers would look back to say “with exultation” they comprised “one of that noble band,” who “toiled for the rights of man, and elevation and liberty of our race.” Sergeant George Hatton of the First USCI “felt as though I were in some other country where slavery was never known,” as he watched black troops gather at City Point, Virginia, while ex-slave Elijah Marrs recalled that, at his first roll call, “I felt freedom in my bones.”20

Milton M. Holland, later a Medal of Honor recipient, wrote of his regiment’s first engagement in Virginia that “they stood like men, and when ordered to charge, went in with a yell, and came out victorious.” The danger of battling Confederates failed to daunt members of a Tennessee regiment, and Henry Prince of the Fourteenth USCI responded to his lieutenant’s warning, “Boys, it may be slavery or Death to some of you to day” with the prophetic retort, “Lieutenant, I am ready to die for Liberty,” just before a bullet struck him dead.21

Black service and valor inspired African American civilians, especially after they witnessed flag presentations or contributed to the well-being of the men. George E. Stephens invited black women to participate in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts’s experience and provide “strong evidence of your patriotism” by organizing sewing circles to support the troops. In the summer of 1863, the black women of New Bern, North Carolina, provided a “splendid battle flag” of rich blue silk for the Thirty-fifth USCI, depicting Liberty resting her right foot on a copperhead snake. The women undoubtedly felt pride in the plate attached to the flagstaff: “Presented to the First Regiment of North Carolina Colored Volunteers by the colored women of Newbern, N.C.” By autumn 1863, African American women founded aid societies in Bridgeport, New Haven, Norwich, and Hartford, Connecticut, to assist black troops. In Louisville, Kentucky, the Colored Ladies’ Soldiers Aid Society tended to wounded black soldiers and established a school and hospital for the African American community there.22

Firsthand encounters with slavery proved educative and motivational for free Northern blacks marching through the South. A member of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts described some of his shoeless comrades during a hard march through South Carolina, but promised that “when we look at the suffering condition of the poor slaves, we can give it all.” For Southern black volunteers, helping to liberate slaves proved an especially bittersweet inspiration, particularly after reports arose that masters sold, whipped, or beat the family members of some enlistees. In March 1864, teams of black soldiers on furlough near St. Louis raided into Howard County, Missouri, to liberate their families. Throughout the South, black soldiers chopped down whipping posts and destroyed slave pens, though instances of violent revenge against actual slaveholders seem rare. Aaron Oates felt emboldened to write directly to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to ask for the emancipation of his family in Kentucky, reminding Stanton that, “as I am a Soldier, willing to loose my life for my Country and the liberty of my fellow man I hope that you will please be So kind as to attend to this.” Some white officers affirmed this sense of black self-liberation. After one black enlistee told his captain that he feared for his family’s welfare, the officer wrote the slaveholder:

Now all I have to Say is this man is now a Soldier, and is entitled to his family, and I have promised him that he Shall have them and he Shall, and you will greatly oblige me, to furnish them with clothing and transportation to the Mo river at Kansas City immediately.

You may Consider this beyond my authority. I Confess it is as an officer, but not as a man, having 100 men with me to execute political Justice where it is necessary.

The delivery of that Negro Woman Martha & her children will insure you the protection and respect of all under my Control. The failure to do so will place the whole matter with me, and I will tell you in the Spirit of Calmness that your life or property is but a small Consideration when opposed to the march of freedom.23

Movingly, Spotswood Rice of the Sixty-seventh USCI wrote his daughters in September 1864 to let them know that he intended to free them when a planned joint expedition of white and black troops advanced into their area within the month. Rice defiantly wrote his daughters’ owner that same day to tell her that his children were his “God given rite,” and the longer she tried to keep them, “the longor you will have to burn in hell and the qwicer youll get their.” Rice warned his daughters’ owner that they were enemies wherever they met and that he had the “powrer and autherity to bring hear away and to execute vengenens on them that holds my Child.”24

An even more stunning event took place in May 1864 near Wilson’s Landing on the James River. The day after the liberation of several female slaves who bore the marks of a “most unmerciful whipping,” former owner William H. Clopton found himself under arrest for disloyal activities. As Sergeant George W. Hatton of the First USCI recalled,

The commanding officer determined to let the women have their revenge, and ordered Mr. C. to be tied to a tree in front of head-quarters, and William Harris, a soldier in our regiment…who used to belong to him, was called upon to undress him and introduce him to the ladies that I mentioned before. Mr. Harris played his part conspicuously, bringing the blood from his loins at every stroke, and not forgetting to remind the gentleman of the days gone by. After giving him some fifteen or twenty well-directed strokes, the ladies, one after another, came up and gave him a like number, to remind him that they were no longer his, but safely housed in Abraham’s bosom, and under the protection of the Star Spangled Banner, and guarded by their own patriotic, though once down-trodden race.

Revealing the energy blacks displayed in helping to destroy the hated institution of slavery, the incident also underscores that once blacks served in U.S. uniform, they planned to claim their spot as equals. Successfully helping to deliver family and racial brethren from bondage generated a heightened sense of empowerment in African Americans.25

The presence of black troops encouraged newly emancipated slaves to live as free people as the Union lines advanced. John C. Brock of the Forty-third USCI reported that the white inhabitants of Fairfax Court House, Virginia, “looked bewildered” as “they really beheld nearly 10,000 colored soldiers filing by, armed to the teeth, with bayonets bristling in the sun,” and “colors flying and the bands playing.” Colonel Robert Cowden of the Fifty-ninth USCI, recruited from Tennessee, described how white inhabitants of Memphis, Tennessee, “saw as they peered from their windows or stores, what they had never before seen and had never expected to see,—their own former slaves powerfully and lawfully armed for their overthrow, and led and commanded by those whom they considered their invaders. The sight must have burned into their very souls.” These displays also profoundly affected black civilians, such as a former slave and his son-in-law who felt confident enough to arrest and disarm a Confederate veteran who had threatened them, and marched the man ten miles to the First USCI’s headquarters.26

Inequality in the Ranks

Acknowledging African American expectations of equal treatment, and experiences of respect by some whites, in no way discounts the pervasive racism black soldiers confronted in the Civil War army, and which contradicted some egalitarian facets of including them in the Union’s armed forces. While many USCT officers showed sympathy to blacks, and saw themselves not only as helping to prosecute a war but also to elevate a race, others joined the USCT simply to gain an officer’s commission. Some of these officers displayed open prejudice at every turn. Other USCT officers held less intense opinions but accepted the notion of black inferiority prevalent at the time and treated their men accordingly. The existence of different perspectives within the USCT officer corps resulted in a wide range of treatment of black soldiers, even where military regulations demanded identical treatment for blacks and whites. Some officers showed fairness and tried to help their men understand military discipline and the rule of law, while others employed severe punishments on subordinates they saw as ignorant by virtue of their race. At its worst, racism among some officers fueled arbitrary abuse of black soldiers and civilians (cruel officers admittedly existed within white regiments as well).27

