African-Americans served in the in the Civil War on both the Union and Confederate side. In the Union army, over 179,000 African American men served in over 160 units, as well as more serving in the Navy and in support positions. This number comprised of both northern free African Americans and runaway slaves from the South who enlisted to fight. In the Confederacy, African-Americans were still slaves and they served mostly in labor positions. By 1865, the South allowed slaves to enlist but very few actually did.Â
African-Americans In the Union Army
At the onset of the Civil War, free black men rushed to volunteer for service with the Union forces. Although African Americans had served in the army and navy during the American Revolution and in the War of 1812 (few, if any served in the Mexican War), they were not permitted to enlist because of a 1792 law that barred them from bearing arms in the U.S. Army. President Abraham Lincoln also feared that accepting black men into the military would cause border states like Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri to secede.
Free black men were finally permitted to enlist late in 1862, following the passage of the Second Confiscation and Militia Act, which freed slaves who had masters in the Confederate Army, and Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. By May 1863, the Bureau of Colored Troops was established to manage black enlistees. Recruitment was low until active efforts were made to enlist black volunteers—leaders like Frederick Douglass encouraged free black men to volunteer as a way to ensure eventual full citizenship.
The First Black Regiments
The first authorized black regiments—designated colored troops—consisted of recruits from Massachusetts, Tennessee, and South Carolina, the latter in areas under Union control, of course. In May 1863, the Corps d’ Afrique was formed in Louisiana by Union major general Nathanial Banks. He planned for it to consist of 18 regiments, infantry, artillery and cavalry, with engineers and mobile hospitals.
Black Union soldiers did not receive equal pay or equal treatment. They were paid $10 a month, with $3 deducted from that pay for clothing—white soldiers received $13 a month with no clothing deduction—until June 1864, when Congress granted retroactive equal pay. Even in the North, racial discrimination was widespread and blacks were often not treated as equals by white soldiers. In addition, segregated units were formed with black enlisted men commanded by white officers and black non-commissioned officers. Some of the white officers had low opinions of their colored troops and failed to adequately train them.
Black units and soldiers that were captured by the Confederates faced harsher treatment than white prisoners of war. In 1863 the Confederate Congress threatened to punish captured Union officers of black troops and enslave black Union soldiers. In response, Lincoln issued General Order 233, threatening reprisal against Confederate POWs. At the Battle of Fort Pillow, Tennessee, on April 12, 1864, the disorganized Union garrison—almost 600 men, about half of whom were black—suffered nearly 575 casualties when they were attacked by Confederate cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest. The fight was promptly dubbed a massacre in the Northern press, and it was claimed that black soldiers who attempted to surrender were massacred. Other reports say the Union troops and their commanders refused to surrender. Exactly what happened at Fort Pillow remains controversial to this day, fueled by Forrest’s pre-war trade as a slave dealer and his post-war association with the Ku Klux Klan.
Black troops played a major role at the Battle of the Crater during the siege of Petersburg, Virginia, and formed a significant part of the Union force during the Battle of Nashville.
By the time the war ended, some 179,000 black men had served in the Union Army, representing 10 percent of its total. Nearly 20,000 more were in the navy. Nearly 40,000 died, three-fourths of them due to disease or infections.
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