For Northern blacks, however, the Emancipation Proclamation represented an enormous victory, and many urged their sons to enlist. In Massachusetts, abolitionist governor John A. Andrew immediately mustered a regiment of African Americans, the Fifty-fourth Regiment of Massachusetts—and other governors, tentative at first, followed. At the time, there was widespread skepticism among whites about whether blacks would fight and, even if they did, about whether they were capable fighters.
Although the few African Americans who had fought thus far in the Civil War had often done so with distinction, their service was scarcely publicized. Initially, most of the newly recruited black regiments were confined to support roles.
Only after the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts made a heroic and widely publicized assault in July 1863 on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, were blacks given a wider role in fighting. Even then, however, blacks were almost never allowed to become officers.
Black soldiers were also paid at lower wages than whites until a protest by the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts prompted Congress in 1864 to equalize salaries and issue back pay. Before Congress complied, however, William Walker of the Third South Carolina Volunteers was court-martialed, convicted of mutiny, and executed for leading black soldiers in refusing to fight until pay was equalized.
n all, African Americans fought in roughly 40 major and 400 minor battles. These included Port Hudson, Louisiana (May 1863), where blacks made several bold assaults against devastating Confederate fire; Milliken’s Bend, Mississippi (June 1863), where blacks fended off Confederates in hand-to-hand fighting; Fort Wagner (July 1863); Petersburg, Virginia (1864), where blacks endured terrible casualties as part of a siege on the city; and Richmond, Virginia (1865), the Confederate capital, which blacks were among the first troops to occupy.
The Confederacy treated all black soldiers, whether freedpeople by birth or by emancipation, as slaves subject to reenslavement and punishment. On several instances, Confederate troops simply murdered surrendering blacks, the most notorious example being Tennessee’s Fort Pillow Massacre.
On April 12, 1864, three years to the day after the start of the Civil War, Union troops at Fort Pillow were surprised by an overwhelming Confederate force. As African Americans surrendered, Confederates shot men, women, and children indiscriminately. They also burned wounded black soldiers in their tents and nailed several African American sergeants to logs before setting them on fire. In all, about 200 African Americans were killed. After a government inquiry, Lincoln ordered retaliation, but no action was taken.
By the end of the war, almost 179,000 African Americans served in the Union Army and navy. Almost 3,000 died from battle wounds, and 33,000 more died of disease. Among the important achievements for black soldiers was the promotion of Martin Robison Delany, a doctor and writer, to the rank of major—the first African American to become a field officer. Black women, too, played important roles for the army: Harriet Tubman served as a guide and scout, and Elizabeth Bowser, a slave in the Confederate White House in Richmond, doubled as a Union spy.