Prejudice regularly manifested itself in the inequitable fatigue duty ordered of black soldiers, borne out of the notion some officers held that blacks should serve primarily as laborers. According to one of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts’s officers, black troops performed fully half of 19,000 soldiers’ days work during the siege of Fort Wagner, although white troops outnumbered them ten to one. An inspector at Morganzia, Louisiana, in July 1864 found that, despite orders which prohibited disproportionate fatigue duty for African American troops, blacks performed all the labor at that post while several white regiments did none. Colonel James C. Beecher complained that “so-called ‘gentlemen’ in uniform” called former slaves turned troops “‘d-—-d Niggers,’” at a time when they were “just learning to be men.” Beecher argued that setting black soldiers to “doing for white regiments what those Regiments are entitled to do for themselves…reduces them to the position of slaves again.” Within days of Beecher’s letter, the commander of the Department of the South, Quincy Gillmore, issued an order prohibiting further use of black troops in its jurisdiction to perform labor for white troops. When Gillmore learned that “improper labors” continued to be imposed on black troops, he insisted that “colored troops will not be required to perform any labor which is not shared by the white troops, but will receive in all respects the same treatment, and be allowed the same opportunities for drill and instruction.”28

Black soldiers resented unequal treatment in fatigue duty, and the Christian Recorder printed angry letters from the field that described poor living conditions. One man in the Thirty-second USCI furiously complained in July 1864 of incompetent and uncaring officers, having to toil day and night on half rations that “white soldiers would not eat,” and hauling guns “like horses or mules” for miles under a beating South Carolina summer sun. Yet the contrasting meanings of the black experience during the war are evident in a letter published by the Christian Recorder in February 1864. “R.W.W.” of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts reported the men having “been worked almost to death” after arriving on Folly Island, South Carolina, though he also recounted how white soldiers “have come to see that they are bound to treat us as men and soldiers, fighting for the same common cause.”29

Inequality in pay comprises one of the major examples of discrimination against blacks in the army. The War Department originally intended to pay black soldiers the same as whites, $13 a month with a $3.50 clothing allowance, and higher salaries for noncommissioned officers. Despite his Republican credentials, however, Solicitor William Whiting reviewed the Act of July 17, 1862, which authorized the enlistment of blacks, and held that black soldiers stood entitled to receive only the pay contemplated by the act for black laborers. The relevant provision read, “That all persons who have been or shall be hereafter enrolled in the service of the United States under this act shall receive the pay and rations now allowed by law to soldiers, according to their respective grades: Provided, That persons of African descent, who under this law shall be employed, shall receive ten dollars per month and one ration, three dollars of which monthly pay may be in clothing.” On June 4, 1863, the federal government changed its policy so that black troops would receive $10 a month in pay, regardless of rank, with $3 deducted for clothing.30

Shortly after the men of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts charged against Fort Wagner and heard of the atrocities committed against blacks during the New York City Draft Riot, both of which occurred in mid-July 1863, they learned of this reduction in their pay. The men became “highly incensed” at their treatment as “drafted ex-slaves,” observed George E. Stephens of that regiment, who noted as well as that offering noncommissioned officers seven dollars effectively reduced these burgeoning black leaders to the “level of privates.” Observing that no special law need be passed to pay Spaniards or Sandwich Islanders in the U.S. service (or, he could have noted, nonnaturalized Irish), Stephens declared that the simple act of muster entitled one to all the pay and bounties awarded to any other soldier, and that military service trumped race. Another soldier in the same regiment, James Henry Gooding, believed that “too many of our comrades’ bones lie bleaching near the walls of Fort Wagner to subtract even one cent from our hard earned pay.” Gooding vowed that, if the nation could not afford to pay them, the men of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts would do their duty “without murmur,” but they would not “sell our manhood for ten dollars per month.” Meanwhile, officers of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts felt stunned at this “breach of faith,” and many of them declined to accept pay for themselves until late November 1863, after their men assured that they could do so.31

In protest, many black soldiers refused to accept unequal pay. The Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts regiments also rejected supplemental pay appropriated by their state to make up the difference between what white soldiers received, feeling that to accept a portion of their pay from the Commonwealth would be to acknowledge a right by the United States to distinguish between them and other soldiers from Massachusetts. A member of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts explained that black soldiers enlisted out of a sense of duty and preferred to serve without pay rather than “acknowledge ourselves the inferiors of our white comrades in arms, and thus by our own actions, destroy the very fabric we originally intended to erect.”32

While the fight over pay hurt the morale of black troops, it also energized long-term demands for recognition of black equality and manhood. Days after learning about the reduction in pay, the noncommissioned officers of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts resolved the need for “true, manly action” so as “to secure to us a full recognition of our rights as men by the controlling masses of this nation.” Joseph Walker wrote from Florida that, while the ensuing privation to families “would cause the blush of shame to mantle the cheek of a cannibal, were he our paymaster,” such suffering became acceptable if it proved that “we are making men (and women) of our race.”33

Refusing to accept unequal pay thus provided blacks with a vehicle to assert their courage of conviction, as a member of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts responded to white critics that blacks stood on their principles. Another soldier, John H. B. Payne, critiqued the legal climate by challenging the country to live up to its betrayed ideals: “Colored men fought to establish the Declaration of Independence, and for the star-spangled banner, the emblem of the white man. After colored men had helped to establish those great blessings, General Washington was the man who presented both the stars and stripes to white men, and suffered the slave-holder to present the stripes alone to colored men.” Payne insisted as a native-born American, “Give me my rights, the rights that this Government owes me, the same rights that the white man has.” Edward D. Washington of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts noted that in combat, bullets struck black and white soldiers without distinction, and he resented being put “put beneath the very lowest rioters of New York.”34

Some black soldiers wrote directly to high-ranking officials to assert their impatient demand for change. James Henry Gooding pointedly asked Lincoln by letter, “Are we Soldiers, or are we Labourers?” Noting that his regiment shared with whites all the perils of reducing Charleston, “the first stronghold that flaunted a Traitor’s Flag,” Gooding challenged Lincoln through the president’s own proclamation to the South that the “United States knows no distinction in her Soldiers.” Invoking the memory of the “rich mould” of dead black soldiers surrounding the parapet of Fort Wagner, Gooding emphasized that he and his comrades affirmed their place as members of the nation, and their demand for equal treatment, through native birth and military service.35

Other black soldiers averred breach of contract to describe the decision of the government not to pay them equal to white soldiers. In seeking clemency from the War Department on his three-year sentence for desertion, seventeen-year-old Warren Hamilton of the Seventy-third USCI offered his services if the government still needed them and explained that he regretted his actions, but felt that “one breack of enlissment was quite sufficient to justify another perticulurly when it was transacted on the part of the gov.” Hamilton cleverly asked, if a general’s promise could be broken, what could one expect of a “poor soldier (pri.)[?]”36

White advocates of arming blacks also spoke out against unequal pay. Members of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts recruitment committee wrote Governor Andrew that black recruits suffered a deception after they had received assurances that they would enjoy equal treatment and added that because blacks “cannot even be permitted to die for their country on an equality with other soldiers, they have been made to feel that they still are only niggars not men.” Governor Andrew, for his part, wrote to Lincoln, cabinet secretaries, and other government officials to advocate a change in policy. Andrew also proclaimed in a published letter that black troops, “showed themselves to be true soldiers of Massachusetts” at Fort Wagner, and he acknowledged black activism with a sympathetic vow not to rest until “you have secured all of your rights.”37

For some black soldiers, frustration at unequal pay generated more than rhetoric and a refusal to accept less money. As one general reported from South Carolina, “The greatest discontent prevails, and in several instances a spirit of mutiny has been developed.” When a transport docked at Folly Island, South Carolina, in April 1864, some members of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts refused to disembark, forcing Major John W. M. Appleton to reboard and physically pull one soldier off while others followed, muttering “money or blood!” and “muster us out or pay us,” in the pouring rain. Trouble continued in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts for several months. Some USCT officers responded unfavorably to the pay protest, heightening tension even more. One soldier from the Thirty-second USCI, for example, reported that “after the officers found out that the men would not take the seven dollars, they began to treat the men like dogs.”38

