U.S. War Department General Order 143 Establishing the Bureau of U.S. Colored Troops

Context

In April 1861, a mere few days after the Civil War had begun when the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, a group of African Americans in Cleveland, Ohio, gathered to pledge their support for the Union cause. As they put it, “As colored citizens of Cleveland, desiring to prove our loyalty to the Government, [we] feel that we should adopt measures to put ourselves in a position to defend the government of which we claim protection.” They continued: “That to-day, as in the times of ’76, and the days of 1812, we are ready to go forth and do battle in the common cause of the country” (qtd. in McPherson, p. 20). Although African Americans had taken up arms during the American Revolution and during the War of 1812, federal law had prohibited the enlistment of Blacks in state militias and the U.S. Army since 1792. At the beginning of the Civil War there were no Black soldiers in the regular army, and most white northerners hoped to keep it that way.

African Americans recognized at the war's outset that this conflict had the potential to rid the United States of slavery, and they were eager to push for their inclusion in the fight. Abraham Lincoln's administration and the mainstream press were careful to declare that the war was about restoring the Union and emphatically denied that the issue of slavery had any role in the conflict. Northern public opinion, at least early in the war, was not prepared to consider challenging the racial balance that placed African Americans at the bottom of the social ladder. Prominent Blacks and abolitionists, however, began pushing for the enlistment of Black troops almost immediately, and many realized the implications of those fears.

Perhaps Frederick Douglass most clearly outlined the fear of white northerners with regard to Black military participation. In August 1861 he editorialized in his newspaper, Douglass' Monthly, “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, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States” (qtd. in McPherson, p. 163). Lincoln recognized that military service for Blacks would indeed place African Americans in a position to demand the rights of citizenship, including suffrage. He also feared that the presence of Black soldiers would discourage white enlistments. Another concern was maintaining the loyalty of the border states, including Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware. Although these were slave states, they had not joined the Confederacy, and the president wanted them to remain part of the Union.

Despite these concerns, pressures to allow Black military enlistment mounted from several directions. From early in the war the Confederate army employed free Black and slave labor to perform much of the manual work required for the military. Eventually, the Confederate army requisitioned slaves from their masters in much the same way it appropriated food or other necessary supplies. Throughout the war African Americans not only raised much of the food that fed the Confederate troops but also built many of the fortifications and entrenchments that protected troops in the field. The Union general Benjamin F. Butler, in command of troops at Fortress Monroe in Virginia, was one of the earliest advocates of using African Americans in the Union cause. In May 1861 he declared escaped slaves who had labored on behalf of the Confederate war effort as “contraband of war” and refused to return them to their masters. Reasoning that returning the slaves to their masters would benefit the enemy, Butler put them to work behind Union lines. Although the policy was controversial, Lincoln allowed Butler's action to stand. Before the summer of 1861 ended, Congress would pass legislation to more clearly define how the Union army should treat the large numbers of slaves who sought freedom behind Union lines.

Realizing the importance of slave labor to the Confederacy, in August 1861 Congress passed the first Confiscation Act, permitting the seizure of any property, including slaves, used to aid the Confederate war effort. This provided legitimacy to Butler's ad hoc contraband policy, and over the duration of the war some 200,000 “contrabands” worked for the Union army. Although the act sidestepped the issue of emancipation, it did introduce the concept of manumission into federal policy. The same month, General John C. Frémont was bolder in declaring free the slaves of Confederates in Missouri. As commander in charge of the Department of the West in St. Louis, Frémont's emancipation declaration was a part of a larger plan to bring Missouri under closer control of the Union.

Alarmed that the action might lead Missouri and the other border states to join the Confederacy, Lincoln quickly rescinded the order and eventually removed Frémont from his post. Lincoln's action angered abolitionists such as the radical Parker Pillsbury, who condemned the president's act as “cowardly submission to southern and border slave state dictation” (qtd. in Smith, p. 12). Some prominent northern politicians, including Massachusetts governor John A. Andrew and Kansas senator James H. Lane, urged Lincoln to arm African Americans. Along with the generals John W. Phelps and David Hunter, they argued that Blacks were eager to fight for the nation. Although Lincoln was not prepared to support a radical emancipation policy in 1861, by midyear 1862, at the urging of these men, he was beginning to see the value of including African Americans in the military. It was also becoming clear that emancipation would necessarily result if African Americans were allowed to enlist in the U.S. Army.

