The American Civil War: Ethnicity--African Americans

Figure 1.-- This 'Harper's Weekly' illustration was captioned, "The war in the Southwest. Adjutant-General Thomas addressing the Negroes in Louisiana on the duties of freedom" -- [From photographs]. New Orleans was the largest southern city and financial capital of the South, undestandable because most of the cotton production flowded down the Mississippi and through the port. As a result of a brilliant naval action, Admiral Faragate seized New Orleanss (April 1862)--the first major southern city to fall and a major step in the blockade of the Confederacy. It was here that Gen. Benjamin Butler became 'Beast Butler' because of the resistance of th city's population. Butler became the only Union general hated more than Gen. Sherman. Gen. Thomas was the Union Army Adjutant General, but spent a great deal of time outside Washington because of issues with Secretary of War Stanton. After the Emancipation Proclmation (1863), he became involved in recruiting freed slaves for the Army. Given that some so many Blacks are in uniform the illustratiin was probably published in 1864 or 65.

Ethnicity is a topic not often considered in the Civil War, except for the obvious -- African Americans and slavery. It can, however, not be avoided in any discussion of the War. The Portuguese began the Atlantic slave trade (15th century). Previously the African slave trade flowed across the Sahara and the Indian Ocean into the Muslim world. Only a small portion of the Atlantic Slave Trade flowed into what is now the United States. Most of the captive Africans were transported to the Caribbean and Spanish and Portuguese Empires. The United States at its very beginning outlawed the slave trade becoming effective (1807). The importation of large numbers of captive Africans ceased, although limited an illegal trade continued on a small scale. From a very early point after the Revolution, northern states began to end slavery--the first jurisdictions in the world to do so. This lead to a national divide of free and slave states. The African-American population in the United States at the time of the Civil War was a still largely enslaved population, located mostly in the southern slave states. There were free African Americans in the North, but relatively small numbers. This would not change until the early-20th century when hyper racism in the Southern states began to drive a rural population to northern cities--the Great Migration. Most African Americans have origins tracing back to West Africa, the African area closest to the American colonies. DNA technology technology today enables African Americans to trace long lost origins. Captives from southern Africa were most likely to be sold in Brazil. By the time of the Civil War, there had been considerable mixing and a sizeable part of the African-American population were mulattoes. This was mostly the result of slave owners forcing themselves on the women. The slave population was largely uneducated because laws in Southern states prohibited the education of slaves. Race hucksters today promote the historical notion that America was built on slavery. [Hannah-Jones] While the United States was not built on slavery, it is undeniable that slavery played an important role in the Antebellum economy, primarily, but not exclusively in the South. The idea that America is built on slavery is absurd ion its face, because if it was true, the South would have won the Civil War and slave labor would have been intrenched. Any real assessment of the American economy will show that the rise of the United States as a powerful nation was primarily based on free labor. What actually occurred was that the American Revolution was foundational to both democracy and free labor. The United States was the first country where the farmer actually owned the land he work. (For millennia, agriculture was the primasry sources of wealth.) The role Blacks played in the War, both in launching the War because of slavery and in the Federal victory is the most obvious ethnic consideration of the Civil War. Here the modern reader has ton be very careful. America historiography is now dominated by Neo-Marxist academicians who at every opportunity seek to demonize the American nation and our people. (It is why America is the only country where some of our athlethes continually express disaproval of their country.) Thus it pains them to have to admit that slavery was destroyed and the War won by a largely white army. They often seek to exaggerate the importance of African-Americans in the War. And the race hucksters in the African America community do not like to admit that their people were freed by white people which is a simple fact. Rather it is now trendy to demonize white people at every opportunity. But even the most mathematically challenged among us can not rationally assert that wars are won by 10 percent of an army. Wars are won by the 90 percent. This is not to diminish in any way the Colored Troops that served valiantly in the War and were an important part of the Union victory. By 1863 when the first African American regiments were formed, it was becoming increasingly difficult to recruit volunteers which is why conscription was initiated in the North. And the additional 10 percent of the soldiers was vital to the Union cause. The first two years of the War were fought by all-white units (1861-62). African-Americans were involved as labor, used by both the Confederacy and the Union. In fact, labor became increasingly important because of the growing lethality of the weaponry. The men had to build entrenchments to survive. The Confederacy used slave labor. The Union used the run-away slaves who fled to Union lines. This became increasingly important as Union forces drove deeper into the Confederacy. For the legal reasons, these people were called Contrabands. The men did the needed physical labor and the women provided a range of domestic functions like sewing, cooking, and laundry. This all changed with the Emancipation Proclamation (1863). The United States War Department issued General Order Number 143 (May 22, 1863), creating the Bureau of Colored Troops to facilitate the recruitment of African-American soldiers to fight for the Union Army. 【Cornish, p. 130.】 For the first time African-American regiments for combat could be formed as part of the United States Colored Troops (USCT). More than 178,000 free blacks and freedmen served during the last two years of the war. Their service bolstered the Union war effort at a critical time. Eventually 175 USCT regiments were formed which came to represent roughly 10 percent of Union manpower. This was unimportant not only in manpower, but for the future of African Americas. A noted abolitionist wrote, "Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship." 【Douglas】 Notice that Douglas does not sat 'freedom', but 'citizenship'. These are two different matters. Nothing exemplifies this more than a Louisiana slave boy known to us today only as Jackson. More than half of the USCT rolls were from the South where most African Americans lived at the time, although not the Deep South with the exception of Mississippi--this probably reflects the areas of the South occupied by Union troops. About 45? percent of the USCT was recruited in northern states, including the Border which had substantial Africans American populastions. Given the relatively small African-American population in the North, this suggests a very high level of volunteering among northern freedmen. 【Gladstone, p. 120.】

Sources

Cornish, Dudley Taylor. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1965).

Douglas, Frederick. Cited by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration in their website, "The Fight for Equal Rights: Black Soldiers in the Civil War".

Gladstone, William A. United States Colored Troops, 1863–1867 (Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1996).

Hannah-Jones, Nikole. "The 1619 Project," The New York Times Magazine (August 2019).

Created: 12:05 AM 8/28/2023
Last updated: 12:05 AM 8/28/2023