Some black troops rejected the protest against unequal pay, however, and feared that it would cause a backlash from whites. Garland H. White of the Twenty-eighth USCI complained after resolution of the pay issue that “those few colored regiments from Massachusetts make more fuss, and complain more than all the rest of the colored troops in the nation. They are doing themselves and their race a serious injury. I sincerely hope they will stop such nonsense, and learn to take things as soldiers should.”39

For still other blacks, hardship eclipsed their resolve to stand against inferior pay. “Letters have been constantly arriving for six months in these regiments in which the wives of the enlisted men describe their sufferings,” reported one general in South Carolina. One draftee in the Sixth USCI, organized in Pennsylvania, writing under the acronym “Bought and Sold,” nearly deserted on reading his wife’s letters. “Our officers tell us now, that we are not soldiers,” he wrote, though he had felt “very patriotic” and “proud to think that I had a right to fight for Uncle Sam.” His wife’s letters, and the realization that so many men could not send their families a penny, chilled that patriotism to the “freezing point,” and he poignantly added that it had little chance of thawing. One member of the First USCI grew so despondent he shot the fingers off his right hand as a way to be discharged. Other black troops angered their comrades by breaking solidarity with the rejection of unequal pay. A member of the Thirty-second USCI, organized in Pennsylvania and a regiment that suffered terrible morale after having to endure rotten rations and backbreaking labor, cast Sergeant Major George W. Clemens to the Christian Recorder as a traitor after he signed the payroll to accept seven dollars.40

In light of these tensions, “Wolverine” in the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts asked those at home to “show their love by suffering with us,” but not to write “down-hearted letters to the soldiers.” “Every heart-burning letter…gives us a very bad disposition,” he warned, and poor behavior among black troops threatened to affirm racial stereotyping of all blacks. Another member of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts recognized that families suffered, but insisted that black “children would blush with shame” if their fathers accepted inferior treatment. While many of them agreed that, through resistance, blacks contended “manfully for our rights,” the fact that families endured tremendous hardship as a result of the protest also weighed heavily on many minds.41

In addition to learning of protests and tension within the black corps, Congress received petitions on the issue from whites and blacks. Some appeals came from sympathetic officers of black regiments, such as those of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth USCI, and from those stationed at Helena, Arkansas. Other petitions came from black troops themselves, such as one from black noncommissioned officers at the post at Benedict, Maryland. The Rhode Island, Iowa, and Vermont legislatures petitioned Congress to equalize pay, as did multiple Union League chapters, and private citizens from such states as Maine, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Wisconsin. In a July 1863 speech in Philadelphia to promote black enlistments, Pennsylvania Republican congressman W. D. Kelley appealed to black manhood but also asked cheering whites to pour in “upon Congress memorials in overwhelming numbers, demanding that, as to pay and pension, they [black soldiers] shall be treated as liberally as others will.”42

By February 1864, Congress turned to the issue of equalizing pay for the black troops. On the Senate floor, Republican Henry Wilson from Massachusetts cited letters from four colonels commanding black troops, but he focused attention on the black protest as well, describing how the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts refused to take a single dollar and declined pay appropriated by its state legislature, “because they were promised the same compensation as other troops, and they demand it as a right.” Republican senators William Pitt Fessenden and John Conness agreed that no distinction based on color should be made in pay but voiced concern for the Treasury, and suggested that equalization of pay should go forward only from the date of passage of appropriate legislation. Other senators, such as Republicans Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and James H. Lane and Samuel C. Pomeroy of Kansas, countered that justice should trump concern for the national coffers.43

A few days later, Republican senator Henry S. Lane of Indiana generated a debate among members of his party. Lane argued his purported concern for the Treasury by identifying blacks as refugees “fighting for a higher boon than money. They are fighting for their freedom,” before he contended that “no man in his sober senses will say that their services are worth as much, or that they are as good soldiers, or that they should be paid as much.” While agreeing with Lane that black troops fought “for something higher and nobler than pay,” Wilson countered Lane by citing Fort Wagner, and he stood firm that justice dictated a retroactive correction.44

The senators also debated whether distinction should be made in pay and bounties between free blacks and slaves who enlisted in the army. While blacks argued for equal standing regardless of former lives as slaves, the Senate debate highlighted continued uncertainty as to whether the simple act of serving in the Union army created for all blacks equality before the law. Minnesota Republican senator Morton Wilkinson powerfully argued on the payment of bounties, “Are not the services of a slave soldier, if he perils his life, just as good as the services of a free man? If a slave regiment or a slave army can save this Constitution and Union, do we not owe those men just as deep a debt of gratitude as we owe the white soldiers or the free black soldiers?” Realizing the wrongs endured by slaves for so long, and claiming that “the greater wonder is that after having been treated by this nation as they have been treated, one of them can be found to raise his arm for the defense of the Union,” Wilkinson pushed further: “Indeed, we owe them more.”45

On March 10, the Senate compromised to pass a bill equalizing pay retroactively to January 1, 1864, with the exception that where a person authorized by the War Department promised enlistees the same pay as whites (such as the soldiers of the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts regiments), that unit would receive equal pay retroactive to the date of muster. Because the House of Representatives had not yet acted on the measure, Senator Wilson on April 22, 1864, moved impatiently to add its text to an army appropriations bill. Wilson’s advocacy reached its crescendo in a speech before the Senate approved his amendment by a vote of 32–5. The Massachusetts senator not only described the “obedient, faithful, brave” soldiers who “proved their courage, constancy, and devotion” at Port Hudson, Milliken’s Bend, and forts Wagner and Pillow, but also the “discontent bordering on insubordination and mutiny” in some regiments on account of unequal pay. “Thousands of colored men have entered the service of the country under the plighted faith of officers of the Government,” Wilson thundered, and in the breach of their promises, “discontent in these regiments has become so great that a mutiny broke out in the third South Carolina volunteers, and the leader of it, who was a sergeant [Sgt. William Walker], has been shot for mutiny, and others are under arrest and they too may be tried and shot for violation of discipline, impelled by a burning sense of our injustice.”46

In the end, the 1864 appropriations bill passed into law held that all blacks mustered into the armed forces were entitled to the same equipment and pay dating to January 1, 1864, all persons enlisted under the October 17, 1863, call for volunteers stood entitled to the same bounty without regard to color, and all blacks free as of April 19, 1861, who had enlisted in the armed services stood entitled from the time of their enlistment to the same pay, bounty, and clothing to which whites were entitled at the time of the enlistment. The following year, blacks earlier mustered into service in South Carolina under Major General David Hunter and Brigadier General Rufus Saxton under authority from the Secretary of War dated August 25, 1862, were deemed entitled to the same pay and allowances, without distinction by color, from the time of their enlistment.47

