EE draft 4.docx

8/10/2019 EE draft 4.docx

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To what extent did African Americans shape the coming,

scope, and consequences of the Civil War?

Candidate number: 112265

Word count: 5,980


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List of abbreviations:

P. S. Foner (ed.), The Voice of Black America: Major Speeches by Negroes in the United

States, 1797-1971, (New York, 1972) = VOBA

I. Berlin, B.J. Fields, S.F. Miller, J.P. Reidy, and L.S. Rowland (eds.), Free At Last: A

Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom and the Civil War(New York, 1992) = FAL

R. M. Myers, ed., The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War(New

Haven, 1972) = COP


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In late 1863 and early 1864, Frederick Douglass toured the North, calling for no war but an

abolition war; no peace but an abolition peace; liberty for all, chains for none; the black man

a soldier in war, a laborer in peace; a voter at the South as well as at the North; America his

permanent home, and all Americans his fellow countrymen1. His message was clear for

the black community, this war could only be won with an end to slavery and the black vote.

The American Civil War held its own distinct meaning for all involved, but central to its

conceptualisation was the idea of freedom, whether that was freedom from the Slave

Power, Black Republicans, male oppression, white oppression, or European invaders, all

parties were concerned with being free in the way they wanted to be. Thus the American

Civil War was fought on multiple fronts, between different aggressors: in addition to fighting

Union troops, the Confederates (and Union slaveholders) were forced to fight their slaves,

who rebelled on an unprecedented scale, making the American Civil War part of the largest

slave revolt in US history, and integral to Union victory. Arguably, the motivations of

enslaved people in the American south were different but connected to the motivations of

the free blacks in the North; this essay will thus consider first the role of slaves in the

coming, scope and consequences of the civil war, before moving on to discuss the role of

free blacks. In many ways, the African American war began before the American Civil War,

which was shaped considerably by African Americans for their own purposes.

Slaves, horses and other cattle to be sold at 12 O Clock2, proclaimed one slave market

advertisement, showing how, at least in the eyes of many slave holders and traders, they

had reduced the humans they claimed to own to the status of animals. The historiography

surrounding black involvement in shaping the American Civil War had followed the

1VOBA, pp.299-300.

2P. Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market(Harvard, 2000), p.218.


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principles of the Southern planters by seeing the war as a white mans war, perhaps with

the exception of Cornishs The Sable Arm. Work from the 1860s onwards from historians

such as Genovese and Blassingame has done much to change contemporary views on black

involvement in the coming, scope and consequences of the civil war, and most historians

now take a more positive view. Though some historians debate the extent to which slaves

freed themselves3, this essay takes the view that they did.

Slave resistance was central to the American Civil War. It started as a personal act: to deny

owners their labour and control their own lives, slaves resorted to a variety of methods,

from running to the swamps for a period of time4, where slaves would support themselves

through hunting and exchange with plantation slaves, to more extreme acts such as self-

mutilation5, infanticide, suicide or murder. Often resistance was far more subtle. Slaves

would forget to complete tasks, or would work slower, or hide their children until the

threat of sale had passed

6

. Once the war started, they would threaten to run to Union lines,

or actually run to Union lines, as one woman did repeatedly each time she returned her

workload was lowered7. Resistance became political: enslaved people knew that by doing

this they were undermining the institution of slavery. They had established networks8,

listening to whites conversations, illicitly reading white newspapers and spreading

knowledge around their local communities9. Whites were aware of this and tried to stop it:

3I. Berlin, Who Freed the Slaves? Emancipation and Its Meaningin David Blight and Brooks Simpson (eds.),

Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era(Kent, OH, 1997)4FAL, p.51. On maroons see J.H. Franklin; L. Schweninger, The Quest for Freedom: Runaway Slaves and the

Plantation South inG. Boritt; S. Hancock eds. Slavery, Resistance, Freedom(Oxford, 2007) p.26.5Johnson, Soul by Soul, p.33.

6Ibid., p.32.

