In Meet General Grant (1928), William E. Woodward wrote: "the American Negroes are the only people in the history of the World . . . that ever became free without any effort of their own. . . ." For nearly a century after the American Civil War, Americans ascribed the Union victory to the sole efforts of white men, completely overlooking the contribution made by blacks as soldiers, laborers, and helpers in the Union army. Woodward expressed a common Southern attitude toward African-Americans in saying that they ". . . sang melodious spirituals, and believed that some Yankee would soon come along and give each of them forty acres of land and a mule." ¹

Recent publications have attempted to bridge the gap concerning African-American participation in the Civil War. These works are general in nature or they target well known black regiments such as the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, the first northern black regiment to be formed. The popular movie, Glory, a Tri-star production directed by Ed Zwick, captured the public's attention when it depicted the regiment's participation in the famed assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina. Documentaries and essays summarizing the feats of the 54th Massachusetts are abundant. Less well known are the achievements of the other 165 black regiments that served in the Union army.

The first several black regiments to be raised consisted largely of free blacks. Many of the regiments formed later in the war were comprised almost entirely of southern slaves. The subordinate position held by fugitive slaves during the war caused many to question their ability to perform as soldiers. The idea of arming ex-slaves brought even more criticism from those in opposition to arming blacks in general. The latter issue raised the question of the fundamental nature of African-Americans; whether or not they were biologically inferior or could adequately function as soldiers. The former issue, however, was concerned with the nature of slavery. Did the institution of slavery dehumanize blacks to the point that they were less fit for service? Those who believed that blacks were inherently inferior were racists. But those concerned about the effects of slavery included abolitionists and sympathetic northerners and probably even blacks themselves.

The 1st North Carolina Colored Regiment of Volunteers (1st NCCV) was one of the first regiments to be raised that consisted predominantly of ex-slaves. It formed part of the North Carolina black brigade organized and commanded by Brig. Gen. Edward A. Wild. The move to recruit large numbers of ex-slaves hinged upon the success of the 1st NCCV and other similar regiments formed early in 1863. As we will see, the performance of the 1st NCCV resolved the issue of whether or not ex-slaves were fit for service.

The 1st NCCV did not participate in a highly publicized assault, nor did it win a major battle for the Union army. It did, however, serve with the 54th Massachusetts in two battles where both regiments sacrificed hundreds of men in preventing a Union rout. The recruitment and formation of the 1st NCCV involved a unique set of circumstances. Its military duties and experiences, however, were typical of black regiments during the war, especially concerning racism and discrimination from white troops and officers.

This regimental study will begin by summarizing selected historical works of scholarship concerning black soldiers in the Civil War and will provide a general background to employing blacks in the Union army. It will examine the recruiting process of the 1st NCCV and will also review the selection of its officers, a very important factor to the success of black regiments. Finally, it will survey the two major battles involving the regiment and address the question of southern blacks' willingness and ability to fight.

Historiography

Bell Irvin Wiley was the first historian to clarify the role performed by southern blacks in the Civil War. Wiley's Southern Negroes, 1861-1865 (1938) emphasizes how the Union army impacted the lives of southern blacks when it advanced into southern territory. Thousands of slaves fled to Union lines seeking freedom. Wiley's account is sympathetic to the use of blacks as laborers, workers, and spies in the Union army, but it is antagonistic towards employing blacks as soldiers. He argues that northern abolitionists unethically heralded the achievements of black troops and attempted to cover up common vices such as lying, stealing, "feigning sickness," and quarreling. Wiley concludes that the performance of black soldiers in battle was not convincing. "The conduct of the Negroes . . . did not prove them good or bad fighters," he reported. They were capable of "performing acts of reckless courage," but "their dependability in standing against sustained resistance was left for future determination." ²

Benjamin Quarles' The Negro in the Civil War goes to the other extreme insisting that black soldiers were blameless. Black troops took pride in their uniform, not wanting to disgrace themselves. "For dress parade, Negro soldiers reported with arms burnished, belts polished, shoes blacked and clothes brushed," Quarles affirms. He noted that the staff officers were pleased to find the soldiers' barracks in an orderly appearance and their campgrounds neat and clean. Black recruits pained themselves to do the militarily correct thing. ³ According to Quarles, this same attitude carried over to the battlefield. Quarles reviews several battles mentioned in Wiley's book, but his conclusion is quite different.