When officers in the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts learned that Congress equalized black pay, they judged it best, “after so many disappointments,” to remain silent until official confirmation arrived. Even then, a final wrinkle caused black soldiers to balk: the law required some blacks to swear that they were free on April 19, 1861, the day the Union first called on states to provide volunteer troops, in order to receive equal pay. Colonel Edward N. Hallowell of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts devised a so-called Quaker Oath, whereby each soldier could swear that “no man had the right to demand unrequited labor” of them, so that either slave or free could answer in the affirmative. The necessity of this Quaker Oath angered many of Hallowell’s soldiers, although they understood his good intentions and consented to take it. Some blacks felt it a “step backward” to have to swear on their freedom in order to get equal pay when they had not had their free status questioned when they enlisted in the first place. Some members of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts even feared that the oath was a trap to identify slaves for return to their owners after the war.48

George E. Stephens of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, meanwhile, continued to seethe with rage in May 1864 that, although blacks proved themselves “just like white troops” in bravery, Dred Scott persisted in army pay, civilian segregation in city passenger cars, and strictures against black purchase of public lands. Lamenting that real legal change continued to elude blacks, Stephens called for a new order in which blacks would be “let alone, and treated just like other men,” earning their wages when they worked, receiving praise when they fought, and being punished when warranted. Stephens promised that, where foreign-born soldiers received the same pay as the native born, and blacks had taken the same pay as whites when they served in prior wars, denying blacks their due now would only energize their resolve to oppose discrimination. As late as August 1864, in light of delays in paying the men after passage of the 1864 appropriations bill, Stephens stridently asked, “Do you think that we will tamely submit like spaniels to every indignity?” In noting that “because I am black, they tamper with my rights,” Stephens expressed his conviction that whites interfered with rights and privileges inalienably vested in him through a higher law.49

Nonetheless, victory in the quest for equal pay gave rise to celebration in the black regiments overall. Officers of the black troops felt relieved, not only because of improved morale but for justice. An officer in the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts described the “relief experienced” by the regiment’s officers as “like the loosening of a cord, long drawn to extreme tension,” while Lieutenant Charles M. Duren of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts praised black resistance and predicted that now “we shall have better men—a better Army.” In the ranks of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, a “petty carnival” prevailed on payday, as music, dancing, and feasting marked the celebration that their resistance had earned blacks a measure of equality. Sergeant John C. Brock reported that the men of the Forty-third USCI “fell in the ranks with more alacrity than they ever did” to receive their equal pay. The troops felt further joy to send money to their families—the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts sent sixty-four thousand dollars and the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts sent sixty-five thousand dollars home by one express company alone. On October 10, 1864, the men of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts held a commemorative service in which they equated their actions to colonial American resistance against the British and resolved their determination to prove themselves worthy for “liberty and citizenship in the new order of things now arising in this our native land.”50

The successful fight against unequal pay proved one of the first civil rights victories borne of black protest, and it powerfully indicated their refusal to abide by any notion of second-class citizenship, even where Congress still refrained from recognizing black national citizenship in the law. Through blazing letters and petitions to government officials and newspapers, refusals to accept any pay except the same as whites, and even mutinies despite the specter of facing capital punishment, black soldiers articulated their vision of a constitutional regime that respected their equality. Historian Joseph T. Glatthaar claims that this protest from the ranks against unequal pay “served no purpose” other than to alienate blacks’ more effective advocates on the issue, their white officers. Glatthaar’s argument erroneously discounts the importance of black action on this matter. The protest of black soldiers not only proved vital to their ultimate success as to unequal pay, it had consequences far broader than three dollars a month. In prevailing on the issue, blacks validated their new status and demands for equality. At a time when Southern slaves had no influence and were punished for protest on the plantation, and free Northern blacks enjoyed little more clout, a protest conducted by black soldiers caught the attention of white officers, politicians, and civilians, and it bore important fruits. Led by noncommissioned African American officers who organized the protest, maintained group cohesion, and prevented degeneration into open mutiny, this major victory marked the emergence of a new class of black leaders.51

Aspiring to Leadership

In contrast to the pay issue, wartime black protest failed to convince the War Department to promote blacks to a rank higher than sergeant. In December 1864, Colonel Charles W. Foster of the Bureau of Colored Troops argued that, even were the military inclined to commission black officers, removing the stricture against doing so would exceed the boundaries of society’s acceptance. Black officers would sometimes outrank whites, and Foster questioned whether “white officers and men [are] prepared to acknowledge and obey the colored man, or officer, as a military superior?” If so, Foster contended, there would be “no harm in giving the colored man a commission,” but if such action came “in advance of public opinion,” it would cause “serious injury to the service.” During the War Department’s prosecution of a massive Civil War, victory trumped principle on this issue.52

Alexander T. Augusta’s experience confirmed Foster’s argument. Augusta accepted a surgeon’s commission and assignment to Camp Stanton, Maryland. In February 1864, six white surgeons at the camp protested to President Lincoln that the black doctor outranked them by virtue of the date of his appointment. The white doctors found it degrading that a black officer commanded them, and Augusta soon found himself examining black recruits passing through Baltimore. In the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, all but three officers supported a petition to promote a black doctor who, as a hospital steward, had ministered to a sick captain. The three holdouts admitted that the doctor had demonstrated his medical skill, but they opposed his advancement simply because they did not want a black surgeon. The regimental commander destroyed the petition. Such events offer insight into the black experience in the army: acceptance by some whites, denial by others, and often, a general ambivalence motivated by a desire to avoid confrontation generated by pushing change too far or too quickly.53

On the home front, blacks opposed the prohibition against their being commissioned as officers, and they used this protest as another means by which to critique the legal structure. In aspiring to hold command positions routinely, African Americans displayed their citizenship expectations as well: not content to follow whites, blacks expected equality and even leadership opportunities. Participants in a July 1864 meeting of black Philadelphians complained that white civilians received commissions but not black veterans. Octavius V. Catto declared during a February 1865 black convention in Pennsylvania that military service had entitled blacks to at least the same rights granted to white immigrants, and if the army included “Germans commanding Germans, even Irishmen commanding Irishmen,” then blacks should command blacks. Frederick Douglass told blacks in Philadelphia that refusing to enlist because they would be commanded by white officers made no sense considering that “we are everywhere commanded by white men in time of peace.” Nonetheless, Douglass predicted, “I have not the slightest doubt that in the progress of this war we shall see black officers, black colonels, and generals even.”54

In early 1865, a petition signed by hundreds of blacks and whites, including senators Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, and Edwin Morgan, New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, generals James S. Negley and Franz Sigel, Frederick Douglass, and Charles Lenox Remond, called for any new USCT regiments to be officered by blacks. Noting that many blacks sprang to the Union’s defense at the first opportunity afforded them, the petition offered that others had hesitated because the hope of promotion remained closed to them. The petition declared that removing this bar would result in a surge of enlistments, the men to be officered by the “hundreds of non-commissioned officers in colored regiments” who stood qualified by experience to serve in higher capacities.55

Blacks argued further that the army could discipline whites in the armed forces who refused to respect them as officers, pursuant to the Articles of War, and they also publicized military operations successfully led by African American noncommissioned officers as evidence of their ability to command. A letter published in the Christian Recorder announced that a successful raid into Florida’s interior led by Sergeant Major Henry James of the Third USCI in the war’s closing days, comprised of twenty-two black soldiers, seven black civilians, and a member of the 107th Ohio, gave “proof” that “a colored man with proper training can command among his fellows and succeed where others have failed.”56

