Frederick Douglass: “Men of Color, To Arms!”

Context

African Americans had been a vital part of the American armed forces long before the Civil War. Black soldiers fought in the American Revolution and defended New Orleans in 1815, but a federal law passed in 1792 prohibited them from serving in state militias or the regular army. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, public opinion in the United States was generally not in favor of using African American troops. Some critics feared that blacks lacked the courage necessary for combat, while others resented any action that would raise blacks’ position in the racial hierarchy and challenge white supremacy. Likewise, some African Americans in the North were skeptical that black enlistment would truly lead to more equality for blacks within the military or among civilian society more generally.

Some white and black abolitionists, however, understood that African Americans could provide an essential contribution to the northern war effort. Former slaves and other free blacks in the North swelled with the same patriotism that encouraged white men to join the military; these men also felt a special burden to aid their brothers who still languished under the cruel slave system. Abolitionists believed that black troops would disprove negative criticisms and help African Americans become further integrated into northern society. Likewise, slaves in the South, who began flocking to Union lines in staggering numbers after the attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in April 1861, presented Union commanders with a dilemma: Since the Confederacy had no qualms about using slave laborers to aid its military actions, why should the Union refuse to use black soldiers to bolster its own war effort? Union General Benjamin Butler was the first to use these refugees—whom he called “contrabands”—to build defensive trenches, serve as camp cooks, and perform other menial labor at Fortress Monroe, the coastal Union bastion near Hampton, Virginia. These escaped slaves were pursued by their owners, but after the passage of the First Confiscation Act on August 6, 1861, army commanders were not obligated to return slave owners’ property. Other leading military officials, like Secretary of War Simon Cameron, spoke publicly about the benefits of black enlistment. General John C. Frémont, commander of the Department of the West based in Saint Louis, Missouri, went a step further and issued a proclamation on August 30, 1861, declaring that the slaves of any Missourian who was disloyal would be freed. His proclamation received support from many northerners, but it complicated President Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to bring southern states back into the fold.

Lincoln’s attitude toward black troops would change over the course of the Civil War, but at the beginning of the conflict his greatest concern was to keep the border slaveholding states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware) in the Union, and to demonstrate to the Confederacy that reunion was still a viable possibility. He illustrated his intentions by making clear that emancipation was not a war aim of the Lincoln administration (thus tacitly promising slaveholders that their human property was safe). Early in 1861 he directed Union officials to send slaves who hid behind army lines back to their owners, an action that emphasized Lincoln’s ultimate plan to preserve the Union. However, when Union forces increasingly found themselves on the defensive, Lincoln began to alter his stance on black recruitment and supported the passage of the First Confiscation Act, which he signed on August 6, 1861. Heavy casualties contributed to this change of heart. He also worked closely with his advisers to create a preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was released in September 1862, shortly after the Union victory at Antietam; this signaled his shift toward making slavery’s abolition an official goal of the administration.

With Lincoln’s strategy changing, and public opinion in the North moving increasingly toward support of black enlistment, Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act on July 17, 1862. This act mandated that all slaves who belonged to Confederate masters would be free and that any black person who was employed by the Union forces was also free. The first black unit to be officially mustered into the army was the Louisiana Native Guards, initially brought into service by Benjamin Butler in his General Order No. 63, published on August 22, 1862. Meanwhile, General James Lane, an ardent abolitionist (and U.S. senator) in the new state of Kansas, began the recruitment of black troops to protect Kansas citizens from Confederate guerrillas clustered along the Kansas-Missouri border. His actions were technically not sanctioned by Lincoln or the army’s leading generals, but after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the only remaining barrier to the use of black troops disintegrated. The Emancipation Proclamation declared that all slaves living in a state in rebellion were free. This made the Civil War a war of emancipation as well as a war to reunite the Union, since advancing Union armies stood to gain support from the newly freed slaves in conquered territory. Lane’s troops were the first black regiment to encounter Confederates on the battlefield at a skirmish in Bates County, Missouri; these troops were officially mustered into the service in 1863 as the First Kansas Colored and Second Kansas Colored.

The governor of Massachusetts, John A. Andrew, also sought permission to raise two regiments of black troops. The War Department authorized this recruitment, and Andrews solicited Frederick Douglass, the former slave and noted abolitionist, to assist in locating free black men willing to fight for the cause of freedom. Douglass began recruiting for the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment of the United States Colored Troops in February 1863. The Bureau of Colored Troops, the government body assigned to administer the recruitment and organization of these units, was created by the War Department on May 1, 1863.