7T. Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage: the transformation of the plantation household(Cambridge, 2008),

p.110.8

S. McCurry, Confederate reckoning: power and politics in the Civil War South(Cambridge, Mass., 2010)pp.226-7.9S. Ash, The black experience in the Civil War South(Santa Barbara, 2010), pp. xvii-xviii.


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slave traders often refused to let slaves speak to each other, and throughout the south

there was a fear of slave revolts and uprisings, despite such events being rare, unsuccessful

and involving few people. The Natchez revolt in 1861 was suppressed very quietly10

,

highlighting slaveholders fears of the idea of insurrection spreading. Blacks continued to

resist the slaveocracy after they were freed. They would furiously burn cities and

plantations11

and, on Charles Manigaults Silk Hope plantation his slaves took over the big

house and left the family portraits out in the rain12

, symbolising their takeover of his land

and disdain for his authority. Try as they might, slaveholders were unable to stop blacks

resisting enslavement. In this way, blacks forced the emergence of white abolitionism, and

northern political antagonism with the south by forcing them to consider the slavery

question.

Running away was often so ubiquitous that most masters rarely responded, as slaves were

expected to return

13

, but some didnt and escaped to freedom: to cities, the North or

Mexico. Slaveholders often refused to let their property go, spending vast amounts of

money and resources recovering them. During the American Civil War, slaves ran away in

increasingly large numbers as escape became more feasible due to the advance of Union

troops. They equated Union with freedom from early on. According to one slaveholder: the

Negroes is very Hiley Hope up that they will soon Be free14

.Freedman John Bostons letter

to his wife on January 12, 1862 reflects this idea: as the lord led the Children of Isrel to the

land of Canon So he led me to a land Whare freedom will rain15

. Some slaveholders thought

10D.B. Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World(Oxford, 2006), p.226.

11Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage,p.106.

12W. Dusinberre, Them Dark Days: slavery in the American rice swamps(Oxford, 1996) pp.431-2.

13

Franklin, The Quest for Freedom pp.23-4.14FAL, p.4.

15Ibid., pp.29-30.


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the solution was to refugee the slaves: to remove them beyond the temptation16

and they

also asked the Confederacy to stop impressing slave labour, as for every man the Govt

would obtain...the Enemy would add ten or twenty to his ranks17

, showing the

Confederates were aware that the majority of slaves supported the Union. Thus from early

on, the slaves became a problem for the Confederacy, and forced themselves and their

desires upon the Union.

Generals Butler, Hunter and Frmont contradicted army orders to protect the slaves

Butler justified this by claiming as a military question it would seem to be a measure of

necessity to deprive their masters of their services18

. He also wondered if the war had

changed their status: were they free, or contraband property19

? Frmont was even more

radical in his approach, deciding that any rebels property that fell into his hands would be

confiscated, including slaves, who would hereby [be] declared free men20

, Hunter made a

similar statement which Lincoln soon countermanded

21

. General Sherman was no

abolitionist, and worried that welcoming the slaves would alienate Union slaveholders22

, but

he put them to work anyway23

, highlighting the main attraction of contrabands for the

military. Union Slaveholders were indeed alienated as they were often unable to recover

their slaves, after soldiers, either due to sympathy for the slaves, or because the

contrabands lightened their workload, prevented slaveholders from reclaiming their

16COP, p.929.

17FAL, pp.153-4.

18Ibid., p.10.

19H.S. Commager; M. Cantor, Documents of American History, 10

thedn (Englewood Cliffs, 2 Vols, 1988 ), i, 396-

720

Ibid., 39821

FAL, pp.46-8.22Ibid.,p.15.

23Ibid.,p.13.


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property24

. Some soldiers even raided plantations to liberate slaves from bad owners25

.

However, the slaves new freedom was tenuously held. Many slaves were freed by Union

troops, only to be re-enslaved26

. In the west, negro stealing was a huge part of the

endemic violence that engulfed Kansas and Missouri in the mid-nineteenth century27

.

Despite these difficulties, slaves continued throughout the war to run to Union lines; by

1865, an estimated 200,000 had worked for the Union as labourers during the war28

. By

running to Union lines, they forced the Union to look at them differently, and many whites

changed their opinions on blacks, particularly after black soldiers won victories.

