African Americans and the War

Soldiers

Federal efforts to free slaves and even enlist them in the army during the first year of the war were hesitant and often countermanded by higher authorities, including Lincoln.  It was simply not clear whether the government, in its fight to save the Union, could or should dismantle the institution of slavery.  Congress authorized the enlistment of blacks in July 1862, but the administration did not order a general mobilization of black troops rather, Lincoln moved slowly to integrate African American troops into the war effort. Lincoln’s Proclamation provided a legal foundation for the enlistment of black soldiers.   More than 182,000 blacks, including ex-slaves, served in Federal armies during the Civil War. Probably the best known regiment is the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, whose futile charge at Battery Wagner near Charleston was immortalized in the movie “Glory.”  But blacks fought well in many more important battles, and some won Medals of Honor.   Another 30,000 blacks joined the Federal navy, comprising one fourth of its total.

Spies

Even before serving in the Northern army, some African-Americans operated as spies.  One of the most famous northern spies was Harriet Tubman, who escaped from slavery in 1849 and lived and worked for a time in Philadelphia. She agreed to become a spy for the federal government and moved to Beaufort, S. C. in 1862 to a Union army stronghold there. By traveling the terrain disguised as a deranged ex-slave, she convinced 756 slaves from the Combahee River area of the Sea Islands to escape to Union lines.  Turning to help the Union cause, over 400 black men formed the United States Colored Troops while the women stayed under Union protection to grow crops and take care of their families and the soldiers’ needs.  Tubman also acted as a scout helping U.S. soldiers to conduct raids on Confederate ammunition and supply depots; she accompanied the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, made up of black soldiers from the North, to Fort Wagner, where more than 300 of them lost their lives.

The Confederacy utilized slave labor in the war effort, working bondsmen and women in the capacities of cooking, laundering, medical care, as well as railroad and industrial work. Some slaveholders resented the impressments of their slaves into such service. Many slaves accompanied their masters to battle.

Slave families

Slave families suffered greatly during the war. When the Confederate government in 1862 began to conscript male slaves to work on the barricades, trenches, and the levees, it left behind women and children to do the work on the plantation.  Slave women continued the rice planting in the Low Country of South Carolina, and it was hard, demanding work. Wearing rags on their feet for lack of shoes, the women complained bitterly to overseers. Additionally the war’s blockade meant that slave women had to make cloth since it was no longer available from the North or from England. Late into the night slave women worked extra hours carding, spinning, dying, and weaving on looms that had not seen service in decades.   Slave women made soap and candles, and struggled to provide for their own families given how little they received from their owners. Slave rations could not be maintained at pre-war levels on many plantations, and planters reduced their allotments, forcing them to forage, fish, steal, or starve.  More slave women suffered from pneumonia and winter fever and chill because planters could no longer get imported wool for cloth or work shoes.