4.+Black+Americans+in+the+US+Civil+War

Black recruits from the United States Coloured Troops (4th Regiment)
 * Introduction **

On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation declaring that all slaves in parts of the country controlled by the Confederacy were now free. The Emancipation Proclamation also included a paragraph in which Lincoln welcomed slaves to serve in the Union army and navy.

Black troops had been fighting as state militia and serving in support positions since early in the war. What was it about Lincoln's call for regular troops that was significant?

Frederick Douglass, an ex-slave and a prominent abolitionist, believed that allowing black men to fight as soldiers was the first step in getting them equal rights. He said, "Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters 'US,' let him get an eagle on his button and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pockets and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States."

Fighting for their own freedom and for that of their families, there was nothing that gave more hope to a slave or caused more rage in the heart of a Confederate soldier than the sight of black men in Federal uniforms. Their influence was greater than the simple addition of 180,000 troops to the Union army and 10,000 sailors to the Union navy.



 * Activity 1 **

Create a timeline individually that clearly shows the events and dates below.

 • Civil War begins, April 12, 1861  • First official authorization to use black men in the military-but not as armed soldiers (Second Confiscation and Militia Act), July 17, 1862  • Emancipation Proclamation (freeing slaves and authorizing use of black men as soldiers), January 1, 1863  • U.S. Bureau of Colored Troops established, March 22, 1863  • First regiment of U.S. Colored Troops mustered into service, June 30, 1863  • Equal pay granted for black soldiers who had been free before the war began, June 22, 1864  • Equal pay for all black soldiers, March 8, 1865 <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> • Robert E. Lee surrenders to U.S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the Civil War, April 9, 1865 <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> • Last U.S.C.T. regiment mustered out of service, December 1867


 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Activity 2 **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Read Joseph Logan's "Volunteer Enlistment" paper below and answer the questions that follow.



<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">1. From these papers, what do we know about Joseph Logan? List at least FIVE things that we can learn about Logan from these papers. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">2. What word has been inserted by hand into the eighth line in the sentence beginning "Do also agree"? <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">3. Why do you think this word has been inserted there?
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Questions: **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">A private in the U.S. Colored Troops received $10 month with $3 taken out of that for clothes. White privates received $13 month with an additional allowance of $3.50 for clothes. Not until June 22, 1864 was an order issued ensuring equal pay regardless of race. But this only applied to soldiers who had been free men before April 19, 1861. It was March 8, 1865- barely a month before the end of the war--when all black soldiers were finally guaranteed equal pay with white soldiers of the same rank.


 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Activity 3: **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Compare what you know about Joseph Logan to the typical Union soldier described below. List as many similarities and differences as you can.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">**The Union Soldier** <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Most of the Union Army was made up of young white men. Although soldiers generally ranged in age from 18 to 45, boys as young as 12 (and a few even younger) often served as cavalry buglers or drummer boys, and some men in their fifties, sixties, and seventies enlisted as privates. Most of the Union soldiers were under 30.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">While almost half of the Union soldiers had been farmers before joining the Army, the others represented a wide variety of expertise and occupations. Hailing from the industrial cities of the North, they ranged from unskilled laborers to engineers, to hairdressers, to mechanics, to college professors. Their education and schooling was just as diverse. Soldiers with university degrees marched beside men who could neither read nor write. In general, however, most of the Union forces had had at least some schooling.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Overwhelmingly, Union soldiers were white. It was not until May 22, 1863 that the U.S. War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops enabling black men to serve as soldiers though many performed supporting duties such as cooks, messengers and builders for the Army prior to being allowed to serve as soldiers. By the end of the war, 178,975 enlisted men served in the U.S. Army as members of the U.S. Colored Troops and 9,695 served in the U.S. Navy. In addition, three regiments of Native Americans, the Indian Home Guard, fought for the Union in the western theater of the war.


 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Extension Activity **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">Study the following sources and answer the questions that follow:

<span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">August 5, 1865 illustration entitled "Franchise" from Harper's Weekly.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">Source A: **
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">Source B: **

1. What differences do you see between the recruits (probably runaway slaves) on the left and the U.S.C.T. soldiers on the right in Source A?

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">2. The image in Source B shows a black man in a United States uniform, and there is a caption in the original that reads, "and not this man?" What point is the artist trying to make?