Slaves undermined the system in more subtle ways. Another form of resistance was

learning. Slaves taught themselves to read in secret as it was often illegal for them to learn,

as whites feared black literacy29

. During the war, many freedmen and women taught

recruits to read and write, and established schools in the south. Freedmen saw literacy as

integral to improving their lives: one Northern official wrote about how the children learn,

and a small number of the adults with great eagerness30

. Many free blacks and abolitionists

came to the South to teach during the war and Reconstruction, including the black-led

African Civilisation Society31

. Post-war, Freedmen suffered from restrictive clauses in new

sharecropping contracts32

, as the planter elite, who retained much of their power during

and after Reconstruction, tried to limit access to education for freedmen and their children

to keep them in a permanent servile state. They also tried to introduce literacy clauses into

24FAL,p.16., 31-34.

25Ibid., p.51.

26Ibid.,103-4.

27K. T. Oertel, Bleeding borders: race, gender and violence in pre-Civil War Kansas(Baton Rouge, 2008), p.33.

28J. Harper, Women during the Civil War: an encyclopedia(New York, 2004), p.5

29J. Anderson, The education of blacks in the South, 1860-65(Chapel Hill, 1988), p.17.

30

FAL, p.264.31E. Forbes, African American women during the Civil War(New York, 1998), p.125.

32Anderson, The education of blacks, p.22.


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state constitutions to restrict black voters. During Reconstruction, 2,000 black officials were

elected by 1877 at local, regional, state and federal levels. The majority of them (83%)33

were educated. For blacks, becoming educated was a necessity to prove the worthiness of

their race and to prevent, or at least reduce, white discrimination.

Slaves undermined the Confederacy in other ways, something General Doubleday was

aware of when he issued these instructions on 6th

April, 1862: all negroes...are to be

treated as persons and not as chattels... they make excellent guides They also Know and ...

have exposed the haunts of secession spies and traitors and the existance of reble

organization34

. The Confederates also recognised this: they are traitors who may pilot an

enemy into your bedchamber! They...are the worst of spies35

. In this way, the contrabands

proved their worthiness to the Union: O.M. Mitchel wrote to Stanton on May 4th

, 1862:

with the assistance of the Negroes in watching the River I feel my self sufficiently strong to

defy the enemy

36

. Some ex-slaves showed considerable bravery working as spies. Mary

Elizabeth Bowser37

pretended to be a maid at the Confederate White House, and dubneys

wife38

worked as a washerwoman for a Confederate army camp, signalling the camps

planned movements on her washing line to her husband in the Union camp opposite.

Harriet Tubman spied, liberated slaves, and participated in military operations39

. One man

helped get Union prisoners to safety by taking them across enemy lines40

, another woman

33E. Foner, The Tocsin of Freedom: The Black Leadership of Radical Reconstruction in G. Boritt; S. Hancock

eds. Slavery, Resistance, Freedom(Oxford, 2007), p.131.34

FAL, p.36.35

COP, p.930.36

FAL, p.45.37

R. Hall, Women on the Civil War battlefront(Lawrence, 2006) p.205-6.38

Ibid., p.206.39Forbes,African American women, pp.37-9.

40FAL, p.154-61.


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hid Union prisoners of war in her house and helped them escape41

. Blacks often went back

across enemy lines to recruit more men for the Union cause42

, and were sometimes caught

by Confederate troops, subjected to courts-martial and hanged43

, or punished by their

masters or border ruffians44

. Confederate slaveholders wanted their male slaves

conscripted into the army as labourers, as one planter put it, to relieve [them] of a

dangerous element45

. However, slaves continued to come, in collaboration with black or

white soldiers46

. Perhaps most shockingly, Confederate soldiers were implicated in a scandal

for writing free papers for slaves in return for payment47

- another example of how slaves

worked to fracture the Confederate war effort which also suggests many Confederates did

not care about slavery. The Confederates began to lose morale: by 1864, one Georgian

wanted to return to the Unioneven if emancipationwas the condition48

.