In surveying the Battle of Port Hudson, fought in May 1863, Quarles quotes a regimental surgeon who wrote that he had "seen all kinds of soldiers," yet none who "for courage and unflinching bravery surpass our colored." The black troops gave three successive charges against the Rebel fortification and each time were met with tremendous rounds of musketry. The Union operation was unsuccessful, but, according to Quarles, the "behavior of the black regiments was one bright spot." ⁴

Concerning the battle at Milliken's Bend, fought one month after Port Hudson, Quarles quotes the Assistant Secretary of War who reported that the conflict "completely revolutionized the sentiment of the army with regard to the employment of Negro troops." Lt. Gen. Ulysses Grant's correspondent sent word that, "The capacity of the Negro to defend his liberty . . . have [sic] been put to such a test under our observation as to be beyond further doubt." One commander voiced a similar opinion: "It is impossible for men to show greater bravery than the Negro troops in that fight." The casualty list at Milliken's Bend reveal that 39 percent of the black soldiers were killed or wounded. This indicates the kind of action given by black regiments in the engagement, according to Quarles.

Quarles ends his review with President Lincoln's opinion of employing black soldiers. "Some commanders . . . who have given us our most important successes . . . believe that the emancipation policy and the use of colored troops constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion," wrote the President in August 1863. Quarles maintains that throughout their entire service, African-Americans displayed bravery and valor and demonstrated the ability to take the offensive against enemy troops. ⁵

Dudley Cornish was the first historian to devote an entire book to the account of black troops in the Civil War. In The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865, (1956), he makes a fresh examination of the record in order to rewrite the history of black soldiers. He criticizes earlier historians claiming that "Men living in a Jim Crow society tend to write Jim Crow history." Cornish wants Americans to be aware that the African-American has been more than a "cotton-chopin, banjo-strumming, irresponsible, shadowy figure on the outskirts of American life." ⁶

Cornish points out that previous conflicts involving black troops failed to eradicate the slave status of blacks. Had they given up efforts to fight in the Civil War, he maintains, blacks would have been excluded indefinitely from American citizenship. Their continual struggle helped win the freedom of nearly four million slaves and provided blacks a limited opportunity in the political sphere.

Cornish's monograph recounts the pre-Emancipation efforts of individual commanders to organize black regiments. It follows the establishment of the Bureau of Colored Troops formed after the Emancipation Proclamation and summarizes the general military activities of black soldiers. The chapter titled "Proof of Pudding is in the Eating" depicts the success of black troops in major campaigns and describes the dangers they encountered at the hands of vengeful Rebels. Other chapters review the struggles for equal pay and equal treatment as soldiers in the United States Army.

According to Cornish, a new chapter had been written by African-Americans. "Colored soldiers . . . with white troops . . . had mingled together in the charge. . . . They had assisted each other from the field when wounded, and they lay side by side in death. . . . All who witnessed their conduct gave them equal praise," he quotes a regimental commander. ⁷ Cornish concludes by quoting Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler who indicated that the black soldier had "with the bayonet . . . unlocked the iron barred gates of prejudice, and opened new fields of freedom, liberty, and equality of right." ⁸

At the height of the Civil Rights movement, James M. McPherson, author of several works on African-American history, compiled a documentary collection depicting the roles of blacks in the war, largely from their own writings and literature. Many of these manuscript sources, originating from black leaders, editors, soldiers, nurses, schoolteachers, and ordinary workers, were in-troduced to the general reader for the first time.

These documents provide a sense of how African-Americans felt during the push for emancipation; how they responded to the need for more recruits in the North; and how they confronted issues such as colonization, mob violence, equal pay for black soldiers, and charges of racial inferiority. McPherson adequately reviews the employment of blacks as spies and laborers for the Union army and the long, arduous process of arming black soldiers. Observations by field commanders, statements by black troops, and newspaper articles are his means of surveying and appraising the activity of black soldiers. His documentary, entitled The Negro's Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted during the War for the Union, is well suited for the casual inquirer or the investigative scholar.

A recent volume, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (1990), elucidates the relationship between white officers and their black commands. Joseph T. Glatthaar begins his 360-page analysis of black troops by recounting the aborted attempts at employing blacks as soldiers. It reveals the hardships and harsh realities that confronted black troops and their white officers once they were mustered into service. Glatthaar provides lengthy detail concerning the recruitment of officers, the training and discipline of men, and the trials they endured. Black troops confronted racism and prejudice and had to prove their valor on the battlefield.

According to Glatthaar, the commissioned officers "bore the marks of their era and background." They were forced to lay aside "powerful preconceptions" and "mental and emotional baggage." Many were successful in overcoming these feelings, forging deep relationships with their men. According to Glatthaar, these relationships allowed black regiments to achieve a high degree of success during the war. ⁹

Glatthaar's monograph, complete with appendices, notes, and twenty-one pages of bibliography, establishes him as the authority on Civil War black troops. His work and others not mentioned serve to broaden our vision of blacks' participation in the Civil War and to satisfy the need for a more complete African-American history of this era.

