A revolutionary shift occurred in white thinking about using black men as soldiers. Although they had fought in the Revolution and in the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812, a law of 1792 barred blacks from the army. During the early stages of the rebellion, despite the eagerness of thousands of free blacks to enlist, the prohibition remained in force. By 1862, however, the need for manpower was creating pressure for change. In August Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton authorized the military government of the captured South Carolina sea islands to enlist slaves in
The 54th Massachusetts storms Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863. Composed of black volunteers but led by Robert Gould Shaw, a white abolitionist, the 54th Massachusetts breached the ramparts but was eventually thrown back, sustaining heavy losses. Although the focal point of this contemporary painting is the death of Shaw, the broader significance of the battle is shown in the foreground, where two black soldiers are bayoneting their Confederate foes. (See Re-Viewing the Past, Glory, pp. 396-397.)
The area. After the Emancipation Proclamation specifically authorized the enlistment of blacks, the governor of Massachusetts moved to organize a black regiment, the famous Massachusetts 54th. (See Re-Viewing the Past, Glory, pp. 396-397.) Swiftly thereafter, other states began to recruit black soldiers, and in May 1863 the federal government established a Bureau of Colored Troops to supervise their enlistment. By the end of the war one soldier in eight in the Union army was black.
Enlisting so many black soldiers changed the war from a struggle to save the Union to a kind of revolution. “Let the black man. . . get an eagle on his button and a musket on his shoulder,” wrote Frederick Douglass, “and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has won the right to citizenship.”
At first black soldiers received only $7 a month, about half what white soldiers were paid. But they soon proved themselves in battle; of the 178,000 who served in the Union army, 37,000 were killed, a rate of loss about 40 percent higher than that among white troops. The Congressional Medal of Honor was awarded to twenty-one blacks.
The higher death rates among black soldiers were partly due to the fury of Confederate soldiers. Many black captives were killed on the spot. After overrunning the garrison of Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River, the Confederates massacred several dozen black soldiers, along with their white commander. Lincoln was tempted to order reprisals, but he and his advisers realized that to do so would have been both morally wrong (two wrongs never make a right) and likely to lead to still more atrocities. “Blood can not restore blood,” Lincoln said in his usual direct way.
•••-[Read the Document Letter from a Free Black Volunteer to the Christian Recorder (1864) at Www. myhistorylab. com
World History
