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:
