Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Excerpts from Brian Taylor, "Fighting for Citizenship: Black Northerners and the Debate over Military Service in the Civil War" (2020)

  

While black recruiters urged prospective Northern servicemen to submit to temporary inequalities, they somewhat contradictorily insisted that, in day-to-day matters, black troops would serve as equals with white troops, Andrew and other Northern officials had promised equal pay. Clothing, and rations, and African American recruiters frequently repeated these pledges. In March 1863, Douglass told African Americans would might serve, “[I have been] authorized to assure you that you will receive the same wages, the same rations, the same equipments, the same protection, the same treatment and the same bounty secured to white soldiers.” He repeated this vow in May, telling a New York City war meeting that black servicemen would be “treated in all respects as white soldiers [were] treated.” At the end of this event, George T. Downing read a letter from Andrew in which the governor promised black troops equality. When black recruiters like Downing and Douglass promised black men equality to their day-to-day treatment, they expressed their sincere belief in the promises that had received; only later in the year would it become clear that African American combatants would be paid less than their white counterparts. In a sense, though, with these promises of fairness black recruiters deliberately tried to distract from the obvious fact that black soldiers would not enjoy parity in all aspects of their service.

 

When they authorized black enlistment in January 1863, Lincoln and Stanton refused to commission black officers, barring black soldiers from rising above the rank of sergeant major. Some black commissioned officers had served in the Kansas and Louisiana regiments formed in 1862. However, Lincoln and Stanton believed that commissioning black officers for the new regiments would run afoul of public opinion, which was only just accommodating itself to black enlistment. (Brian Taylor, Fighting for Citizenship: Black Northerners and the Debate over Military Service in the Civil War [Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020], 80)

 

Black recruiters could not answer black Northerners’ concerns regarding their prisoner-of-way status so easily; no argument would justify Confederates’ refusal to recognize captured black soldiers as POWs. As early as December 1862, Jefferson Davis remanded captured black soldiers to the various Confederate states, all of which treated black insurrection as a capital offense, for punishment. The following May, the Confederate Congress confirmed this policy. Northern efforts to arm slaves enraged Confederates, and slaves turned soldiers were their chief targets; Southern officials had not by 1863 decided how to treat captured free African American soldiers. Still, black Northerners knew that they might be executed or enslaved if captured, or perhaps murdered on the field by Confederate soldiers seeking to implement government policy more speedily. As early as the summer of 1863, reports came from several battlefields that Confederate troops had murdered captured black soldiers. (Ibid., 81)

 

Continuing its prewar policy of enlisting black sailors, the Union navy welcomed black recruits, free and enslaved. From the war’s earliest days, slaves reached Union ships and naval installations and enlisted alongside white and free black sailors. Black men in the Union navy dealt with racism in the ranks but often enjoyed substantial equality with white sailors, usually serving in integrated crews, receiving equal pay, benefits, and living conditions, and enjoying access to promotion. Black enlistment, Steven J. Ramold has written, was a “godsend” to Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, who faced the formidable task of establishing an effective blockade of Confederate ports and rivers. The navy’s policy elicited little comment. This silence likely stemmed from the fact that the prewar navy had enlisted black men. Black sailors spent long periods at sea or in a small number of eastern naval yards and were literally not as visible to the Northern public as black infantry troops later would be; this fact, combined with Americans’ low estimation of the navy and those who served in it, quieted criticism. See Ramold, Slaves, Sailors, Citizens, 4-5, 36-43, 82-83. William H. Johnson was another black man who fought in white regiments, the Second and Eighty Connecticut, during this period of the war. After seeing action at First Bull Run, Johnson actually wrote to the Pine & Palm to oppose black service, though later in the year he wrote to his friends at the Banneker Institute in Philadelphia to urge them to enlist. Johnson was of a handful of black men already serving in the Union army in 1861. Despite Union officials’ determination to keep their armies segregated, these pioneer black Civil War soldiers enlisted in white regiments, either passing as white men or simply gaining acceptance for their courage and bearing despite their ancestry. William H. Johnson of Connecticut was one of these early black soldiers; in the summer of 1861, he joined the Second Connecticut as an “independent man”—records do not indicate what this term meant—and served with it for ninety days before transferring to the Eighth Connecticut. Johnson fought at the First Battle of Bull Run and participated in the capture of New Bern and Roanoke Island, North Carolina. See William H. Johnson, “Negroes in the Southern Army,” PP, Aug. 2, 1861; William H. Johnson to the Banneker Institute, 18 Dec. 1861, box 5G, Records of the Banneker Institute (1853-1865), Leon B. Gardiner Collection of American Negro Historical Society Records, 1790-1905, HSP; Redkey, Grand Army of Black Men, 10. (Ibid., 184 n. 134)

 

The end of hostilities between Norther and South betokened an uncertain future for African Americans. The transformation the war had wrought inspired hope for further change. But black Northerners knew that the alterations they had already seen had been spurred only by Confederate rebellion. Once that rebellion ended, change might cease. While the war raged, black soldiers were indispensable to the Union, and federal and state officials’ recognition of their contribution to the national survival helped propel reform. But policies that undermined African American citizenship had persisted. Although many black soldiers still had substantial time left to serve in their enlistments, the war’s cessation changed the relationship between black soldiers and the nation. African American troops continued to serve, but they might no longer be seen as allies whose cooperation was vital to the United States’ survival. (Ibid., 125)

 

The reason I picked up this book is part of my ongoing research into D&C 87, and how we might have had a partial fulfillment already of D&C 87:4. For more on Joseph Smith's "Civil War Prophecy," see:


Resources on Joseph Smith's Prophecies