The Fight for Equal Rights: A Recruiting Poster for Black Soldiers in the Civil War

The issues of emancipation and military service were intertwined from the onset of the 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, however, because a Federal law dating from 1792 barred Negroes from bearing arms for the U.S. army (although they had served in the American Revolution and in the War of 1812.) In Boston disappointed would-be volunteers met and passed a resolution requesting that the Government modify its laws to permit their enlistment.

The Lincoln administration wrestled with the idea of authorizing the recruitment of black troops, concerned that such a move would prompt the border states to secede. When General John C. Frémont in Missouri and General David Hunter in South Carolina issued proclamations that emancipated slaves in their military regions and permitted them to enlist, their superiors sternly revoked their orders. By mid-1862, however, the escalating number of former slaves (contrabands), the declining number of white volunteers, and the increasingly pressing personnel needs of the Union Army pushed the Government into reconsidering the ban.

As a result, on July 17, 1862, Congress passed the Second Confiscation and Militia Act, freeing slaves who had masters in the Confederate Army. Two days later, slavery was abolished in the territories of the United States, and on July 22 President Lincoln presented the preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet. After the Union Army turned back Lee’s first invasion of the North at Antietam, MD, and the Emancipation Proclamation was subsequently announced, black recruitment was pursued in earnest. Volunteers from South Carolina, Tennessee, and Massachusetts filled the first authorized black regiments. Recruitment was slow until black leaders such as Frederick Douglass encouraged black men to become soldiers to ensure eventual full citizenship. (Two of Douglass’s own sons contributed to the war effort.) Volunteers began to respond, and in May 1863 the Government established the Bureau of Colored Troops to manage the burgeoning numbers of black soldiers.

By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men (10 percent of the U.S. forces) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war-30,000 of infection or disease. Black soldiers served in artillery and infantry and performed all noncombat support functions that sustain an army, as well. Black carpenters, chaplains, cooks, guards, laborers, nurses, scouts, spies, steamboat pilots, surgeons, and teamsters also contributed to the war cause. There were nearly 80 black commissioned officers. Black women, who could not formally join the Army, nonetheless served as nurses, spies, andscouts, the most famous being Harriet Tubman, who scouted for the 2d South Carolina Volunteers.

Because of prejudice against them, black units were not used in combat as extensively as they might have been. Nevertheless, the soldiers served with distinction in a number of battles. Black infantrymen fought gallantly at Milliken’s Bend, LA; Port Hudson, LA; Petersburg, VA; and Nashville, TN. The July 1863 assault on Fort Wagner, SC, in which the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers lost two-thirds of their officers and half of their troops, was memorably dramatized in the film Glory. By war’s end, 16 black soldiers had been awarded the Medal of Honor for their valor.

In addition to the perils of war faced by all Civil War soldiers, black soldiers faced additional problems stemming from racial prejudice. Racial discrimination was prevalent even in the North, and discriminatory practices permeated the U.S. military. Segregated units were formed with black enlisted men and typically commanded by white officers and black noncommissioned officers. The 54th Massachusetts was commanded by Robert Shaw and the 1st South Carolina by Thomas Wentworth Higginson—both white. Black soldiers were initially paid $10 per month from which $3 was automatically deducted for clothing, resulting in a net pay of $7. In contrast, white soldiers received $13 per month from which no clothing allowance was drawn. In June 1864 Congress granted equal pay to the U.S. Colored Troops and made the action retroactive. Black soldiers, on the other hand, received comparable rations, supplies, and medical care. Casualty rates, nevertheless, were 40 percent higher for blacks than for whites.

The black troops faced greater peril than white troops when captured by the Confederate Army. In 1863 the Confederate Congress threatened to punish severely officers of black troops and to enslave black soldiers. As a result, President Lincoln issued General Order 2 3 3, threatening reprisal on Confederate prisoners of war (POWs) for any mistreatment of black troops. Although the threat generally restrained the Confederates,

black captives were typically treated more harshly than white captives. In perhaps the most heinous known example of abuse, Confederate General Nathan B. Forrest shot black Union soldiers captured at the Fort Pillow, TN, engagement of 1864.

The document featured with this article is a recruiting poster directed at black men during the Civil War. It refers to efforts by the Lincoln administration to provide equal pay for black soldiers and equal protection for black POWs. The original poster is located in the Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780’s-1917, Record Group 94.

TEACHING ACTIVITIES

Analyzing the Document

1. Make a copy of the document for students, and direct them to read the poster and answer the following questions:

a. Who do you think is the intended audience for the poster?

b. What does the Government hope the audience will do?

c. What references to pay do you find in this document?

d. What references to treatment of prisoners of war do you find in this document?

e. What evidence of discrimination during the Civil War do you find in this document?

f. What evidence of Government efforts to improve conditions for black soldiers do you find in this document?

g. What purposes) of the Government is/are served by this poster?

h. How is the design of this poster different from contemporary military recruitment posters? After the students have completed the assignment, review it and answer any questions they might raise. Then discuss more generally the contribution and status of black soldiers in the Civil War.

Click the image to view a larger version

Creative Writing Activities

2. Share with students the information in the introductory note; then assign them to drawon information from the note and the document to write one of the following:

• a journal entry of a member of the U.S. Colored Troops

• a letter from a U.S. Colored Troops soldier to a son who wants to enlist

• an account of the role of black soldiers for either an abolitionist or Confederate newspaper an interior monologue of the wife of a soldier in the U.S. Colored Troops reflecting on the circumstances of her family during his absence.

Oral Reports

3. President Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9981, issued in 1948, marked the transition of the black military experience from a period of segregated troops to one of integrated forces. The order provided for "equal treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services" and commanded the desegregation of the military "as rapidly as possible."

Divide the class into six groups: Civil War, Indian wars, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and Persian Gulf War. Assign each group the task of locating information about black troops engaged in these conflicts and presenting the information they discover in an oral report. Encourage imaginative presentations.

Students should collect information about pay, equipment, service assignments, promotion potential, treatment of black prisoners of war, and the relation of combat service to the struggle for equal rights in each instance. Each group should attempt to locate statistical information about the numbers of black soldiers in arms for their assigned conflict and the numbers of black casualties, decorations, and commissioned officers. Outstanding individual or unit contributions in engagements should be described as well.

For Further Research

4. Select one of the following activities as a follow-up: a. Arrange with the school or public library to set up a reserved reading shelf for your students on the topic of the black Civil War experience.

b. Assign students to read a copy of Robert Lowell’s poem "Colonel Shaw and the Massachusetts’ 54th," alternately titled, "For the Union Dead." (The poem can be located in the Norton Anthology of American Literature.) Ask students to consider the following questions:

• Why does Lowell say "their monument sticks like a fishbone in the city’s throat"?

• Why do you think Shaw’s father wanted no monument "except the ditch, where his son’s body was thrown"?

• What is Lowell’s attitude toward the "stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier"?

• Lowell altered the inscription on the Shaw Memorial that reads "Omnia Reliquit Servare Rem Publicam" ("He leaves all behind to serve the Republic") to his epigraph "Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam" ("They give up everything to serve the Republic"). How is the inscription typical of attitudes in 1897, when the memorial was dedicated? How is the epigraph, written in 1960, different, and what does that say about Lowell’s attitude toward these soldiers?

c. Ask for volunteers to watch the film Glory, a fictional account of the 54th Massachusetts, then the American Experience documentary, The 54th Colored Infantry. (If that tape is not available, you might use the segments on black units in Ken Burns’s Civil War.) Students should then review Glory for historical accuracy.