Themes of the American Civil War
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| Second-class Soldiers Unfortunately, deliberately prejudicial policies compounded the more general problems that the African-American regiments faced after Most obviously, blacks were never promoted on a par with whites. Benjamin Butler, in mustering in the Louisiana regiments, had created a mixed officer class. Jim Lane in Kansas did likewise, and since he was acting against orders anyway he never troubled himself to defend his actions. However, when Governor Andrew sought to appoint black officers to the 54th and 55th Massachusetts, he was told that white officers only would be accepted. Similarly, when Jim Lane’s Kansas regiments were officially recognized, its black officers were not. In the South Nathaniel P. Banks, on taking over from Butler, promptly set about removing—by fair means and foul—all the black officers, usually by forcing them to resign following a deliberate campaign of humiliation. In many cases the argument used to defend such blatant racism was that the blacks concerned lacked the necessary literacy and military knowledge to cope with high command. In many cases, particularly as far as the contraband regiments were concerned, there was an element of truth to the charge. Unfortunately, white officers had no more experience, and were no more capable in this regard, than the blacks. The only difference was that the white officers were not being put under the microscope to the same extent. By 1865 only one in 2,000 black troops had achieved officer rank, mostly as chaplains or physicians. The African-American regiments also received a greater proportion of fatigue duty than many of the white regiments. This meant not only that they were not receiving essential fighting experience, but that the nature of the duties required of them meant that their uniforms become worn out very quickly, giving them the appearance of laborers rather than of soldiers. The quality of weapons distributed to the black regiments was also not always on a par with those the white regiments received, although again it is important to bear in mind that adequate weaponry—and, more important, the ability to use it—was a problem for many regiments, both black and white. Medical care for the black regiments was equally discriminatory, and a 196 • Susan-Mary Grant particular problem, given the high rate of combat casualties in these regiments. Many of the black troops, being relatively new to the field, had little immunity to the diseases that infected the camps, and the problem was compounded by a white assumption that blacks were not as susceptible to disease as whites. Finding surgeons to work with black troops was also difficult. Again, racism alone does not account for this. By 1863 there was a general shortage of physicians in the Union army, and those that could put up with the rigors of camp life had long ago been employed by regiments formed earlier in the war. Poor morale problems and combat stress also affected the black regiments to a greater degree, in part because some of them suffered under the leadership of unprincipled officers. Several of the Virginia regiments reported low morale, and members of the 38th USCT almost rebelled because of the treatment they received from their officers. 31 This, however, was nothing in comparison to the treatment black troops suffered at the hands of some of the Confederate regiments. Depressingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, a greater proportion of wartime atrocities were directed at the colored regiments. The most notorious incident occurred in April, 1864, at Fort Pillow, north of Memphis. A force of some 1,500 Confederates, under the command of Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest—later prominent in the notorious Ku Klux Klan—demanded the surrender of the fort, which was manned by about 500 Union troops, half of them black. In the fighting that ensued some 66 percent of the black troops were killed, as opposed to 33 percent of the whites. The Fort Pillow incident was investigated by the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, which concluded that a massacre had taken place and that most of the garrison had been murdered after it had surrendered. Northern public opinion rallied to the black troops in the wake of Fort Pillow, but, as with Port Hudson and Fort Wagner, it was a high price to pay for the recognition of valor. 32 Of all the discriminatory policies to impact on the African-American regiments, the most damning related to pay. At the outset, however, there was no indication that the War Department intended to pay black troops less than white. When Governor Andrew was granted permission to raise the Massachusetts 54th, for example, he was instructed to offer $13.00 per month plus rations and clothing, along with a bounty of $50.00 for signing up and on mustering out. In 1863 the army paymaster actually gave the rd Colored Infantry the standard pay. Unfortunately, in June of that year the War Department decided that black troops were entitled to only per month, of which $3.00 should be deducted for clothing. The reasoning was that the raising of black regiments came under the Militia Act of which specified the lower rate of pay on the grounds that it had not anticipated combatant blacks. Even before this, however, the promised bounty was slow incoming, and in some cases never appeared at all. African-American Soldiers • 197 For many blacks, the problem went far beyond a simple insult. Their families depended on the money. The matter prompted an angry backlash from both black troops and many of their officers. Robert Gould Shaw was one who refused to take any pay unless his men received the full per month, but this was a sacrifice that his troops found harder to make than he did. Governor Andrew, embarrassed at the turn of events, offered to makeup the difference out of his own pocket, but the 54th would not let him. There was a principle at stake. James Henry Gooding of the 54th wrote in some anger to the New Bedford Mercury, reminding its readers that the colored men generally, as a class, have nothing to depend upon but their daily labor so, consequently, when they leave their labors and take up arms in defence of their country, their homes are left destitute of those little necessities which their families must enjoy as well as those of white men and as the city has passed a resolution to pay them a sum, they would rather their families received it than become objects of public charity. 