In the end, only about a hundred blacks (and fourteen of 133 USCT chaplains, holding a titular rank of major) held officer’s commissions during the war. Three Louisiana regiments under Major General Benjamin Butler in 1862 contained about seventy-five of the commissioned blacks, though Major General Nathaniel Banks purged them when he assumed command of the department. Six sergeants in the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry regiments received lieutenant’s bars at the end of war, and three members of a light artillery battery in Kansas accepted commissions. Eight black surgeons received medical commissions as majors, and in February 1865, Martin R. Delany accepted a commission as major of the 104th USCI, though he served on detached recruiting duty. Even where black protest on this issue proved largely unsuccessful, it reveals the aspirations blacks embraced. Delaney’s commission heartened one sergeant in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts to assert, in direct reference to language in Justice Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott, “that we have got rights that the white man is bound to respect.” The soldier anticipated that, “before the suppression of this rebellion that the colored man will not only wear the plain straps, but the spread eagle.”57

Learning in the Ranks

As another important component of the political awareness they gained in the army, black soldiers developed a deep appreciation for education as well as the economic worth of their labor. Blacks incorporated both concepts, which also fit well with the Republican Party’s free labor ideology, into their definition of citizenship. Few black troops had formal schooling, and most of those who could read or write enlisted from Northern or Border states or Louisiana. Military necessity required the education of at least a portion of these soldiers so that literate noncommissioned officers could understand sign posts, command parties on missions that did not warrant an officer, or read passes while on guard duty. One officer requested a guard detail from a white regiment not because of prejudice but because the soldiers from a nearby black regiment proved insufficient due to their illiteracy: when sent to make arrests, for example, they were “just as apt to get the wrong as the right Person, if they get any at all,” and in one case, showed a wanted man an arrest summons and believed his response when he told them that the warrant named a different individual. The requesting officer received his white detail.58

Inspectors in Maryland began educating promising prospects when they realized that barely any of the recruits enlisting there could read sufficiently to discharge the duties of a noncommissioned officer. Encouraged by the chance to become noncommissioned officers, twenty-one blacks accordingly enrolled by the end of March 1864 at a school set up in nearby Philadelphia by the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments. By June 1864, meanwhile, nine military schools in New Orleans taught an average of 2,400 soldiers/students a day, and by December 1864, twenty teachers staffed thirteen schools for 1,549 black soldiers at Memphis. Similarly, civilians operated a school in a large tent at Camp William Penn outside Philadelphia, where eleven black regiments trained.59

Many officers in the USCT, even those not classified as abolitionists, began to promote the idea that education should be available to African Americans. Black soldiers enthusiastically seized this opportunity, asking for regimental schools, purchasing books and paying teachers with money they raised, and studying with more educated comrades when teachers were unavailable. Like many black civilians, these soldiers saw education as a means of self-improvement as well as an important way in which to prepare to enjoy the rights for which they fought. Black chaplain Henry M. Turner petitioned the army’s adjutant general for five hundred spelling books, and identified education as a “means to make brave soldiers” but also “good and intelligent citizens.” Turner argued that where the regiment compiled a record of bravery in nine battles, its military service earned a right to both citizenship and educational opportunity. Churches, relief associations, and other donors, but not the government, eventually provided the books Turner sought.60

Regimental schools proved one of the most important ways in which military service impacted blacks’ quest for self-sufficiency. The Union army did not promulgate an official or universal schooling system for soldiers in the field, but schools developed in many of the USCT regiments with the support of chaplains, unit officers, and those at home. Regimental chaplains typically had charge of these schools and usually found assistance from other officers, and occasionally the wives of officers or teachers from benevolent societies. In a letter to the Christian Recorder, Sergeant John C. Brock implored friends at home to send newspapers to black soldiers so that they had material to read, explaining that part of the time spent in the nation’s service would also be “days of instruction, to fit us for good citizens” on the return of peace. Other times, regimental commanders supported education by purchasing supplies using their unit’s regimental fund.61

Orders to promote education of black troops sometimes issued from the department, army, or corps level. Major General Nathaniel Banks appointed members of the American Missionary Association as lieutenants in several black regiments for the purpose of helping educate the nearly nineteen thousand African American troops in the Department of the Gulf. During winter quarters 1864–65, Major General Benjamin Butler instructed that each USCT regiment in the Army of the James build a schoolhouse so that chaplains and officers who volunteered could educate these soldiers, and Twenty-fifth Corps commander Brigadier General Godfrey Weitzel taxed sutlers to fund this educational initiative.62

Sometimes, scarce resources meant that only a limited number of soldiers had the opportunity to attend schools. In other cases, schools served as many soldiers as possible, and sometimes included as students the wives and children of soldiers, and people without any connection with the regiment. The overall education effort had mixed results: some units achieved a high level of literacy while in others, most reached some ability to read but still could not write. The voracity with which the men sought to learn, however, was undeniable. By January 1866, the colonel of the Sixty-second USCI, from Missouri, reported that of 431 men in the regiment, 99 had learned to read, write, and cipher; 200 could read and write; and 337 could spell words of more than two syllables. Colonel James Shaw Jr. of the Seventh USCI, organized in Maryland of ex-slaves from the Chesapeake Bay area, reported about the reaction of his men to a donation by Rhode Island citizens of five hundred spelling books: “‘Give me a spelling book,’ says one, ‘and me,’ ‘and me,’ said others, with eager, anxious faces that showed their interest and desire to learn.” Shaw reported that barely fifty men in the regiment initially knew the alphabet but three-fourths had learned it two months later. The unit’s regimental historian later recalled that by the time the Seventh USCI disbanded, nearly all could read and most could write, though, “what was of even greater importance, they had learned self-reliance and self-respect, and went back to their homes with views enlarged, sympathies quickened, and their interest in the outside world thoroughly awakened.”63

Black soldiers embraced the sentiment of one member of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts, who reminded them, “If ever we expect to become a people we must try and educate ourselves and our children.” When the trustees of Wilberforce University in Ohio, the first college run by African Americans, appealed for money, black soldiers responded swiftly. While pursuing Lee’s army to Appomattox Court House, the men of the Eighth USCI, organized at Camp William Penn, Pennsylvania, collected more than $200 from among their ranks to donate to the school. To supplement $5,000 raised by the Sixty-second USCI, a fellow Missouri regiment, the Sixty-fifth USCI contributed $1,379.50 to establish in 1866 the school now known as Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. And fittingly, when soldiers of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, former slaves, and Northern blacks donated money for a monument to Robert Gould Shaw in the shadow of Fort Wagner’s parapet, the threat of Morris Island’s unstable sand and the potential for damage to the monument by racist vandals led to the fund’s use for a different, living monument: the Shaw School founded to educate black Charlestonians.64

Many black soldiers also began to appreciate the financial meaning of their labor for the first time, especially ex-slaves who now earned money, and those who protested unequal pay. When the Seventh USCI, organized at Baltimore, mustered out, George R. Sherman estimated that its men had saved nearly ninety thousand dollars in Baltimore and Washington banks. Banks established for use by black soldiers, such as those in Colonel Thomas W. Higginson’s Thirty-third USCI or the Department of Norfolk, Virginia, also helped some of them learn about sound fiscal practices and good financial planning.65

The Christian Recorder also noted (along with swipes at Irish Americans) that at least in Philadelphia, the war improved living conditions for blacks: “Men have been drafted and others have volunteered, and thus got their bounty, and given it to their wives and children, many of whom you would hardly know if you were to meet them on the street, they are so much changed and a great deal better clad…. They seem to enjoy it to some extent, and make a better appearance than their IRISH neighbors, who are citizens and have the rights of freemen.” Moreover, many of the blacks remaining in Philadelphia, “now seek for work, their minds having been stirred up by UNCLE SAM. They have come to the conclusion to be industrious instead of lounging about in IRISH and other doggeries, day and night.”66

