When did african american soldiers start being recruited into the union army?

MISSOURI STATE ARCHIVESUnited States Colored Troops in Missouri:Finding African American History at the Missouri State Archives

During the Civil War, over 8,000 black Missourians served in the Union Army. They were not treated the same as white soldiers. They were not paid as much and their weapons and uniforms were inferior and of poor quality. But these African American soldiers fought for something they believed in -- freedom from slavery.

The Civil War started on April 12, 1861, at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Many African American men wanted to fight for the Union. Some were free blacks and others were former slaves. They tried to volunteer at recruiting stations, but were turned away. The Union Army did not want black soldiers.

President Abraham Lincoln had trouble deciding whether to recruit black soldiers. Eleven slave states had already left, or seceded from, the United States. There were four more states that allowed slavery. These four states - Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware - were called "border states" because they were in between the southern states that seceded and the northern states. President Lincoln was afraid that if he allowed black men to fight, thereby emancipating them, those last four slave states would secede, too. He hoped that the war could be won quickly without using African American soldiers.

However, President Lincoln did not realize how hard the Confederate Army would fight. It won several battles, such as Bull Run in Virginia, and Wilson's Creek in southwest Missouri. Many soldiers from both sides were killed and wounded. But Lincoln still would not allow black soldiers to fight.

Some officers thought African Americans should be part of the Union Army. They tried to form regiments of black volunteers to fight, but the War Department forced them to stop.

By July 1862, the United States Congress passed a law allowing African Americans to serve in the Union Army as laborers or cooks or wagon drivers. The law still did not allow black soldiers. But abolitionist General Jim Lane organized a black regiment in Kansas. It was called the 1 st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment. It included former slaves from Missouri, Arkansas, and the Indian Territory. The regiment's first battle was at Island Mound, Missouri, in October 1862. By January 1863, the regiment was mustered into the regular Union Army, and it was renamed the 79 th United States Colored Infantry Regiment (New).

In August 1862, the War Department decided to officially allow the Union Army to recruit African American soldiers. It also said that any slave who fought would be declared free. This meant freedom for their wives and children, too.

Each state recruited its own black soldiers. In early 1864, all the units with African Americans were designated the United States Colored Troops (USCT), with a few exceptions. Each unit in the USCT was assigned a regiment number. The men who enlisted in the USCT came from many different states and backgrounds.

The USCT had an estimated 160 to 170 regiments of infantry, cavalry, heavy artillery, and light artillery. During the Civil War, most regiments consisted of up to 1,000 soldiers. It was hard to keep accurate records. The regiment numbers changed sometimes and some units were deactivated. The total number of African American soldiers is thought to have been between 176,000 and 200,000. There were also African American men and women civilians, perhaps as many as 200,000, who worked as scouts, spies, cooks, teamsters, or chaplains.

The United States Colored Troops made up about ten percent of the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Another 19,000 African Americans served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died in battle or from infection or disease. Though reluctantly accepted into the military, black soldiers consistently proved their courage during the fighting.

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation: “All persons held as slaves within any States…in rebellion against the United States,” it declared, “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” (The more than 1 million enslaved people in the loyal border states and in the Union-occupied parts of Louisiana and Virginia were not affected by this proclamation.) It also declared that “such persons [African American] of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States.” For the first time, Black soldiers could fight for the U.S. Army.

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A 'White Man’s War'?

Black soldiers had fought in the Revolutionary War and—unofficially—in the War of 1812, but state militias had excluded African Americans since 1792. The U.S. Army had never accepted Black soldiers. The U.S. Navy, on the other hand, was more progressive: There, African Americans had been serving as shipboard firemen, stewards, coal heavers and even boat pilots since 1861.

After the Civil War broke out, abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass argued that the enlistment of Black soldiers would help the North win the war and would be a huge step in the fight for equal rights: “Once let the Black man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S.; let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket,” Douglass said, “and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.” However, this is just what President Lincoln was afraid of: He worried that arming African Americans, particularly former or escaped slaves, would push the loyal border states to secede. This, in turn, would make it almost impossible for the Union to win the war.