33 One of his comrades concurred Now it seems strange tome that we do not receive the same pay and rations as the white soldiers. Do we not fill the same ranks Do we not cover the same space of ground Do we not take up the same length of ground in a graveyard that others do The ball does not miss the black man and strike the white, nor the white and strike the black.” Corporal John B. Payne, of Gooding’s sister regiment, the Massachusetts 55th, likewise declared, I am not willing to fight for anything less than the white man fights for. If the white man cannot support his family on seven dollars per month, I cannot support mine on the same amount.” 34 The issue of pay went beyond prejudice alone. It represented the crux of the problem for those African-American regiments which fought in the Civil War, and threw into sharp focus many of the inconsistencies and contradictions that lay at the heart of Union war aims. The Union had, from the very start of the war, been faced with two distinct yet linked problems the role of the free black and the future of the slave. Equality and emancipation were not synonymous, but at the same time one could not be addressed without affecting the other. The question over the rights of citizenship for the free Northern black went hand in hand with the larger and more troubling question of slavery—for many the root cause of the conflict. Northern blacks were very well aware of this and, unlike Northern whites, could not and would not avoid the wider implications of the Civil War. Thomas D. Freeman, of the Massachusetts 54th, described not just the financial difficulties that his regiment were facing but summed up the wider problem in a letter to his brother-in-law in 1864: 198 • Susan-Mary Grant the Regiment in general are in Good Health but in Low Spirits and no reason why for they have all to a man done there duty as a soldier it is 1 Year the st Day of April since I enlisted and there is men herein the regiment that have been in Enlisted 13 Months and have never received one cent But there bounty and they more or less have family . . . we are not Soldiers but Laborers working for Uncle Sam for nothing but our board and clothes . . . we never can be Elevated in this country while such rascality is Performed Slavery with all its horrors cannot Equalise this for it is nothing but work from morning till night Building Batteries Hauling Guns Cleaning Bricks clearing upland for other Regiments to settle on . . . now do you call this Equality if so God help such Equality.” 35 Lincoln’s reasons for hesitating over emancipation were valid ones, but he knew that the matter had to be addressed. The question was when and how. The Emancipation Proclamation, when it came on January 1, was not perfect. Lincoln knew that it would have to be confirmed via a constitutional amendment. But it did irrevocably commit the Union to a policy of attacking slavery, and made it impossible to deny to blacks the right to fight as full members of the citizen army of the Union. For many African-Americans, including Frederick Douglass, the Emancipation Proclamation was long overdue, and the discrimination suffered by the black soldiers represented a troubling omen for the future. George E. Stephens voiced his anger over the matter After we have endured a slavery of two hundred and fifty years we are to pay for the privilege to fight and die to enable the North to conquer the South—what an idea to pay for the privilege to fight for that tardy and at best doubtful freedom vouchsafed to us by the government He returned to this theme a few months later, and expanded on the relationship between pay and patriotism. The matter of pay seems to some of those having slaveholding tendencies a small thing he noted but it belongs to that system which has stripped the country of the flower of its youth . . . Like as the foaming waves point the mariner to the hidden rocks on which his storm-driven ship will soon be lost, this gross injustice reveals to us the hidden insidious principles on which the best hopes of the true patriot will be dashed. For Stephens the matter was a simple one, and he reminded the readers of the Anglo-African of it starkly Our destiny is united with that of the country—with its triumph we rise, with its defeat we fall.” 36 Leading African-American spokesmen like Stephens saw the Civil War very much as a war for emancipation long before it became apparent to them African-American Soldiers • 199 that Lincoln shared this view, and far ahead of a Northern public which, like James Conkling, regarded it as a war for the restoration of the Union as it had been, with slavery intact. William H. Johnson, of the 8th Connecticut Infantry, was arguing that the Civil War was a war for freedom long before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and the Union began recruiting blacks. Writing from North Carolina in 1862, he expressed the “hope to meet the enemy again, fight, conquer him, end the rebellion, and then come home to our Northern people, to freemen who look South with joyous hearts, and behold not a single Slave State—but only free territory, from Maryland to Texas He was confident that the Union armies would, ultimately, defeat the rebels, and hang slavery.” 37 Download 2.25 Mb. Share with your friends:
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