That black soldiers gained a new appreciation for education and greater understanding of the value of their labor helped inform their consideration of what rights they deserved as citizens. Sergeant Joseph H. Barquet of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry argued that education would permit blacks to capitalize on opportunities opened in the war’s wake. Barquet additionally called for black land ownership and for products made by blacks to bring “in market the same value as that produced by others.” In the closing days of the war, Sergeant Major George S. Massey of Pittsburgh similarly argued, as any free labor Republican would, that “homes and property” would support improvements in the status of blacks, and he called on them to earnestly pursue respectable and profitable occupations. Massey did not expect all blacks to become lawyers and doctors, but he valued all profitable labor. Massey warned that political equality would “do but comparatively little towards elevating our race or condition when we are wanting in every other respect,” and he understood the need for black self-help: “While we have to look to others for equality before the law, we must depend entirely on our own hands and heads for equality in financial resources.”67

Soldiering Side By Side

The African American military experience did more than create an opportunity for thousands of blacks from across the United States to unite, it also forced interracial collaboration in a common cause. Whites and blacks shared the triumphs and privations of a soldier’s life. Members of both races had to contend with the ramifications arming blacks had on African American status. Once in uniform, positive interactions with whites supported a growing sense among blacks that they had an American identity and caused at least some whites to rethink the prewar exclusion of blacks from citizenship. Both changes were prerequisites for a new legal concept of citizenship, which excluded race as a governing factor, to emerge.

Many whites who originally enlisted in the Union army fought neither for blacks nor abolition, and some openly disdained emancipation and arming African Americans. As a black war correspondent traveling with the Army of the Potomac early in the war, George E. Stephens noted varying degrees of hostility toward African Americans among the troops. Stephens recounted that some members of the Excelsior Brigade raided the house of a free black man, and that federal officers sometimes returned fugitives to slavery. Congress itself did not pass legislation prohibiting officers from aiding in the return of fugitive slaves until March 1862.68

Accordingly, the U.S. Sanitary Commission and the Loyal Publication Society anticipated opposition to arming black troops, and distributed pamphlets through the army to generate acceptance of this policy. One such pamphlet described African American service in 1776 and 1812, and questioned what valid reason against arming blacks could exist when “our bravest and most patriotic generals, our Washington, and our Jackson, did not hesitate to solicit, to employ, and to reward the military services of Negroes.”69

In fairness, some Union soldiers had probably never even seen a black person before the war. For example, the 1860 census for New York’s Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties, from which the soldiers who comprised the 154th New York Infantry hailed, listed a negligible number of black residents. On first reaching the South, members of the regiment viewed blacks they encountered as a part of the landscape, though some of them also decried slavery as an institution that debilitated the land. Eventually, members of the unit developed a multitude of reactions to blacks. Some men of the 154th New York continued to feel racist disdain for blacks, while others resented them as having caused the war in the first place, along with their own loss of freedom at having to submit to a soldier’s life. Others, however, felt honored to serve as an instrument of slavery’s eradication. Additionally, some members of the 154th New York who originally scorned blacks gradually changed their minds in the face of positive interactions. One opponent of emancipation converted when he went to a house near Savannah, Georgia, to purchase food at the end of Sherman’s March to the Sea. There, a family of ex-slaves cooked the soldier a hoe cake, told him how they had assisted escaped Union prisoners in the past, and refused his offer to pay for his meal. On returning to camp, the soldier told his tentmate, “I went away a Democrat but I have come back an abolitionist. When a party asks me to vote to enslave such a people as…I have seen today, then I cease to be one of their number any longer.”70

Seeing the whipping posts, and hearing of cruel treatment against slaves, convinced some white soldiers not only of the military necessity but also the justice of freeing and arming blacks. After spending six months in the South, one New Yorker reflected, “I would just like to see a man whipping a negro I would try the virtue of my sword if he did not stop it.” After hearing about the thrashings endured by a fifteen-year-old escaped slave, one future USCT officer from the Seventieth Indiana wrote that it “is enough to make a man feel like it would be God’s service to shoot them [slave masters] down like buzzards.” After he personally encountered slaves, Meschack Purington Larry from Maine wrote his sister, “Instead of thinking les of a negroe I have sadly learned to think them beter than many wight meen that hold responsible positions.” A member of the Twenty-fifth Wisconsin wrote home that the slaves he met in Kentucky could not talk for two minutes before tears welled in their eyes, as they praised God for the coming of Lincoln’s soldiers.71

On the other hand, deep-seated racism persisted in some soldiers no matter what. These attitudes reflected relentless opposition from a portion of society against the idea of recognizing blacks as equals or citizens. Such sentiments threatened the egalitarian features of black military service as well as the notion that these aspects could someday be made permanent in the law. While a board of examination reviewed the military competence of applicants for USCT commissions, it did not screen for racists who viewed the black regiments only as an avenue for promotion. A veteran of the black Twenty-ninth Connecticut Infantry recalled at least one officer who “ought to have been with the Greys instead of the Blues, he had so little use for the Colored troops,” until the regiment’s colonel arrested the offender. In other cases, officers who ordered excess fatigue duty exhausted black troops, increased their sickness rates, and made them feel like little more than uniformed laborers.72

The racism of some high ranking officers fueled white-on-black abuse. Brigadier General John P. Hatch routinely referred to his command as “Niggers,” and Major General Lovell H. Rousseau prohibited black soldiers from arresting women. On September 30, 1863, Colonel James Montgomery of the Second South Carolina (African Descent) demoralized a detachment of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts with a harangue delivered in the middle of its protest against unequal pay. Professing to be their friend, Montgomery told the soldiers that they should feel “glad to pay for the privilege to fight, instead of squabbling about money” and argued that the government had already paid them a generous bounty in setting them free. “You are a race of slaves,” Montgomery told the aghast men, “A few years ago your fathers worshipped snakes and crocodiles in Africa. Your features partake of a beastly character…. I am disgusted with the mean, low habits you have learned from the low whites,” who supported their refusal to take this pay. Montgomery concluded by encouraging the black soldiers to pursue education, observing that “Irishmen come to this country and in a few years become the same as other white men,” and he advised them to try to improve their features by having the lightest blacks marry the darkest women. Brigade commander Milton S. Littlefield followed Montgomery with a speech pledging his honor that the men would receive their full salary, though he could do little to soothe the sting of Montgomery’s nearly hour long diatribe.73

White soldiers could viciously insult their black comrades. During an expedition in southwestern Virginia, a detachment of six hundred black cavalry from the Fifth USCC “patiently” endured jeering whites who pulled off their caps, stole their horses, and taunted their courage. Later, four hundred of the black cavalry lost a quarter of their men in a charge, making “those who had scoffed at the Colored Troops on the march out…silent.” Although Confederates brutally murdered some prisoners from the regiment, the cavalrymen gave Rebel wounded water. Some USCT officers feared the possibility of more violent racial fights. Thomas W. Higginson noted in April 1863, “There has been no quarrelling or chafing as yet” between his black regiment and nearby white troops. But, Higginson continued, “At the same time it always makes me anxious, for if a quarrel should arise, even slight, the whole slumbering hostility would awaken instantly & might be the destruction of all of us.”74

