Themes of the American Civil War
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| Second-class Citizens Frederick Douglass, too, had been arguing that the Civil War had to be linked to the cause of freedom from the earliest days of the war. What Douglass meant by freedom, however, went far beyond George Stephens’s vision. Rather than the destiny of the black man being linked to the Union’s success in the Civil War, Douglass was more of the opinion that the future of the American republican experiment itself rested on the triumph of the black soldier and the freed slave. For Douglass, the evil of slavery had corrupted the white man as much as it had degraded the slave, and the Civil War was an opportunity not just to end the institution but to rededicate the nation to the principles set out in the Declaration of Independence. Freedom for both white and black depended not just on a Union victory but on a complete reassessment of the national ideal. Speaking in Boston in 1862, he advised his audience: My friends, the destiny of the colored American, however this mighty war shall terminate, is the destiny of America. We shall never leave you. The allotments of Providence seem to make the black man of America the open book out of which the American people are to learn lessons of wisdom, power, and goodness—more sublime and glorious than any yet attained by the nations of the old or the new world. Over the bleeding back of the American bondsman we shall learn mercy. In the very extreme difference of color and feature of the negro and the Anglo-Saxon, shall be learned the highest ideas of sacredness of man and the fullness and protection of human brotherhood. 38 Ultimately, the problem facing both African-American soldiers and their noncombatant spokesmen in the North was that their vision of the meaning of the Civil War clashed with that of the majority of whites. For 200 • Susan-Mary Grant blacks, the Civil War offered an opportunity not just to end slavery, but to redefine American national ideals. Their determination to fight in the face of hostility and prejudice left their dedication to these national ideals in no doubt whatsoever. In this regard, African-Americans during the Civil War had afar more expansive, optimistic, and demanding vision of the nation’s future than many whites did. They had proved themselves to be patriot soldiers to afar greater extent than some whites. As George Stephens noted only a few months after Fort Sumter fell, this land must be consecrated to freedom, and we are today the only class of people in the country who are earnestly on the side of freedom.” 39 This message was reiterated time and again in the course of the conflict. Following the Emancipation Proclamation, James Henry Gooding declared that the American people, as a nation, knew not what they were fighting for till recently In the aftermath of the New York City draft riots of George Stephens took the opportunity to remind white Americans that even while your mob-fiends upheld the assassin knife, and brandished the incendiary torch over the heads of our wives and children and to burn their homes, we were doing our utmost to sustain the honor of our country’s flag, to perpetuate, if possible, those civil, social, and political liberties, they, who so malignantly hate us, have so fully enjoyed.” 40 That black troops were showing much more dedication to the nation’s ideals than many whites in the midst of the Civil War cannot have been a message that whites wished to hear. Yet, at the war’s conclusion, the future did, initially, look promising, and several of the black regiments received a heroes welcome. The Massachusetts 54th was honored at a reception in Boston in September, 1865, and the Boston Evening Transcript reported the event in glowing terms: The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, the pioneer State colored regiment of this country, recruited at a time when great prejudices existed against enlisting any but so-called white men in the army, when a colored soldiery was considered in the light of an experiment almost certain to fail, this command—which now returns crowned with laurels, and after two hundred thousand of their brethren, from one end of the traitorous South to the other, have fought themselves into public esteem—had such a reception today as befitted an organization the history of which is admitted to form so conspicuous apart of the annals of the country. 41 The paper’s optimism proved to be premature. Left in the South while many of their white comrades returned home, many African-American soldiers felt abandoned by a federal government that took little account of African-American Soldiers • 201 their needs or their specific circumstances. Ina letter to the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, from North Carolina in October of 1865, one black soldier complained that We have come out Like men & we Expected to be Treeated as men but we have bin Treeated more Like Dogs then men Reporting excessive guard duties, sometimes unrelieved for over forty-eight hours, hospitals full of sick men and cripples although the regiment was reported as at full strength, and with even the fifers & Drummars on guard he charged that because we are colored . . . they think that we Don’t know any Better.” The unequal treatment endured by many African-American troops left in the South at the war’s end was highlighted by another soldier, John Turner, writing in July, My family are sick and absolutely naked,” he complained. They are also threatened with being turned into the street. Now I respectfully ask for my discharge that I maybe able to attend to the wants of my family—or if I cannot obtain my discharge I earnestly petition for my pay Supported by the military authorities, Turner received his discharge the following month, but it was a bitter victory, and too slow incoming Turner’s wife died before he made it home. 42 It is hard to escape the conclusion that the federal government, thrown into mourning and a degree of disarray following Lincoln’s assassination, and having achieved its immediate ends in the defeat of the South, found it too convenient to forget that black Union troops remained there during the early period of Reconstruction. The issue of pay—or rather the lack thereof—had been a sore point for the black regiments during the war at the start of the peace little had changed. In August of 1865 one commander of African-American troops stationed in Texas reported that his troops had not been paid since the end of October, 1864, now nearly ten months.” He stressed: The soldiers having formerly been slaves and recruited at a time when the sentiment in Kentucky was bitterly opposed to the arming of colored troops their women and children were driven from their homes and followed their husbands to the recruiting depot at Paducah Ky. and thereforth became dependent on the wages of the husband and the soldier to supply them with the necessaries of life and to my own knowledge they are constantly writing to send them money and having no means to satisfy their demands it has a tendency to discourage the soldier. 43 Damaging, albeit temporary, neglect by the government in whose name these soldiers served was only compounded by their frequent mistreatment at the hands of returning Confederate troops. A white officer stationed in Louisiana reported the mistreatment of Soldiers wives, and in some cases their ejectment for nonpayment of rent by returned rebels who seem to 202 • Susan-Mary Grant be resuming their old positions allover the country He pointed out that this was against the specific orders issued by the Union authorities, and supposedly enforced through the agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau, but, “owing to the ignorance of many colored persons is very often violated.” Instead, he noted,“persecution is the order of the day amongst these returned rebels against the colored race in general and, he stressed, Soldiers in Download 2.25 Mb. Share with your friends:
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