The North had long before decided on that course of action. Lincoln and the Republican

political elite slowly moved towards the idea of uncompensated emancipation as

contrabands and resisting slaves proved their worth in the war: by the coming of the

Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st

1863, Lincoln liberated on paper at least, all

slaves held by rebels: crucially, he retained the support of the Border States and tried to

appease planters in occupied areas of the Confederate States by making the Emancipation

Proclamation not applicable to slaves held by loyal owners. It was not until the 13th

Amendment was ratified that slavery was actually made illegal throughout the United

States. Nevertheless his actions were welcomed by the army: General Halleck, by March 31st

41FAL, p.129.

42Ibid., p.108.

43Ibid., p.96-97.

44Ibid., p.112-15.

45Ibid., p.132-3, 134-5.

46

Ibid., p.112-3, p.71.47Ibid., p.137-9.

48Ibid., p.151-2.


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1863 believed that the north must either destroy the slave-oligarchy or become slaves

themselves...this is the phase which the rebellion has now assumed49

. Whilst for slaves, the

American Civil War had been merely a part of their ongoing war for freedom, for the

Northern whites, the war took a turn in meaning, from being about ensuring their freedom

to ensuring both their and black freedom. Many Northerners, like Lincoln, questioned the

validity of the Emancipation proclamation50

, pronouncing it wholly void unless... as a war

measure51

. Others felt more positively. The Republican abolitionist newspaper, the Chicago

Sun,felt people voted for Lincoln in the 1864 demand[ing] the destruction of slavery52

. An

image depicting Lincoln as Moses with a freedman kneeling in front of him, kissing his

hand53

, shows how powerfully the act was seen by people, creating the idea of Lincoln the

Emancipator, linking the war permanently with the idea of black freedom.

Freedmen soon learnt that they had to work hard to maintain their newfound rights as

Union officials could be as paternalistic as slaveholders. A northern overseer on the

liberated South Carolina Sea Islands warned that if they failed to show now that they could

work as hard without the whip as they used to work with it... the Govt would ... believe all

the stories their masters had told us about their laziness54

. Blacks had to prove that they

could live up to Northern Republican free labour ideology, which meant giving up their

informal slave economy. Many refused to do so. Freedmen were sometimes able to assert

themselves: Philbrick, a northern capitalist, was forced to divide his recently purchased Sea

Islands land into family lots for freedmen to work in, because they refused to work as he

49FAL, p.103.

50W. E. Gienapp, The Civil War and Reconstruction: a documentary collection(New York, 2001), p.166.

51Ibid., p.168.

52Ibid., p.278.

53

Figure 48, Freedom to the Slaves, in Harold Holzer, Gabor S. Boritt, Mark E. Neely, Jr. The Lincoln Image:Abraham Lincoln and the Popular Print (New York, 1984)54

FAL, p.246.


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wanted55

. Freedmen had to deal with Union impressments, as officials seemed to regard

their wishes and family ties as unimportant56

. In addition they faced Confederate raids and

re-enslavement57

. In Union camps, freedmen faced similar problems as well as endemic

sickness due to poor living conditions58

. Female contrabands were generally ignored, or

seen as the wives of male freedmen, maintaining their status as property. Later they were

transported north to fill a labour shortage59

. Some also found work in camps or with soldiers

as washerwomen, cooks and nurses. In Union occupied Louisiana and Mississippi,

slaveholders were forced by the Union army to pay freedmen for their labour. There were

problems with this, however. At least one plantation owner accused black soldiers of

inciting his workers to rebellion60

, and abandoned blacks who had taken over their ex-

owners plantation often had to fight to keep their claim to the land they worked and lived

on61

, despite the praise of government officials: No White men in Louisiana could have

done more or better than these Negroes & they well deserve the reward of their labor62

.

The poor treatment of blacks did not go unnoticed: Major Julian E. Bryant made a damning

report to the District of Northeastern Louisiana Headquarters: generally the negro has been

treated by those employing him, as a mere brute...and not as a free citizen63

.

Blacks in New Orleans complained similarly: the labor system established... does not

practically differ from slavery64

, adding that there is no pratical liberty for the laborers,

55FAL, p.262.

56Ibid., p.200-4.