Glatthaar has provided a detailed summary of the African-American's Civil War. He indicates that the war began as a "white man's war." Most Americans, including the President, felt the purpose of the war was to uphold the Constitution by restoring the Union. Slavery was not a major issue at first. The War Department recognized the need for manpower as the once conceived "short war" had no end in sight. The need for more recruits and the broadening of the war aims to abolish slavery helped open the door for black service.

The Union army established a blockade to prevent supplies from going in or out of Confederate states. Federal troops occupied coastal areas in 1861, displacing southern plantation owners and leaving thousands of slaves unattended. These abandoned slaves hoped to find shelter and refuge behind Federal lines, but Union commanders were compelled to return slaves to their masters under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. As more and more slaves crossed over, however, commanding officers began to realize the potential for labor.

Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, commanding officer at Fortress Monroe, ignored the Fugitive Slave Act when three escapees sought refuge in his camp. Instead of allowing Confederate authorities to recapture the runaways, he employed them in the Union army and labeled them "contraband of war." Butler was first to apply the term "contraband" to freedmen employed by the Federal forces.

On August 6, 1861, Congress passed a confiscation act supporting the use of ex-slaves for Union labor. The act authorized the seizure of any property used in the "aid of rebellion," including slaves previously assigned to work on Confederate fortifications or naval vessels. ¹⁰ This act brought slavery to the forefront of legal and political thought. Abolitionists and black leaders pointed out that slaves served as a "tower of strength" for the Confederacy. They believed that the Union army could deliver a blow to the southern economy by confiscating slaves. Farmers could no longer leave their plantations, fight for the South, and still maintain their crops. Although the southern economy was not devastated, almost 200,000 escaped slaves had served as laborers, cooks, spies, nurses, carpenters, and teamsters for the Union army by the end of the war. ¹¹

President Lincoln tried to avoid the issue of arming blacks. Frederick Douglass, the leading lobbyist for blacks, contended that black regiments would equal two white ones if allowed to fight. He believed that armed blacks carrying the banner of emancipation into the South would soon end the war. Douglass despised Lincoln's tenderness toward the "blood thirsty slaveholding traitors" and prophesied that the North would not succeed unless it made the destruction of slavery its priority. ¹²

Early in 1862, several commanders considered the idea of arming blacks. Maj. Gen. David Hunter, the new commander of the Department of the South, recognized the need for more troops and organized a black regiment on the Sea Islands of South Carolina. He went beyond the bounds of the confiscation act, declaring martial law in three states and proclaiming slaves to be free. Sensitive to the border states, Lincoln voided Hunter's proclamation. He feared that extreme action supported by the War Department might cause border states to secede and join the rebellion. Impatient for volunteers, Hunter resorted to conscription in order to fill up the ranks. Though a second confiscation act and the Militia Act of July 17 authorized Lincoln to raise black units, he refused to validate Hunter's efforts in the Sea Islands. Hunter was forced to disband his black troops, and his project was not continued until General Rufus Saxton was later sent to the Sea Islands.

In the West, Brig. Gen. James Lane of Kansas was unaware of Lincoln's refusal to arm blacks. Lane raised two regiments of black infantry by the authority of the Confiscation Act of July 17 to help fight Missouri and Kansas bushwhackers. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton informed Lane that Lincoln had not yet authorized the recruitment of black troops, but Lane was not deterred from filling the ranks of his regiments. Lane's troops, composed largely of free northern blacks, were officially mustered into service on January 13, 1863, as the 1st Regiment of Kansas Colored Volunteers. ¹³ Kansas became the first of the free states to enroll units of black soldiers.

Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler, commanding the Department of New Orleans in 1862, at first devalued the use of black troops. On August 22, however, he welcomed an ex-Confederate detail of black soldiers into his Union forces when threatened by a Confederate attack. In organizing a regiment, he issued an invitation only to freedmen who had previously enrolled in Confederate militia units, purposefully excluding refugee slaves. Butler was cautious about arming free blacks, much less fugitives who had known little else but the hardships of slavery. The regiment was mustered into service on September 27, 1862, and was named the 1st Regiment Louisiana Native Guards. A second regiment was mustered in on October 12 and a third on November 24. ¹⁴

On August 25, 1862, General Saxton received authority to organize black regiments in South Carolina not to exceed five thousand soldiers. ¹⁵ Saxton was the first to receive official orders for recruiting black soldiers. Thus the War Department recognized African-Americans as official fighting members of the Union army.

Saxton found it difficult to follow Hunter's lead when he reached the Sea Islands. Hunter's conscription policies and his failure to discipline abusive white officers caused ex-slaves to become wary of the command at Port Royal. Lincoln's pre-Emancipation Proclamation address helped to boost blacks' confidence in the Union army. When Saxton had mustered enough recruits to form a regiment, he placed Thomas Wentworth Higginson of Massachusetts in charge and named the regiment the 1st South Carolina Colored Volunteers (SCCV). The 1st SCCV was the fifth black regiment to be officially recognized by the Union army. ¹⁶ Three other South Carolina regiments were eventually organized and mustered into service.

