Article #7 of Multi-Article Series >>>>> A Short Course in African American History

African Americans and the Civil War

 

African Americans fought on both sides of the Civil War that rocked the young republic during 

1861-1865.  Those African Americans who fought on the side of the Confederacy in the Civil War were generally forced to do so by their masters or were in such dire economic circumstances that the proximity of an army offering food and shelter proved tempting, even with the prospect of manumission should the Union army prevail.  African Americans fought predominately, though, and with much greater alacrity, for the Union, fleeing to Union ranks in those states to which the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) applied, or seeking out one of the Northern armies to fight for the military that seemed positioned against the institution of slavery.

 

African Americans in the service of Union forces not only served as soldiers but also cooked meals, repaired railroads, constructed new roads, rebuilt bridges, carried fresh ammunition and additional weapons to the troops, provided medical attention as nurses and attendants, assisted officers with routine tasks, and rendered personal service.  Harriet Tubman and Susie King Taylor were two high-profile women who served Union forces.  Tubman served as a spy, nurse, and occasional combatant; 

the men who fought alongside the irrepressible and high-spirited woman held her in high esteem, affectionately dubbing her “General” Tubman.  Taylor trained under American Red Cross founder Clara Barton and served with diligence and courage in tending to the medical needs of soldiers;  in her spare moments she taught many fellow African Americans to read and write, and she continued her advocacy for full rights of citizenship when whites in the postwar South flagrantly violated both constitutional and statutory law.

 

Despite his leadership of the antislavery party, Abraham Lincoln had no intention of immediately freeing the slaves upon taking office;  rather, he envisioned a gradual process over a number of years, giving plantation owners time to adjust and striving to reduce sectional acrimony.  But when the leaders of the South showed themselves recalcitrant, and as many Union leaders disobeyed presidential orders by accepting African American soldiers into their ranks, Lincoln did not crack down.  He himself had a change of heart at the midpoint of the war, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and formally inviting black participation as soldiers and in other army posts.  The Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves only in those states not yet under Union control:  Lincoln issued this order as part of his war powers, pragmatically avoiding raising the ire of plantation owners in the border states and those southern states claimed victoriously by Union forces.  Runaway slaves and military leaders, though, filled in the gaps of this very incomplete document of freedom, so that slaves eagerly sought out and responded to commanders all too ready to capture the energy of African Americans who were highly motivated in the effort to defeat the Confederacy.

 

The regiments of the U. S. Colored Troops served the Union with distinction.  The 54^th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, the first regiment of African American troops raised in the service of the Union, showed great courage and skill in numerous battles.  One of its members, Sergeant William H. Carney, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic acts during the 1863 assault on Fort Wagner, of the harbor of Charleston, south Carolina.  A mail carrier in New Bedford, Massachusetts, for most of his postwar career, Carney moved to Boston in 1901 to take employment as a messenger in the State House.  A flag of the 54^th Massachusetts Colored Infantry that Carney had guarded tenaciously while wounded during the battle for Fort Wagner was enshrined in that  government building where he spent every work day.  Upon Carney’s death in 1908, the State House flag flew at half-mast and the chaplain of the state senate gave a eulogy in his honor.

 

Given the distinction with which African Americans served the Union (and in a fewer cases, the Confederacy, the racism and discrimination that they faced in the army was particularly abhorrent.  Unless necessity dictated otherwise, blacks were given the most menial duties, and they generally worked at half-pay for work equivalent to that done by whites.  The Confederacy treated African Americans they captured with an inhumanity not usually evident in the way that they dealt with white Union captives.  Although exigency often led Confederate commanders informally to conscript African Americans into their units, only in March 1865 (a month before war’s end) did the critical need for troops lead Confederate president Jefferson Davis officially allow the recruitment of black soldiers.

 

After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, newly freed slaves left the plantations in droves, and many found their ways into the Union army.  In all, 178,985 African Americans fought during the Civil War.  At lease 37,000 died in combat.  Seventeen black soldiers received the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award bestowed by the United States government for feats of bravery.