57Ibid., pp.52-6, 269-77.

58Ibid., p.192.

59L. Schwalm, Between Slavery and Freedom: African American Women and Occupation in the Slave South, in

L. Whites; A. Long, Occupied Women: gender, military occupation and the American Civil War(Baton Rouge,

2009) p.150.60

FAL, p.255-7.61

Ibid., p.110-11, 257-9.62

Ibid., p.111.63Ibid., p.269.

64Ibid., p.319.


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without the right of contracting freely65

In addition to labour restrictions, land was difficult

to obtain and keep. Soldiers from the 33rd

USCI formed a building association in 1863 to

raise enough money to buy land communally66

. Some efforts were made to help freedmen:

Shermans Special Field Orders No. 1567

set aside a large expanse of land for the use of ex-

slaves and their families. In South Carolina, black delegates in 1868 tried to get a federal

loan to buy land for freedmen68

, and the State Land commission helped about 14,000

African Americans obtain land by 187669

. Northern whites showed they were just as

paternalistic as Southerners in believing they had to show blacks how to work and live.

Blacks had already fought to free themselves from one system of exploitation, but had to

fight again to work on their own terms.

Slaves attempted to use the legal system to assert their rights from early on in their war for

freedom. Dred Scott sued for his and his familys freedom several times. Chief Justice Roger

B. Taney finally ruled in 1857 that Dred Scott had no right to sue, as African Americans were

not classified as citizens. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law forced Free States to allow for the

return of slave runaways in the North. This was deeply contested by slaves: they still ran

away and they were protected ever more vociferously by the biracial abolitionist

community. After the outbreak of war, slaves had more and more of an opportunity to

assert their rights. In contraband camps and in the army, blacks gained access to justice for

the first time. In the army, blacks were often court-martialled for mutinies, usually starting

because of white prejudice or discrimination. Courts-martial were generally extremely fair

65FAL, p.320.

66Forbes,African American women, p.14.

67FAL, p.40.

68J. Underwood; W. Burke,At freedoms door: African American founding fathers and lawyers in

Reconstruction South Carolina(Columbia, S.C., 2000), p.7.69A. Ochiai, Harvesting freedom: African American agrarianism in Civil War era South Carolina(Westport,

2004), p.241.


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and colour-blind in pronouncing their judgements70

, and often made allowances for

provocation, i.e. discrimination. Black women were also able to access justice for the first

time. While in Union camps, women were often abused by Union men. But, under the 1863

Enrolment Act, rape by Union soldiers was made a military crime and some women were

able to get some justice. However, black evidence was often questioned71

, and there was a

clear hierarchy of sentencing, with black men receiving the worst punishment and white

men receiving lighter punishment: in one case, Lincoln had a rape case reviewed and the

wealthy white defendant got a presidential pardon for the remainder of his sentence: 9 and

years72

. Black men and women bravely asserted themselves, despite facing discrimination,

as for many it was the first time that they could.

Freedmen often sought official help to recover their families73

. Spotswood Rice wrote to the

owner of his children, promising to reclaim his children: my Children is my own and I expect

to get them...and to execute vengencens

74

. Nancy Johnson and Samuel Larkin lost property

to the incoming Union soldiers and attempted to get compensation75

. While both received

something, it was less than they asked for, and blacks generally were less able to access

compensation, pensions and other government services76

. By participating in the legal

system and calling on the Union government for support, blacks showed they believed they

were part of the Union community.

70C. Samito, The Intersection between Military Justice and Equal Rights: Mutinies, Courts-martial, and Black

Civil War Soldiers, Civil War History, 53.2 (2007), pp.170-202.71

E. Barber; C. Ritter, Physical Abuse...and Rough Handling: Race, Gender and Sexual Justice in the

Occupied South, L. Whites; A. Long, Occupied Women: gender, military occupation and the American Civil War

(Baton Rouge, 2009), p.62.72

Ibid., p.64.73

FAL, pp.120-1, 122-3, 505-7.74

Ibid., p.482.75

Ibid., p.123-9, 266-8.76R. Reid, Freedom for themselves: North Carolinas Black soldiers in the Civil War era(Chapel Hill, 2008),

p.324.


