African American Civil War

Research Notes

Topic: African American military service during the Civil War

  1. http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blocks-civil-war/

        • News   from Fort Sumter set off a rush by free black men to enlist in U.S. military units. They were turned   away because a Federal law by dating from 1792 barred Negroes from bearing arms for the U.S military units. Although they were forced to serve in the American Revolution and in the War of 1812.

        • The Lincoln administration wrestled with the idea of authorixzing the recruitment of black troops   concerned that such a move would prompt the border states to secede.

        • Black soldiers served in artillery and infantry and performed all noncombat support function that sustain an army as well. Black carpenters, chaplains,cooks,guards,laborers, nurses, scouts,spies,steamboat,pilots, and surgeons.

        • By the end   of the civil war roughly 179,000 blackmen(10% of the Union Army)

        • 19,000 served in the Navy

        • Because of the prejudice against them black units were not used in combat as extensively as they might have been

        • The soldiers   served with distinction in a number of battles; black infantry men fought gallantly at Milliken’s Bend, LA; Port Hudson, LA; Petersburg,VA,and Nashville, TN.

        • Article Ciatation-Freeman Elsie, Wynel l Burroughs Schamel and Jean West. “The Fight for Equal Rights: A Recruiting Poster for Black Soliders in the civil war” Social Edu. 56,2(February   1992):118-120[Revised and updated in 1999 by Budge Wiedman]

  2. http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/history/aa-history.htm

        • “ Once let the black get upon his person the brass letters, U.S. let him get a 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. –“Fredrick Douglass”

        • These words spoken by... [continues]

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