In July 1862 Congress passed two bills that tied emancipation to military enlistment. The second Confiscation Act authorized northern courts to free the slaves of those “engaged in rebellion” and authorized Lincoln to employ “as many persons of African descent as he may deem necessary and proper for the suppression of this rebellion, and for this purpose he may organize and use them in such manner as he may judge best for the public welfare” (qtd. in Smith, p. 14). The Militia Act granted freedom to slaves who worked for the U.S. Army and gave Lincoln the authority to “to receive into the service of the United States, for the purpose of constructing intrenchments, or performing camp service, or an other labor, or any military or naval service which they may be found competent, persons of African descent” (qtd. in Smith, p. 14). While Lincoln and many northerners remained skeptical about arming African Americans, Congress had clearly paved the way for the enlistment of Blacks with these two acts. During the summer of 1862 Lincoln also began secretly drafting a proclamation that would emancipate slaves in the Confederate states that had not fallen under Union control.

The public would not learn of the Emancipation Proclamation until September 1862, when it was announced following the Union victory at the battle of Antietam. Not knowing Lincoln's plan, some northerners attacked his failure to fully execute the emancipation clause of the second Confiscation Act. Douglass proclaimed in an editorial, “The signs of the times indicate that the people will have to take this war into their own hands and dispense with the services of all who by their incompetency give aid and comfort to the destroyers of the country” (qtd. in McPherson, p. 47). Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, complained that Lincoln was too worried about the border states and urged him to enforce the new acts. In the summer and fall of 1862, as Lincoln cautiously danced around the full implementation of the second Confiscation Act, more radical military leaders in the field took it to heart.

The first African Americans to take up arms for the Union cause during the Civil War did so in the South. Empowered by the second Confiscation Act and the Militia Act, commanders in the field were willing and sometimes eager to begin enlisting Black units. One of the first to do so was General Benjamin F. Butler, who by mid-1862 commanded occupation forces in Louisiana. As his earlier contraband policy might suggest, Butler had no problem employing African Americans to fill a shortfall in the number of Union soldiers available to defend New Orleans. On September 27 he mustered into service the First Louisiana Native Guards. Although Blacks had been placed in defensive roles in several small units, this was the first sanctioned regiment of African American soldiers in the Union army. Pleased with the result, Butler organized two additional regiments, the Second and Third Louisiana Native Guards by November 1862.

Other early African American regiments were raised in South Carolina, including the First South Carolina Volunteer Infantry (African Descent), commanded by the abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson. In Kansas, before he had official authorization, Senator James H. Lane began recruiting for the First Kansas Volunteer Colored Infantry, which became the first Black regiment recruited in the northern states. All African American units were headed by white commissioned officers, although eventually Black soldiers could aspire to the rank of corporal or sergeant, and more than a hundred gained a commissioned rank. By the end of 1862 between three thousand and four thousand Black men were serving in five regiments. When first recognized by the War Department, the soldiers in Black regiments received $10 monthly pay, $3 less than their white counterparts.

Following the issuance of the final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, Black enlistment became a major priority and a central part of Lincoln's emancipation program. That month Massachusetts governor John A. Andrew was authorized to raise the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, and prominent New England abolitionists rushed to help recruit. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton also authorized Rhode Island and Connecticut to begin recruiting Black regiments. Black abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, Martin R. Delany, Henry McNeal Turner, and John Mercer Langston, recruited broadly across the northern and midwestern states. In March 1863 the army's adjutant general, Lorenzo Thomas, was ordered to the South to head an enlistment drive.

Thomas's southern travels took him to the Mississippi Valley, where he was charged not only with recruiting African American troops but also with finding qualified officers to lead the newly forming regiments. The enlistment drive was successful, as Thomas found many freedmen eager to serve. Thomas's 1863 recruiting resulted in raising twenty Black regiments but also pointed to the need for a more ordered system of recruitment and organization to govern the new troops. Issued on May 22, 1863, General Order 143 provided the mechanism for organizing all Black regiments under the newly created Bureau of Colored Troops.

Assistant Adjutant General Charles W. Foster was appointed to lead the bureau, and he primarily supervised Black enlistment and recruitment in both the North and South for the remainder of the war. Following the creation of the United States Colored Troops, African American regiments with state names, with only a few exceptions, were renamed and designated units of the U.S. Colored Troops. Exceptions were made for a few regiments from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Louisiana. The significance of renaming the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry as the Seventy-ninth U.S. Colored Infantry or the First Louisiana Native Guards the Seventy-third U.S. Colored Infantry was that instead of being mustered into a state unit, the Black soldiers became agents of the U.S. Army. In June 1864, a year after the creation of the Bureau of Colored Troops, Congress granted equal pay to African American soldiers. The Bureau of Colored Troops offered a professional, organized, and well-ordered chain of command and bureaucratic structure that enabled African Americans to gain a permanent place in the military and to stand and fight for the freedom guaranteed by the U.S. government.