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However, discrimination was everywhere. In Mississippi, a recent state law forced blacks to

find a white employer by the second week of January, or be arrested for vagrancy77

. In

Louisiana, freedmen were often forced into sharecropping and debt peonage78

. The slaves

on Philbricks land complained about abusive managers and that he had promised to sell

land to them but later refused79

. Francis L Cardozo, a black delegate in the South Carolina

Constitutional Convention, spoke in 1868 about the need to break up the plantation system:

give [the planters] an opportunity, breathing time, and they will reorganize the same old

system they had before the war80

. Thus freedmen sought the vote to better protect

themselves. Black Tennesseans claimed historical precedent and their participation in the

war as reason enough for them to vote81

. William H. Gray, a black delegate in the Arkansas

Constitutional Convention in 1868, said he couldnt trust white men to protect his rights: it

would be impossible for the Negro to get justice in a state whereof he was not a full

citizen82

. While some progress was made largely due to the tireless work of freedmen, the

South became increasingly restrictive of black rights after Reconstruction ended,

disenfranchising black males and imposing segregation laws as the whites did what Cardozo

feared.

The black community fought back. The navy was already open to blacks, though they usually

worked in more menial, low-paying jobs83

. Many blacks joined the navy as the war started;

others blacks organised themselves into army regiments: William A. Jones wrote to the

Secretary of War, Simon Cameron on November 27th

, 1861 urging him to receive one or

77FAL, p.524.

78C. Ripley, Slaves and freedmen in Civil War Louisiana(Baton Rouge, 1976), p.197.

79FAL, p.290-4.

80VOBA, p.353.

81

FAL, p.504.82VOBA, p.354-5.

83J. M. McPherson, Ordeal by fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction(Boston, 1992) p.347.


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more regiments (or companies) of the colored of the free States84

. Cameron refused their

service. General Hunter armed his contrabands without permission. In his explanation, he

was unrepentant: I have clothed, equipped and armed the only loyal regiment yet raised in

South Carolina85

, highlighting the fact that blacks were faithful to the Union, and whites

were not. Black soldiers who had fought on the Confederate side in New Orleans had to

work hard to convince Union officers to let them fight on the Union side. The black officers

tried to retain their position: If the world doubts our fighting give us A chance and we will

show then what we can do86

, but were forced to resign. Once black soldiers were admitted

to the army, they could only be led by white officers and were often left to fatigue duty.

Some officers like Colonel Beecher protested this87

, and blacks were eventually (by June

1864) given equal fatigue duty with whites. Blacks had to prove their military prowess to a

disbelieving white world. Songs such as Sambos Right to be Kilt88

showed that for many

whites, blacks were accepted into the army to allow fo r more whites to live. It wasnt until

after battles such as at Fort Wagner that black soldiers were seen positively by the majority

of Northern whites, but many blacks believed it would be worth it to gain white acceptance,

and then the right to vote.

Blacks were denied equal wages after having been promised it89

. The 54th

and 55th

Massachusetts colored regiments protested by refusing (along with their white officers) to

take any pay. Many sought a discharge after protesting for more than a year due to the

financial strain. James Henry Gooding, a freeborn soldier, whose letters home were

published in a Northern newspaper, wrote to Lincoln: all we lack, is a paler hue, and a

84FAL, p.18-19.

85Ibid., p.58.

86Ibid., p.438-9.

87

Ibid., p.459-60.88McPherson, Ordeal by fire, p352.

89W. L. Andrews, The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader(Oxford, 1996), p.225.


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better acquaintance with the Alphabet...We have done a Soldiers Duty. Why cant we have a

Soldiers pay?90

. Blacks were not only denied equal pay, but their families, many of whom

were still left in slavery, were often subjected to violence due to their men being soldiers91

.

The Confederacy attempted slave enlistment in the end, but never endorsed the idea of

emancipation on enlistment92

. In spite of their courageous fighting, blacks continued to face

discrimination.

