Struggle for Freedom and Citizenship

I. Reckoning with Slavery

  • Emancipation was to a large extent the result of haphazard Union policies
  • Actions taken by Union generals in response to black refugees who crossed into Union lines
  • Congress and Lincoln responded to what was happening in the field
  • Quickly became clear once the fighting started that Union generals and the government could not avoid addressing the issue

II. Benjamin Butler

  • Initially in charge of Fort Monroe
  • As slaves fled toward the fort, he declared them “contraband of war.”
    • Decision he made on his own

III. Contraband “policy”

  • Tremendously contentious
    • Lincoln was trying to hold the allegiance of border states
      • Wanted to assure them he wouldn’t challenge slavery
  • Many commanding officers opposed the policy
    • No consistent approach—some continued to return slaves
  • August 1861: Congress passed the 1st Confiscation Act
    • Effectively endorsed what Butler did
    • Pro-Confederate slaveowners, or those whose slaves were contributing to Confederate cause, no longer had to be returned

IV. John C. Fremont

  • Commander in charge of the Western Department
    • Famed explorer
    • First Republican presidential candidate back in 1856
  • August 1861: declared martial law in Missouri
  • Began confiscating secessionists’ property/slaves
    • Declared all slaves of disloyal masters emancipated
  • Lincoln incensed
    • Told him to rescind order; when he refused, Lincoln fired him
  • But Fremont had put the issue of emancipation on the table

V. Major General John Hunter

  • Another case of a general pushing toward emancipation
  • In charge of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina; masters/whites had fled
  • Requested permission to create of black regiments
  • Then issued General Order 11, freeing slaves in Georgia, Florida, South Carolina
  • Again Lincoln nullified the order; refused to equip or pay his troops

VI. Fugitive Slaves/Refugees

  • Put to work doing the most difficult and dirty jobs
  • Often treated very poorly
  • No national policy regarding pay or working conditions
  • Creation of shantytowns outside Union-occupied cites
    • Rampant disease; utter destitution; incredibly high death rates
  • Other blacks became camp followers
  • As the costs of war mounted, and the Union moved toward a policy of “hard war,” white Northerners grew more open to the idea of black soldiers

VII. Moving toward Black enlistment

  • African Americans had wanted to enlist from the beginning, but they were turned away
    • 1792 law barring them from the military
  • July 17, 1862: Congress passed the Second Confiscation and Militia Act
    • Decreed that slaves who crossed over to Union lines were “forever free,” provided they had been held by supporters of the Confederacy
      • Used the language “forever free”
  • July 19, 1862: Congress banned slavery in the territories
  • July 22, 1862: Pres. Lincoln presented the preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet

VIII. Formation of Colored Regiments

  • May 1863: Government established the Bureau of Colored Troops
    • Key black leaders urged enlistment on the grounds that it would lead to citizenship rights
  • Frederick Douglass: “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.”

IX. Black troops

  • In the end, roughly 180,000 black men serve (10% of the Union Army); another 19,000 in the Navy
    • 93,000 from Confederacy
    • 40,000 from border slave states
    • 53,000 from free states or Canada
  • Diverse lot
    • Illiterate freedmen
    • Well educated freedmen from cities like Boston, Philadelphia

X. Discrimination in the military

  • Prevented from serving as officers
  • Often commanded by racist whites; brutal treatment
  • Last to get needed supplies
  • Unequal pay
    • 54th Mass. refused their pay for a year in protest
    • July 1864, Congress finally passed an equal pay law, but to did not grant full back to all; finally did so a year later
  • Disciplined more harshly
    • 21% of soldiers executed were black; 80% of those who were executed for mutiny
  • Often kept from combat; put in menial jobs

XII. High morbidity rates from disease

  • Around 18% (twice as high as white)
  • Poor camp conditions; inadequate food
  • Ex-slaves often already in a weakened state
  • Medical care was worse than for whites
    • Not enough doctors
  • But conditions were even worse for blacks in contraband camps (Jim Downs)

XIII. Impact of black troops

  • Did change many white Northerners’ attitudes toward African Americans
    • Union troops often first to express altered views
  • Numerous examples of black heroism
  • Port Hudson, Louisiana
    • Captain Robert F. Wilkinson wrote, “One thing I am glad to say, that is that the black troops at P. Hudson fought & acted superbly. The theory of negro inefficiency is, I am very thankful at last thoroughly Exploded by facts. We shall shortly have a splendid army of thousands of them.”
  • Battle of Milliken’s Bend, June 1863
  • Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863

XIV. Meaning of military service for blacks

  • Opportunity to travel; meet new people
  • Opportunity to gain some education
    • Created schools; formed various societies
  • First time well-educated Northern blacks and southern blacks spent time together
    • Northern blacks helped to educate and politicize southern blacks; contact with southern blacks expands Northern blacks’ sense of racial identification
  • Manhood
    • Military service as the quintessential means of demonstrating manhood and fitness for citizenship