Certain events had persuaded the Lincoln administration to reconsider its original war aims. McClellan's Peninsula campaign was a failure, Pope was defeated at Second Bull Run, Lee was thrusting north of the Potomac, and elections were around the corner. Lincoln was also feeling pressure from black leaders and abolitionists who insisted that blacks had the right to fight against the southern institution of slavery.

Lincoln had announced on September 22, 1862, that his Proclamation would take effect the following January 1. He declared emancipation for all slaves in those states that had not given up arms against the United States government. He realized that blacks were needed to supplement for the dwindling number of white volunteers. In order to arm them, it was logical that they should be emancipated. He was still concerned with the border states, however, and appeasing their fears of the possibility of servile insurrections. In his Proclamation, Lincoln still maintained the notion that the answer to slavery was colonization, an idea that he propagated until his assassination.

When the Proclamation became effective, only a few officials received authority to raise black regiments. Governor John Andrew of Massachusetts was one such official. He wrote to Francis G. Shaw in February 1863, offering the colonecy of a regiment soon to be organized to his son Robert. Having Robert lead a regiment of blacks would be an extension of Francis Shaw's long struggle against southern slavery. ¹⁷ The 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Colored Volunteers was to be an experiment to set precedents for future northern regiments. The success of this regiment would be vital in gaining northern support. The 54th proved itself with an aggressive assault against Fort Wagner, South Carolina, on July 17, 1863. There, Col. Robert Gould Shaw and over 40 percent of the 630 officers and men present were killed in action. ¹⁸ Because of the valor and bravery exhibited by these men, thousands of free blacks and southern ex-slaves joined the Union army.

Once Congress and the Lincoln administration opened the door for blacks to fight, the War Department recognized the need for an adequate plan to recruit black troops. To address this problem, the War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops in May 1863, under Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas. The bureau was to establish effective methods of recruitment and provide for the selection of officers. The War Department gave Thomas authority to raise as many black regiments as possible throughout the Mississippi Valley region. He successfully recruited 76,000 black troops, 41 percent of the total number who served in the Union army.

By October 31, 1863, the Union army had authorized 58 black regiments and had recruited a total of 38,707 soldiers of African descent. ¹⁹ The Lincoln Administration and the people of the North were committed to employing blacks as soldiers. The establishment of the Bureau of Colored Troops made the recruiting of African-Americans a "professional, organized, regularized activity" under the control of Washington. ²⁰ With the exception of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts, all black regiments were renamed "United States Colored Troops" early in 1864 and were assigned a number. Nearly 180,000 blacks had served in the Union army in 166 regiments by the time Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Seventeen black soldiers were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, and at least one-hundred received commissions as officers.

Of the first thirty black regiments to be formed, four were raised in North Carolina. By 1863, thousands of fugitive slaves had concentrated in coastal Carolina towns. The persistence of a northern delegation of anti-slavery men prompted the War Department to turn its attention to North Carolina. On April 13, 1863, the War Department authorized Brig. Gen. Edward A. Wild "to raise a brigade (of four regiments) of North Carolina volunteer infantry, to be recruited in that state, and to serve for three years or during the war." ²¹ Wild went to New Bern to begin his task.

Footnotes for Chapter 1
1. William E. Woodward, Meet General Grant (1928; reprint, New York: Liveright, 1965), 372 (page references are to original edition).
2. Bell Irvin Wiley, Southern Negroes, 1861-1865 (New York: Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1938), 315, 334, 340-41.
3. Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1953), 212.
4. Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War, 218, 219.
5. Ibid., 223-224.
6. Dudley Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (1956; reprint, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1966), Foreword (page references are to reprint edition).
7. Ibid., 289.
8. Ibid., 290.
9. Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (New York: The Free Press, a Division of Macmillan, Inc., 1990), 81-82.
10. Ibid., 28.
11. James M. McPherson, The Negro's Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted During the War for the Union (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965; reprint, New York: Ballantine Books, 1991), 145 (page references are to reprint edition).
12. Cornish, The Sable Arm, 5.
13. Ibid., 77.
14. Ibid., 65-67.
15. Ibid., 80.
16. Ibid., 92.
17. Peter Burchard, One Gallant Rush: Robert Gould Shaw and His Brave Black Regiment (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965), 73-74.
18. Glatthaar, Forged In Battle, 138.
19. General Foster to Secretary of War Stanton, Report of the operations of the Bureau, October 31, 1863, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901), ser.3, 3:1113 (Hereafter ORA).
20. Cornish, The Sable Arm, 130.
21. Thomas M. Vincent, Assistant Adjutant-General, to Colonel Edward A. Wild, April 13, 1863, ORA, ser.3, 3:122.

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