Blacks were the first troops to enter Richmond on April 4th

1865, highlighting the depth of

change in their roles during the war. After the civil war had ended, the only black troops at

the Grand Review in Washington were contraband labourers; but blacks were present at

other reviews93

. This was partly because they had enlisted later than most white soldiers,

but was also due to racism. Black veterans often faced violence after the war, and found it

more difficult to get work than black civilians and white veterans94

. By the late nineteenth

century, there was little remembrance of black military involvement. In 1897, a memorial to

the Massachusetts 54th

was built, but only Robert Gould Shaw, the white officer, was

sculpted with any likeness95

. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson led a commemorative service of

veterans. No black troops were represented; blacks were only present as labourers96

.

Despite their successful attempt to use their military service to gain more rights, the end of

Reconstruction led to increased white racist violence and restrictive legislation against the

black community.

90FAL, p.462, 467black labourers were sometimes better paid than the soldiers.

91Ibid., p.464.

92Ibid., p.164-5.

93G. Gallagher, The Union War(Cambridge, Mass., 2011), p.11.

94S. Grant, Fighting for Freedom: African-American Soldiers in the Civil War in S. Grant; B. Reid, Themes of the

American Civil War(New York, 2010) p.20395Ibid., p.185.

96Davis, Inhuman Bondage, pp.306-8.


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Free blacks in the North had been clear about what they wanted from the political elite:

enfranchisement and equality. Prior to the Civil War, the north reduced the black vote to a

tiny minority97

. They fought back against this and other inequalities. Benjamin F. Roberts in

Boston took the city to court to try to desegregate schools. Though it took several cases and

some help from white allies (including Charles Sumner), they eventually won98

. Blacks

questioned the right of their government taxing them for services they were excluded

from99

. On August 14th

, 1862, Lincoln met with five black leaders to discuss a colonization

proposal. Lincoln believed that colonization was the only way to deal with the enmity

between whites and blacks in America, saying, in an extremely paternalistic speech, it is

better for us both...to be separated100

. Isiah C. Wears refuted the proposal , saying that

blacks did not need charity; they needed to have the same right to their own labour as

whites101

. Many Northern blacks agreed, though some preferred to take their chances

abroad. After the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation, there were celebrations, but

there was also a sense that blacks deserved more. After the New York Draft Riots, the once

non-violent J.W.C. Pennington called upon the black community to defend itself102

. In New

Orleans, the black community called for the right to vote. When the state denied it, they

sent a delegation north. Arnold Bertonneaus impassioned speeches to the president and

Massachusetts Republicans led Lincoln to write to Governor Hahn on March 13th

, 1864,

asking him to consider giving ten per cent of the black community the vote. He publicly

proposed this idea in his Last Public Address. The passing of the 13th

,14

th and 15

th

97Foner, The Tocsin of Freedom, p.118.

98C. Mabee, Black Freedom: the nonviolent abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War(New York, 1970),

p.172.99

Ibid., p.264.100

Roy P. Baslered., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, (9 vols, New Brunswick, 1953-1955) p.373.101VOBA, p.262.102

Ibid., p.275.


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Amendments to the US constitution eventually assured African Americans the vote, at least

at first. In this way, blacks were very successful in shaping the aims of the civil war.

John S. Rock, the first black man admitted to the Supreme Court, was radical in his call for

emancipation: compensate the master? No, never. It is the slave who ought to be

compensated103

. Northern blacks fought hard to help free enslaved blacks before and

during the civil war, and helped them rebuild the South afterwards. Prior to the start of the

Civil War, free blacks such as David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet were inciting slave

resistance. Walker called upon slaves to learn about the Haitian revolution104

, while

Garnets impassioned speech called for slaves to fight and rather die freemen, than live to

be the slaves105

. Frederick Douglass spent the end of 1863 and beginning of 1864 touring

the North talking about the need for an end to slavery to gain equality106

, as well as

recruiting for the army. Many free blacks opened their homes to fugitives on the

Underground Railroad

107

; others provided help by forming crowds to storm courthouses to

free fugitives108

. Some formed aid societies such as the all-black, female, Salem Female Anti-

Slavery Society109

. In St Louis, contraband women who were transported there were

supported by the all-female, biracial Contraband Relief Society110

. Free blacks worked

tirelessly to liberate slaves and support them after, for moral reasons and to prove to whites

that blacks did not belong in bondage. Their actions became incorporated into the aims of

the civil war, linking the two communities further.