READ MORE: 6 Black Heroes of the Civil War

The Second Confiscation and Militia Act (1862)

However, after two grueling years of war, President Lincoln began to reconsider his position on Black soldiers. The war did not appear to be anywhere near an end, and the Union Army badly needed soldiers. White volunteers were dwindling in number, and African-Americans were more eager to fight than ever.

The Second Confiscation and Militia Act of July 17, 1862, was the first step toward the enlistment of African Americans in the Union Army. It did not explicitly invite Black people to join the fight, but it did authorize the president “to employ as many persons of African descent as he may deem necessary and proper for the suppression of this rebellion…in such manner as he may judge best for the public welfare.”

Some Black people took this as their cue to begin forming infantry units of their own. African Americans from New Orleans formed three National Guard units: the First, Second and Third Louisiana Native Guard. (These became the 73rd, 74th and 75th United States Colored Infantry.) The First Kansas Colored Infantry (later the 79th United States Colored Infantry) fought in the October 1862 skirmish at Island Mound, Missouri. And the First South Carolina Infantry, African Descent (later the 33rd United States Colored Infantry) went on its first expedition in November 1862. These unofficial regiments were officially mustered into service in January 1863.

The 54th Massachusetts

Early in February 1863, the abolitionist Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts issued the Civil War’s first official call for Black soldiers. More than 1,000 men responded. They formed the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the first Black regiment to be raised in the North. Many of the 54th soldiers did not even come from Massachusetts: one-quarter came from slave states, and some came from as far away as Canada and the Caribbean. To lead the 54th Massachusetts, Governor Andrew chose a young white officer named Robert Gould Shaw.

On July 18, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts stormed Fort Wagner, which guarded the Port of Charleston, in South Carolina. It was the first time in the Civil War that Black troops led an infantry attack. Unfortunately, the 600 men of the 54th were outgunned and outnumbered: 1,700 Confederate soldiers waited inside the fort, ready for battle. Almost half of the charging Union soldiers, including Colonel Shaw, were killed.

READ MORE: The 54th Massachusetts Infantry

Confederate Threats

In general, the Union army was reluctant to use African American troops in combat. This was partly due to racism: There were many Union officers who believed that Black soldiers were not as skilled or as brave as white soldiers were. By this logic, they thought that African Americans were better suited for jobs as carpenters, cooks, guards, scouts and teamsters.

Black soldiers and their officers were also in grave danger if they were captured in battle. Confederate President Jefferson Davis called the Emancipation Proclamation “the most execrable measure in the history of guilty man” and promised that Black prisoners of war would be enslaved or executed on the spot. (Their white commanders would likewise be punished—even executed—for what the Confederates called “inciting servile insurrection.”) Threats of Union reprisal against Confederate prisoners forced Southern officials to treat Black soldiers who had been free before the war somewhat better than they treated Black soldiers who were formerly enslaved—but in neither case was the treatment particularly good. Union officials tried to keep their troops out of harm’s way as much as possible by keeping most Black soldiers away from the front lines.

The Fight for Equal Pay

Even as they fought to end slavery in the Confederacy, African American Union soldiers were fighting against another injustice as well. The U.S. Army paid Black soldiers $10 a month (minus a clothing allowance, in some cases), while white soldiers got $3 more (plus a clothing allowance, in some cases). Congress passed a bill authorizing equal pay for Black and white soldiers in 1864.

By the time the war ended in 1865, about 180,000 Black men had served as soldiers in the U.S. Army. This was about 10 percent of the total Union fighting force. Most—about 90,000—were former (or “contraband”) enslaved people from the Confederate states. About half of the rest were from the loyal border states, and the rest were free Black people from the North. Forty thousand Black soldiers died in the war: 10,000 in battle and 30,000 from illness or infection.

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