Civil War, Participation and Recruitment of Black Troops In

By: John David Smith

Source:

 Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

Civil War, Participation and Recruitment of Black Troops In

Frederick Douglass considered the Civil War to be both a millennial event and a regenerative force in American life. He believed that a redeeming God would use the war as a crucible to free the South's 4 million slaves. After years of personal and collective protest against slavery, Douglass framed the war's meaning—its suffering and its mandate—in apocalyptic terms.

Central to Douglass's understanding of the war was his vision of free blacks and former slaves' fighting to free their slave brethren. In May 1861 he clamored for “carrying the war into Africa [the South]”; he declared, “Let the slaves and free colored people be called into service, and formed into a liberating army.” In January 1862, while waiting impatiently for the government to free and arm the slaves, Douglass remarked, “Slavery has been, and is yet the shield and helmet of this accursed rebellion.” President Abraham Lincoln listened to but was unmoved by Douglass's appeals.

Since the war's outbreak in April 1861 the president had insisted that the conflict was a constitutional struggle to keep the Union intact, not a war to destroy slavery or to arm blacks. Lincoln understood that emancipation, the use of armed black soldiers, and the possibility of placing blacks on a social and political par with whites would all challenge the nation's racial status quo: white supremacy. Thus, such actions would fuel the racial phobias of conservative Democrats and Republicans and discourage white enlistment. Lincoln also worried that emancipation would alienate nonslaveholders as well as slaveholders in the loyal border states and might further solidify opposition to the Union in Confederate states.

Band of the 107th U.S. Colored Infantry at Fort Corcoran, Arlingston, Virigina, c. 1862–1865. Congress established no standard band instrumentation, but most bands—like this one—used all brass, since brass instruments stood up best in outdoor conditions.

Library of Congress.

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Nevertheless, Douglass became disgusted by what he considered to be Lincoln's inaction. In a 4 July 1862 speech, Douglass charged that Lincoln's policies had “been calculated … to shield and protect slavery” and that the president had “scornfully rejected the policy of arming the slaves, a policy naturally suggested and enforced by the nature and necessities of the war.” Two months later, in a blistering editorial in Douglass' Monthly, the black leader branded Lincoln as little more than “an itinerant Colonization lecturer, showing all his inconsistencies, his pride of race and blood, his contempt for Negroes and his canting hypocrisy.” Despite Lincoln's professed antislavery views, Douglass blasted him as “quite a genuine representative of American prejudice and Negro hatred and far more concerned for the preservation of slavery, and the favor of the Border Slave States, than for any sentiment of magnanimity or principle of justice and humanity.” Specifically, Douglass complained that Lincoln, lacking “courage and honesty,” had failed to enforce the Second Confiscation Act of July 1862. The president had

"evaded his obvious duty, and instead of calling the blacks to arms and to liberty he merely authorized the military commanders to use them as laborers, without even promising them their freedom at the end of their term of service … and thus destroyed virtually the very object of the measure."

(Foner, vol. 3, p. 269)

Lincoln's decision to issue the final Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863 forced Douglass to change his tune. By that time the president had concluded that the destruction of slavery had become both a military necessity and a major Union war aim. The enlistment of black troops was inextricably linked to Lincoln's emancipation policy.

Douglass congratulated Lincoln on the “amazing change” regarding emancipation, calling it an “amazing approximation toward the sacred truth of human liberty.” Douglass added that “we are all liberated” by the Emancipation Proclamation; “the white man is liberated, the black man is liberated, the brave men now fighting the battles of their country against rebels and traitors are now liberated, and may strike … the Rebels, at their most sensitive point.” Convinced that black troops would help turn the tide in the direction of Union victory, Douglass predicted that “whoever sees fifty thousand well drilled colored soldiers in the United States, will see slavery abolished and the union of these States secured from rebel violence.”

Determined to do his part to recruit black troops, in 1863 Douglass joined such leading abolitionists as George Luther Stearns, Richard P. Hallowell, Martin Robison Delany, William Birney, Henry McNeal Turner, and John Mercer Langston in traversing the Northern states to gather enlistees. Douglass admonished black recruits “to fly to arms, and smite with death the power that would bury the government and your liberty in the same hopeless grave.” Douglass's dream of “carrying the war into Africa” became a reality in May 1863 when African Americans fought heroically at the battle of Port Hudson, Louisiana, the first significant assault by black troops in the war.