Even some praise attributed black military acumen to the prior experience most of them had as slaves, an especially ironic commentary on perceptions of the soldier’s life. Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas reported in May 1864 that Southern whites inculcated an attitude of strict deference in their slaves, and freedmen in the army carried “this habit of obedience with them”—a statement that omitted the agitation black troops mounted against unequal pay and other perceived injustices. While deeming them to be “a most important addition to our forces,” and acknowledging their valor at Port Hudson, Thomas emphasized that the greatest value of black troops lay in their performing garrison duty, thus freeing white units for combat service.75

On the other hand, tense racial moments sometimes resolved in a way that emphasized black rights. Some USCT officers actively defended their men and earned their admiration in the process. In March 1864, an Irish American soldier called one of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry a “nigger” before having to flee for fear of physical retaliation. Lieutenant Colonel Charles B. Fox immediately rushed to the scene, tracked down and arrested the culprit, and had him escorted to the provost guard “by at least two files of good brave colored soldiers.” Colonel John H. Holman earned black correspondent Thomas M. Chester’s praise for disciplining and removing a lieutenant from the division staff for “inwarrantable treatment” to a black sergeant, and George E. Stephens reported the court-martial and dishonorable discharge of a lieutenant from the Fifty-second Pennsylvania who refused to do duty with black troops.76

Opportunities for blacks to parade alongside whites accentuated in a happier way their sense of equality and American identity that came with the blue uniform. While briefly assigned as the only black unit in Brigadier General Thomas G. Stevenson’s brigade in August 1863, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts drew in line with colors flying to march in review alongside white troops from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York. Thanksgiving 1863 on Morris Island, South Carolina, included all soldiers there, black and white, assembling near the ocean for a religious observance, before each regiment celebrated the day on its own with sports and feasting. At other times, black troops paraded by themselves but in honor of a universal American holiday, such as when the First Division of the Twenty-fifth Corps of black troops held a “grand review” on February 22, 1865, to honor George Washington’s birthday.77

3. “Emancipation Day in South Carolina.” The Color Sergeant of the First South Carolina (African Descent) addressing the regiment at Port Royal, South Carolina, January 1, 1863. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, January 24, 1863. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Blacks also commemorated events specific to their experience, and they expressed in these internal ceremonies pride in the changes wrought by their service. The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts observed January 1, 1864, the first anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, by assembling on Morris Island, South Carolina, along with large delegations from the Second South Carolina (African Descent) and the Third USCI organized in Pennsylvania. Inspirational speeches emphasized that on the very ground where slavery previously oppressed them, blacks now stood “upright as living men.”78

Shifts in the Racial Climate

Black soldiers took notice of the possibilities of this changing racial climate, a recognition that helped animate calls for changes in the law after the war. When a drunken white soldier told one of the First USCI to “get out of the road you damned nigger,” the soldier replied defiantly, “Look at what you say…[you] can’t call me a nigger no more.” A corporal corrected one USCT captain who threatened to shoot him as a “damned nigger,” after the corporal halted the officer for trying to leave camp without a pass. The guardsman confidently identified himself not as a “nigger” but a “Federal soldier” who wore the “Federal uniform,” adding, “I have taken the same oath that you have.” A court-martial later dismissed the captain.79

Furthermore, the fact that blacks stood against inequality earned the respect of at least some whites, another circumstance that illuminated the potential of the moment for blacks in their calls for equal rights. Members of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts found that white soldiers encamped nearby called their unit the “Independent Colored Regiment” and encouraged them to maintain their protest against unequal pay.80

Combat performance also helped earn black soldiers the respect of some white troops. After their baptism of fire, the men of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts marched past the camps of several white regiments to hear those soldiers shout, “Well done! We heard your guns!” and, “Hurrah, boys! You saved the Tenth Connecticut!” Daniel W. Sawtelle of the Eighth Maine wrote in spring 1863, “I have thought that the negroes would not make good soldiers and so did most of the men in this regt, but in the several skirmishes they have had with the rebels they have won the prasses of all and the rebels are as afraid of them as they would be of so many tigers.” Sawtelle continued, “If I disliked [slavery] before I utterly detest it now and I am not alone. Men that called themselves negro hateers a while ago are compelled to say they are better than they thought they were.” Following the Fourteenth USCI’s performance in battle at Dalton, Georgia, on August 15, 1864, the Fifty-first Indiana reportedly honored their comrades by replying, when asked what regiment they were, “Fifty-first Colored.” For the home front, a woodcut published in Harper’s Weekly on November 11, 1865, depicted dead black and white soldiers lying together on the same battlefield.81

Black soldier Thomas B. Wester of the Forty-third USCI, fighting in Virginia, thus recognized war as an exercise uniting both races together in a common cause. According to Wester, blacks fought “side-by-side with the white men,” the “bones of the black man…whitening the battle-fields, while their blood simultaneously with the white man’s oozes into the soil” that former slaves earlier cultivated. During a march from Barrancas, Florida, to Blakely, Alabama, in the closing days of the war, Chaplain C. W. Buckley “never witnessed such a friendly feeling between white and colored troops…. I have seen the two divisions exchange gifts, and talk with each other with apparent equality. All seemed to realize that they were marching from victory to victory beneath the same flag;—that their arms were alike raised in defence of our endangered liberties.” When the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts broke camp to return to the Bay State, a white regiment in its brigade, the Fifty-fourth New York, drew up to bid it farewell, and each regiment gave the other “loud and hearty” cheers. And perhaps most poignantly, in walking over the battlefield after a charge on September 29, 1864, at New Market Heights (Chaffin’s Farm), Virginia, John McMurray, an officer in the Sixth USCI, “couldn’t help shedding a few tears” on finding one of his men, “Big Sam” Johnson, dead. McMurray had developed a friendship with Big Sam, often listening to his stories while on the march. Decades later, McMurray recollected sadly that “even now when I think of him I feel a pang of sorrow that his cheerful light of life was extinguished so early…. I looked at him a few moments, said ‘good bye, Sam,’ and was compelled to go on without seeing that he was decently buried.”82

Compliments from superior officers also fueled black soldiers’ burgeoning sense of self-confidence and American identity, both necessary if African Americans were to continue making more defined calls for change in the law after the war. Colonel Thomas J. Morgan of the Fourteenth USCI praised his soldiers after they defended Decatur, Alabama, in October 1864 with words that highlighted changing attitudes among some whites in the army. Morgan declared to his men, the “blood of those who fell has hushed the mouths of our Enemies while the conduct of those who live Elicited praises and cheers from all who witnessed it—It is no small event for a black regiment to receive three hearty cheers from a regiment of white men.” Morgan reminded his command that “one year ago…it was considered by most of the army and a large number of the people of the United States very doubtful whether Negroes would make good soldiers and it was esteemed no honor to be an Officer in a black regiment—Today the regiment is known throughout the army and the North and is honored—The Col commanding is proud of the regiment and would not [exchange] its command for that of the best white regiment in the U.S. service.”83

Blacks accordingly linked battlefield performance with demands for equality. In the Christian Recorder, Chaplain William H. Hunter of the Fourth USCI identified June 15, 1864, when black troops breached the Southern works in front of Petersburg before having to fall back due to lack of reinforcements, as “the day when prejudice died in the entire Army of the U.S. of America. It is the day when it was admitted that colored men were equal to the severest ordeal. It is the day in which was secured to us rights of equality in the Army and service of the Government of the United States.”84

