African Americans in the Civil War

Significance: Both the North and the South relied upon African Americans to support the war effort. In the South, African American service raised doubts concerning the role of African Americans in Southern society, especially when many Southerners recommended the use of slaves as soldiers. In the North, African Americans pointed to their military service as proof that they deserved equal treatment under the law.

President Abraham Lincoln initially regarded the Civil War (1861–65) as a means to preserve the Union, so he rejected calls for African American military service. He feared that black troops would alienate the border states and harden the Southern commitment to the war. However, the advancing Union armies were magnets for escaped slaves, and officers soon used African Americans as laborers. In 1862, some officers began recruiting former slaves as soldiers without government permission. In July 1862, Congress authorized the president to use black troops, but it was not until the release of the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, that Lincoln allowed for the enlistment of African American soldiers.

Military Service

Approximately 180,000 African Americans served in the Union army during the war, with an estimated 37,000 losing their lives in combat or to disease. Another 29,000 African Americans served as seamen, making up a quarter of the Union navy. Because of Northern discriminatory attitudes, black soldiers and sailors often performed manual labor, releasing white soldiers for combat duty. Given the opportunity, however, African Americans fought valiantly. Black Union soldiers met the enemy in 449 separate engagements. They faced great risks from Confederate soldiers who were outraged at the sight of an African American in uniform. At Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and Poison Spring, Arkansas, rebel troops murdered African Americans who were attempting to surrender. At war’s end, sixteen soldiers and four seamen had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Many black soldiers remained in the military, serving in western units. Native Americans soon dubbed them “Buffalo soldiers” because their hair resembled that of the buffalo.

Although the navy was integrated, African Americans who enlisted in the army served in segregated units, often under white officers who had little respect for them. African Americans were not permitted to become officers until 1865, and only about one hundred of them obtained commissions. Because they were regarded as laborers, African Americans received less pay than white soldiers. They received ten dollars per month minus three dollars for clothing, while whites earned thirteen dollars a month plus a clothing allowance. This situation led to increasing resentment in the later years of the war as blacks saw more combat. When William Walker refused to report for duty until his pay was equal to that of white soldiers, he was court-martialed. Found guilty of mutiny, he was executed by a firing squad in March, 1864. Three months later, Congress approved the equalization of pay rates with retroactive pay through the beginning of 1864. Soldiers who could prove they were free as of April 19, 1861, were permitted retroactive pay for service in 1862 and 1863, which meant that many former slaves were not eligible for the back pay. Shrewd officers got around this unfair provision by having black soldiers swear that they did not owe anyone labor on that day, an oath that former slaves could honestly take.

In addition to military service, African Americans assisted the Union war effort by performing many other duties. Approximately 200,000 African Americans served as nurses, cooks, teamsters, or laborers. Slaves fleeing to the Union forces often provided valuable information regarding troop movement and terrain.

The Confederacy

When war broke out in 1861, a small number of free African Americans in the South, motivated by a sense of regional loyalty, volunteered to enlist in the Confederate army. Some of these men served in military units during the war. Although they never saw combat, two Louisiana regiments of African Americans called the Native Guards drilled with the state militia. However, the notion of African Americans serving in the military contradicted the belief in white superiority, and the Confederate government officially prohibited African Americans from military service until March, 1865. At that time, desperation prompted the government to approve the enlistment of 300,000 slaves in the army. Because the war ended only a month later, very few African Americans actually served in the Confederate army.

Despite the ban on military service, African Americans played a crucial role in the Southern war effort. They provided support for the military, cooking food, working in field hospitals, and performing manual labor such as digging trenches and building roads. Because African Americans completed these essential tasks, white soldiers were not diverted from combat duty. The Confederate navy also made use of African Americans, usually as firemen, cooks, and laborers. Moses Dallas, an inland pilot, guided a Confederate force in a successful attack on a Union gunboat in 1864. Robert Smalls, a slave who worked on an armed ship, the Planter, brought his family on board and sailed the vessel out of port while the officers were ashore. Smalls surrendered the ship to the Union navy and became a hero for his efforts.

African Americans also worked in the industries that supplied the army. They worked alongside whites in the iron mines, composing approximately half the labor force at the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia, and an estimated 20 percent of the workers in the Confederate Ordnance Department were black. Perhaps the most important role that African Americans played during the war was on the home front. As whites left the farms and plantations to fight in battle, the Confederacy became dependent upon African Americans for the production of agricultural products.

Bibliography

McPherson, James M. The Negro in the Civil War. New York: Vintage, 1965. Print.

Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the Civil War. Boston: Little, 1953. Print.

Sheffer, Debra J. The Buffalo Soldiers: Their Epic Story and Major Campaigns. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2015. Print.

Spurgeon, Ian Michael. Soldiers in the Army of Freedom: The First Kansas Colored, the Civil War's First African American Combat Unit. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 2014. Print.

Trudeau, Noah Andre. Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865. Boston: Little, 1998. Print.

Woodward, Colin Edward. Marching Masters: Slavery, Race, and the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2014. Print.