Themes of the American Civil War

colonial era South Carolina enacted legislation that offered freedom to slaves in return for their military services, although Virginia remained welded to a strict policy of forbidding slaves to bear arms or from serving in the militia except as drummers and trumpeteers.”
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Despite such mixed messages, by the conclusion of the American Revolution—in which some 5,000 out of the troops in Washington’s Continental Army were black—military service was regarded as a valid and successful method of achieving freedom for the slave as well as an important expression of patriotism and loyalty to the new nation. During the War of 1812 the future President Andrew
Jackson rallied black troops to America’s cause with the words As sons of
Freedom you are now called upon to defend your most estimable blessings.
As Americans, your country looks with confidence to her adopted citizens. . Long before the Civil War, therefore, the African-American tradition of equating military service not just with freedom but with citizenship of the
American nation was firmly established.
It was not surprising, therefore, that when hostilities commenced between
North and South in 1861 blacks throughout the North, and some in the
South too, sought to enlist. However, free blacks in the North who sought to respond to Abraham Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers found that their services were not required by a North in which slavery had been abolished but racist assumptions still prevailed. Instead they were told quite firmly that the war was a white man’s fight and offered no role for them. The notable
Northern black leader, Frederick Douglass, himself an escaped slave, summed the matter up succinctly:
Colored men were good enough to fight under Washington. They are not good enough to fight under McClellan. They were good enough to fight under Andrew Jackson. They are not good enough to fight under Gen. Halleck. They were good enough to help win
American independence but they are not good enough to help preserve that independence against treason and rebellion. They were good enough to defend New Orleans but not good enough to defend our poor beleaguered Capital.
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Douglass further recognized that, unless the issue not just of arming free blacks but of freeing the slaves was addressed, the Union stood little chance of success. Until they shall make the cause of their country the cause of freedom he asserted, until they shall strike down slavery, the source and center of this gigantic rebellion, they don’t deserve the support of a single sable arm, nor will it succeed in crushing the cause of our present troubles.”
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The Union, however, showed little sign of wanting the support of any sable arms. In the early months of the conflict the National Intelligencer
reinforced the view that the war has no direct relation to slavery. It is a war
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for the restoration of the Union under the existing constitution.”
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Yet under the pressures of war it became increasingly difficult to maintain such an exclusionary and limited policy. This was particularly true for those generals in the field who found themselves having to deal with not only the free black population but a growing number of slaves who, dislocated by the war, were making their way through to Union lines. Whilst the federal government prevaricated on the question of arming blacks fora variety of political and military reasons—not least of which was the desire not to upset the loyal but slaveholding border states—the Union generals found themselves faced with a problem that required more immediate resolution. Consequently, the first moves both toward arming blacks and freeing slaves during the American
Civil War came not from Washington but from the front line.
An important precedent as far as the slaves were concerned was set very early in the conflict. In 1861 Benjamin F. Butler, in charge of Fortress
Monroe in Virginia, declared that all slaves who escaped to Union lines were
“contraband of war and refused to uphold the terms of the Fugitive Slave
Law which bound him to return them to their owners. Butler’s policy did not have much impact on attitudes in the North, but it did reinforce the views of those like Douglass who felt that slavery was of great military use to the Confederacy—and therefore damaging to the Union—and who consequently felt that the Civil War was likely to turn into a war for freedom if it lasted any length of time at all. For this reason, Butler’s actions did find limited favor in Washington, and the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, founded in December of 1861, strongly supported both emancipation and the arming of blacks.
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Perhaps predictably, however, the first moves to arm blacks and free slaves proved clumsy. In Missouri, John C. Frémont, the commander of the
Department of the West, unilaterally declared martial law in August, and declared all slaves owned by Confederate sympathizers to be free. Lincoln insisted that Frémont modify his announcement to bring it into line with the 1861 Confiscation Act, which removed slaves only from those actively engaged in hostilities against the Union. Then in late March, 1862, Major
General David Hunter, on taking over control of the Department of the
South from Sherman, also declared martial law, emancipated all slaves held in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, and forced as many escaped male slaves as he could find into military service. Not only was Hunter’s announcement also rejected by Lincoln, but the aggressive manner in which he went about recruiting blacks for the Union army served only to alienate the very people whom he was attempting to help. The fact that he was also unable to pay them only made matters worse. Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, the white officer in charge of what became the st South Carolina
Volunteers (and later the rd US. Colored Infantry, had cause to lament
Hunter’s rashness. Higginson praised the military ability of the black troops
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under his command, noting that they take readily to drill, and do not seem to object to discipline they are not especially dull or inattentive they seem fully to understand the importance of the contest, and of their role in it The troops did, however, express suspicion of the federal government, and this Higginson put down to the legacy of bitter distrust bequeathed by the abortive regiment of General Hunter,—into which they were driven like cattle, kept for several months in camp, and then turned off without a shilling, by order of the War Department.”
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More successful were the efforts of Jim Lane in Kansas. A former U.S.
Senator and a brigadier-general in the Union army, Lane chose simply to ignore the War Department and raised a black regiment, the st Kansas
Colored Volunteers, in 1862. This regiment was finally recognized the following year, by which time it had already seen active service against the Confederacy. The War Department did sanction the recruitment of black troops in August 1862, when General Rufus Saxton, the military commander in charge of the sea islands off South Carolina, was authorized to arm, equip, and receive into the service of the United States up to
5,000 black volunteers. Black regiments were not properly raised, however,
until after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were the first states to raise black regiments, and in May, 1863, the War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops, headed by CW. Foster, with the remit of organizing the training and administration of the new black regiments.
Both Northern free blacks and freed slaves in those parts of the South now under Union control were recruited into these regiments, all of whom with the exception of the Connecticut and two of the Massachusetts regiments) came under the new designation United States Colored Troops”
(USCT), whether they were Infantry (USCI), Cavalry (USCC), or Heavy
Artillery (USCHA).

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