Complimentary accounts of black troops in action printed in white newspapers helped emphasize this point to a broader audience. While covering combat on the Richmond/Petersburg front, African American correspondent Thomas M. Chester’s articles in the Philadelphia Press publicized black prowess in combat and promoted the idea of racial union through shared military experience. A Democratic newspaper founded in 1857, the Press traditionally showed little attention to promoting the interests of blacks, and it is unknown why its editor hired a black correspondent. In mid-August 1864, Chester noted that, through joint service, both whites and blacks earned fame and glory. Chester related details of black valor for a twofold purpose: while continued displays of loyal bravery would “soon eradicate the last vestige of prejudice and oppression from the grand Army of the Potomac,” it also reinforced black resolve and pride.85

Chester provided casualty lists not only for informational purposes but to publish tangible proof of black men shedding their blood for the Union and their own rights. For Chester, assignment of black troops to hazardous duty showed that they had established a reputation for both discipline and valor, and he found it a compliment that even after the fall of Richmond, the government intended to keep black troops in the service until their terms of enlistment expired. Chester proudly reported the details of blacks engaged in combat, describing “no flinching” as African Americans “manfully received and returned fire” at the Battle of New Market Heights, where a black division endured Confederate artillery fire, charged the Rebel earthworks, and earned fourteen Medals of Honor. Chester concluded that such gallantry “wiped out effectually the imputation against the fighting qualities of the colored troops.”86

Conclusion

In the end, black soldiers met mixed reactions and treatment. Some encounters confirmed deep-seated racism within American society that could not be easily expunged and stood in contrast to the more welcoming reception Irish American soldiers enjoyed. Other experiences, however, affirmed a promising sense of the equality of blacks. As a member of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts recalled, on first landing on Folly Island, South Carolina, his comrades “were liable to be insulted by any of the white soldiers,” but eventually “they have come to see that they are bound to treat us as men and soldiers, fighting for the same common cause.” While instances where black soldiers earned the respect of white troops or civilians did not lead to a radical and immediate shift in racial relations, they did sow seeds of acceptance that gradually germinated and merged with other impulses within at least a portion of American society. Moreover, black soldiers mobilized as active opponents to anyone or any rule that distinguished them from white soldiers, and they increasingly asserted their role as leaders of the black community. Whether helping inspire civilian freedpeople or successfully rejecting second-class citizenship by opposing unequal pay, these black soldiers also became civil rights leaders, and their influence had a profound impact both on personal attitudes (both white and black) as well as official policies.87

The African American military experience afforded free Northern blacks and less-educated Southern slaves an opportunity to interact with one another, as well as whites, in a shared experience and common cause. Wartime moments symbolizing the admittedly incomplete integration of blacks into the fabric of Union society—from exchanging slave garb for the soldier’s uniform to helping strike slavery’s death blow—generated a confidence and sense of American identity among them that began to manifest in political ways. These experiences heightened black appreciation for an American allegiance denied them by slavery in the South and persistent racism in the North, and familiarized them with the possibilities of equal treatment.

This new appreciation of their self-elevation and awareness of their American allegiance led blacks increasingly to assert their demands for a new legal order that included them as part of “the people.” Black troops impatiently engaged with political issues beyond emancipation, and they challenged racist treatment that sought to distinguish them from whites. The presence of black troops in uniform, their performance in combat, and their developing American identity, political awareness, and organization, shifted the dynamic of black-white interactions. Blacks began to modify the paradigm of race relations during the Civil War era not only by enlisting, but by asserting demands for inclusion and equality as well. Experiences in the army also informed developing black definitions of citizenship.

Additionally, Confederate policy that captured black soldiers did not qualify as prisoners of war led to articulation by the federal government that any man wearing Union blue stood entitled to the same treatment regardless of race. Major General David Hunter wrote directly to Jefferson Davis and, after equating the South’s fight to maintain slavery as “the liberty to do wrong—which Satan, Chief of the fallen Angels, was contending for when he was cast into Hell,” informed the Confederate president that the “United States flag must protect all its defenders, white, black or yellow,” and every black soldier “cruelly murdered” would result in the execution of the highest-ranking Confederate in Hunter’s possession. President Lincoln adopted this policy as well, and the New York Times declared to readers that “a black-skinned loyalist is of more account than a black-hearted traitor anyday,” when it suggested executing Confederate prisoners for every black prisoner murdered. On the other hand, such threats (no retaliatory executions ever took place) did not stop atrocities such as the Confederate massacre of black prisoners taken at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and other instances where Confederate soldiers executed captured or wounded black federal soldiers.88

During the war, African American civilians used black military service to emphasize their call for equal rights. On June 5, 1864, more than a thousand black men from New Orleans, including twenty-seven veterans of the 1815 battle there, petitioned President Lincoln and Congress. Claiming to be “loyal citizens” who owned property, engaged in commerce, paid taxes, and had fathers who served in the War of 1812, the petitioners added that blacks “have spilled their blood, and are still pouring it out for the maintenance of the Constitution of the United States; in a word, they are soldiers of the union.” Lincoln accordingly wrote to Governor Michael Hahn, an opponent of black suffrage, to ask “whether some of the colored people may not be let in [to vote]—as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks.” When the new Louisiana constitution failed to grant suffrage to African Americans, the black newspaper L’Union nonetheless argued that “from the day that bayonets were placed in the hands of the blacks…the Negro became a citizen of the United States,” and it prophesied that, as the “war has broken the chains of the slave,” it was also “written in the heavens that from this war shall grow the seeds of the political enfranchisement of the oppressed race.”89

The Reverend Henry Highland Garnet similarly linked the service of black soldiers to political rights when he delivered on February 12, 1865, at Lincoln’s invitation, the first sermon by a black in the House of Representatives. After scorning slavery from the perspective of one whose “first sight…was a Christian mother enslaved by professed Christians,” Garnet declared that God “stamped on [the] forehead” of all men, regardless of race, “title to his inalienable rights.” Moreover, Garnet argued, the military service of blacks to the Union sanctified equality, men who “for a season were scorned and rejected, but who came quickly and cheerfully when they were at last invited, bearing a heavy burden of proscriptions upon their shoulders, and having faith in God, and in their generous fellow-countrymen, they went forth to fight a double battle. The foes of their country were before them, while the enemies of freedom and of their race surrounded them.” Garnet demanded more than emancipation in name only, looking forward to a time in the near future

when emancipation shall be followed by enfranchisement, and all men holding allegiance to the government shall enjoy every right of American citizenship…. When the men who endure the sufferings and perils of the battle-field in the defence of their county, and in order to keep our rulers in their places, shall enjoy the well-earned privilege of voting for them. When in the army and navy, and in every legitimate and honorable occupation, promotion shall smile upon merit without the slightest regard to the complexion of a man’s face.

Speaking for his racial community, Garnet demanded that blacks be held “in every respect…equal before the law, and…left to make [their]…own way in the social walks of life,” with the “right to live, and labor, and to enjoy the fruits of our toil.”90

Yet, despite recognizing themselves as citizens, and acting accordingly, blacks remained excluded throughout the duration of the Civil War from national citizenship in the eyes of the law. Moreover, while experiences in the military altered black soldiers’ sense of identity, blacks also had a legacy of participating in past American wars only to experience continued racism and exclusion once the crisis passed. What remained to be seen was whether blacks could translate their wartime experiences into permanent changes in the legal concept of citizenship.