103VOBA, p.257.

104Davis, Inhuman Bondage, p.171.

105VOBA, p.151.

106Ibid., p.298.

107L. Horton, Kidnapping and Resistance: Antislavery Direct Action in the 1850s in D.Blight, Passages to

Freedom: the Underground Railroad in history and memory(Cincinnati, 2004) p.162.108

Ibid., p.167-9.109Harper, Women during the Civil War, p.8.

110Schwalm, Between Slavery and Freedom, p.149.


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The church was instrumental to the African Americans war. In the North, black churches

such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion

Church were at the centre of black communities, and led missionary efforts in the South. In

addition, black ministers were able to speak up for blacks in a position which was more

likely to be respected by the white community. Henry McNeal Turner was a chaplain in the

army during the war, and afterwards did much to convert freedmen to the African

Methodist Episcopal Church. His theological training was biracial and multi-denominational,

providing him with a useful network of allies in his quest to win the South from the white

Southern Methodists111

. Black ministers were respected as leaders of the community

Sherman and Stanton met with local ministers in Savannah in February, 1865, to discuss the

future of the freedmen of Georgia112

. The friendly face of the black church helped the black

community strengthen its ties with the Union, and helped win the majority of Southern

blacks into its influence.

The coming, scope and consequences of the American Civil War affected other minority

groups who were fighting their own battles for freedom. Poor whites in the south felt they

suffered more for a cause that was not theirs113

. They showed their disillusionment by

deserting in ever larger numbers, so that by 1865, two-fifths were absent from the army114

.

Poor Southern women suffered deprivation, but also fought and engaged with the state in

new ways: the Regulators wrote to Vance, the governor of North Carolina in 1863

threatening to take food unless it was supplied, a threat they carried out115

. Poor women

across the Confederacy rioted over food shortages in the spring of 1863. Many Indian tribes

111J. Smith, Black soldiers in blue: African American troops in the Civil War era(Chapel Hill, 2002), p.337.

112FAL,p.309-18.

113

Ibid., p.148-50.114McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, p.124.

115Ibid., p.175.


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20

were forced to pick sides in the conflict, and about 20,000 Indians fought in it116

. Tribes in

Indian Territory suffered particularly badly, as this led to internecine strife, and forced

migration for many tribe members117

. After the civil war, many were forced to renegotiate

their treaties118

. In the North, the Sioux Uprising, from August to December, 1862, led to

severe retaliation, with the execution of 38 Dakota and the tribes expulsion from the

state119

. For the Indians, the Civil War led to so much displacement and internecine warfare

that it could be argued that it marked the end of their efforts to stop American expansion.

Like all minority groups, African Americans were involved in a war with the white male

majority throughout the nineteenth century. Their story is more complicated than many

because in the north and south, blacks had different obstacles to overcome. In the north,

(and later in the south) blacks fought for and won much political freedom as a consequence

of the Civil War. For many black southerners, freedom meant merely the continuation of

their struggle for equality, but it was an enormous step forward. The coming, scope and

consequences of the American Civil War were deeply shaped by the black community,

which forced the war of the white political elite to become a war about emancipation and

black rights through the tenacity of black resistance to the social and political structures

imposed upon them. The words of Henry Highland Garnet were well remembered: let your

motto be resistance! resistance! resistance!120

.

116L. Hauptman, Between two fires: American Indians in the Civil War(New York, 1995), p.x.

117Ibid., p.xi.

118T. Miles, Ties that bind: the story of an Afro-Cherokee family in slavery and freedom(Berkeley, 2005)p.188.

119H. Reilly, The Frontier Newspapers and the coverage of the Plains Indian Wars(Santa Barbara, 2010) p.14-

16.120E. Hutchinsin, Let your motto be resistance: the life and thought of Henry Highland Garnet (Boston, 1972),

p.153.


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