Two months later, when addressing a mass meeting in Philadelphia, Douglass explained the importance of black men brandishing their swords to defeat the Rebels:

"Never since the world began was a better chance offered to a long enslaved and oppressed people. The opportunity is given us to be men. With one courageous resolution we may blot out the hand-writing of the ages against us. Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters U.S.; let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth or under the earth which can deny that he has earned the right of citizenship in the United States. I say again, this is our chance, and woe betide us if we fail to embrace it."

(Foner, vol. 3, p. 365)

Douglass realized, however, that the U.S. Colored Troops confronted twin obstacles generally unknown to white Union soldiers. Confederate President Jefferson Davis threatened to enslave black troops captured in battle and to execute their white officers. African American soldiers also had to combat the across-the-board second-class status accorded them by the U.S. government. Lincoln's administration and acts passed by Congress denied blacks commissions as officers; provided them with inferior pay, equipment, and medical care; and largely denied their families the humanitarian relief provided to white soldiers' families.

Douglass exploded with anger when he learned of the Confederates' treatment of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment at Battery Wagner on 18 July 1863. Although the black soldiers fought heroically “and vindicated their sponsors, the abolitionists,” the regiment paid a heavy price for its valor. Almost one half of the six hundred men who attacked the Confederates were killed, wounded, or captured.

Douglass admonished George L. Stearns,

"Think of its noble and brave officers literally hacked to pieces while many of its rank and file have been sold into a slavery worse than death, and pardon me if I hesitate about … raising a fourth Regiment until the President shall give the same protection to them as to white soldiers."

(Foner, vol. 3, p. 369) Further, Douglass complained, “the slaughter of blacks taken as captives seems to affect him as little as the slaughter of beeves for the use of his army.” He wrote in August 1863, “Colored men have a right not only to ask for equal pay for equal work, but that merit, not color, should be the criterion observed by Government in the distribution of places.”

While sympathetic to the injustice accorded black soldiers in terms of their unequal pay, Lincoln urged them to be patient. According to Douglass, in August 1863 the president reminded him that many whites still doubted the wisdom of enlisting black troops, that many whites still considered the idea of black soldiers offensive, and “the fact that they were not to receive the same pay as white soldiers seemed a necessary concession to smooth the way to their employment at all as soldiers.” In a reportedly patronizing tone, Lincoln informed Douglass that because black men “had larger motives for being soldiers than white men … they ought to be willing to enter the service upon any condition.” Lincoln eventually assured Douglass that the government would equalize the pay of black and white soldiers—but the men would have to wait.

Douglass and African American troops, however, were losing “patience and faith” with Lincoln. As late as September 1864, the black leader, writing in the Liberator, remained dismayed at the government's

"treatment of our poor black soldiers—the refusal to pay them anything like equal compensation, though it was promised them when they enlisted; the refusal to insist upon the exchange of colored prisoners, and to retaliate upon rebel prisoners when colored prisoners have been slaughtered in cold blood, although the President has repeatedly promised thus to protect the lives of his colored soldiers."

(p. 1) Though the black soldiers held on, they remained impatient and seethed with indignation, especially over their unequal wages. Back home, their families suffered from lack of support. Not until 3 March 1865 did Congress finally grant full retroactive pay to all black soldiers who had been promised equal pay upon mustering into the service.

Although Douglass never joined the U.S. Colored Troops—the secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, reportedly promised him a commission that never came to pass—two of his sons, Charles and Lewis, served in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. A third son, Frederick Douglass Jr., recruited black troops in Mississippi. By the war's end, with Douglass's assistance, the army had raised 178,975 African American soldiers. His prediction that the war would forever change African Americans' relationship to white Americans had proven true.

See also Black Militias; Civil War; Confederate Policy toward African Americans and Slaves; Confederate States of America; Delany, Martin Robison; Discrimination; Douglass' Monthly; Douglass, Frederick; Emancipation; Emancipation Proclamation; Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment; Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment; Integration; Langston, John Mercer; Lincoln, Abraham; Military; Religious Beliefs, Frederick Douglass and; Stearns, George Luther; and Union Army, African Americans in.

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