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Black Lives Matter Movement
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Institutional affiliation
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Black Lives Matter Movement
Black life matters are one of the significant social movements in the United States. It
majorly tends to protect African Americans' rights against police brutality and other forms of
racially motivated violence against the marginalized group, black people. The movement
comprises a broad array of people and organizations. Apart from advocating against police
brutality against other black people, they also advocate for other necessary policy changes that
relate to black liberation. It is a network that also operates through social media with lots of
followers or members in the United States and other parts of the world, for example, in Europe
and Africa. The movement's popularity has shifted dramatically over the years, which can get
seen through the polls conducted by the Pew Research Center. According to their findings, 67%
of adults in America expressed some support for the movements. In 2020, a poll that was
conducted proved a drop in support for the movement among adult whites and Hispanics;
however, such support remained widespread among black adults.
Black life matters advocate for policy changes that discourage some of the unethical
social acts like racial discrimination, leading to the killing of many black individuals (Wolflink,
2019). Racial discrimination has been one of the social issues affecting national unity within the
country. For example, it has led to a high level of inequality in various government or public
sectors. There is inequality in healthcare inequality with the marginalized communities being the
most affected (Noguera, 2017). That also relates to employment opportunities in which the
Whites and Hispanics are given more priority than other individuals like the Asians and those of
African origin. That also relates to the remuneration method. A high level of racial segregation is
also witnessed. For example, employees in the manufacturing or production department might be
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doing the same kind of work. Still, those from marginalized communities do get less payment or
salary than the whites (Noguera, 2017).
Racial segregation can be traced back to the period of civil war when the African
Americans joined the Union Army to fight against the forces that were loyal to the southern
states. The Union army had the full backing of the Northern states. The Southern states have
seceded to form the Confederate States of America. Their main intention was to ensure
continuous freedom to own slaves. They wanted the enslavement of black people in the southern
states to continue, an issue that was vehemently opposed by the incoming president, Abraham
Lincoln (Lande, 2016). He managed to win the presidential election on an anti-slavery platform,
which forced the seven southern slave states to oppose his regime. In those states, farming was a
significant economic activity, and they had extensive farmlands. That made them need slaves
that were to provide necessary human labour in those farms, and any form of ending slavery
would affect them economically (Johnson, 2021). African Americans, therefore, decided to join
the Union forces to gain their freedom.
About 146,000 black soldiers who joined the Union forces came or hailed from the slave
states. Lande (2016) stated that the majority of the black soldiers failed to embrace the service
entirely. That is because of what they considered inequality that was practiced in the force. As a
result, they deserted in individual acts of rebellion. Racial discrimination was an evidenced event
within the Union army where the white soldiers did not fully recognize the black soldiers. The
white soldiers were not accessible to arming them or join the force (Boutwell et al., 2017). Black
soldiers were also given a different punishment from that of the white soldiers. For instance,
those who rebelled were given severe punishment through hanging. That expresses the question
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about the freedom of the black men, mainly in the service during the US civil war. That was a
form of brutality against the blacks, which is still being expressed today. For example, the recent
murder of George Floyd, who publicly died in the hand of a white policeman, Derek Chauvin.
There was also the shooting issue of George Zimmerman, who shot an African American teen
known as Trayvon Martin. That act made the Black Life Matters movement gain more fame or
recognition within the states and globally (Wolflink, 2019). The movement activist played a
significant role in the 2016 United States presidential election. Those kinds of deaths were
related to racial discrimination in which the protestors considered a form of mistreatment of
brutality towards the blacks.
Historically, slaves were considered inferior. The case concerning their murder got
ignored by government authorities and never taken with lots of seriousness; however, no one was
allowed to kill the slave of another because it was considered as if he had deprived the other of
his property. Previously, black individuals also got assassinated in the same manner as the killers
believed to be state-sponsored, and they tend to silence the rise of black Americans. Some of the
famous individuals who got killed include Martin Luther King II, Malcolm X, among others who
were also involved in achieving equality among all the citizens (Noguera, 2017). There was mars
demonstration across the American streets in both instances, just like in the recent cases.
Even after abolishing slavery on January 31, 1865, when the law got passed by Congress,
it still emerged that slavery was far from over. For example, after abolishing slavery, African
Americans got exposed to various job opportunities in other economic sectors of development
that include manufacturing and even in both federal and local government offices (Johnson,
2021). The issue of slavery at heart could be seen as a payment system in which Black
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Americans were paid less than their white counterparts. In job positions, black Americans were
never allowed or promoted to senior positions or supervisory positions to make them be over
their white counterparts. After abolishing slavery, people were still allowed to work in the
farmlands but at fair wages (Johnson, 2021). A high level of disparity got also experienced in
schools whereby children with African ancestry were not allowed to join certain schools that
white men’s children attended. The same situation also got realized eve in healthcare facilities
and even in public transport. There were specific public vehicles and other forms of public
transport used by the whites and other senior races, and people of colour were not allowed to use
them alongside them.
Racial discrimination and a lot of disparity are still experienced in the United States. For
example, that can get witnessed through economic disparity along the racial line. Just like in the
historical times, there is a vast economic difference between the Whites, White Hispanics and
other marginalized communities (Lande, 2016). That has majorly been contributed by income
levels in which most of the African Americans live below the poverty level. A high percentage
of them do occupy middle and low-class income groups. Rising economic inequality in the
United States is a significant issue of concern. It has developed into apolitical issues in the race
to various party nominations, mainly in the Democratic presidential nomination (Wolflink,
2019). Candidates with better policy interventions that might help address the issues are in a high
position of winning the party nomination certificate.
Historically, after attaining their freedom, African Americans knew the following
significant issue to fight for was voting rights. They were much aware that they would elect
leaders that would push for their reform agenda in both houses, like the current significant social
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movement that pushes for the black American’s agendas outside the houses and fights for their
rights, the Black Life Matters, previously, unions like the women suffrage that majorly
advocated for the women voting rights. They fought for gender equality; however, black women
were not considered since its main objective was to employer white women and given them other
rights like the right to own a property (Boutwell et al., 2017). There was also another labour
union that advocated for better pay for the blacks and equal job opportunities. Currently, that is
still a significant issue, with most African Americans still occupying a large percentage of
unemployed individuals. That has also affected their income level, which leads to economic
inequality.
There is also the issue of health and housing disparity that has existed from historical
times. That also aligns with racial segregation which according to Noguera (2017), a high
percentage of Whites and White Hispanics do own homes or stay in better housing facilities.
However, many marginalized communities like the black Americans do live in inadequate
housing structures; some of them are also homeless. That is majorly contributed by economic
disparity that has made it difficult for them to obtain their homes. However, the government has
made various necessary measures towards ensuring better housing, for example, by promoting
the construction of less expensive houses that middle or low-income individuals can achieve.
Additionally, just like in the old days, health disparity is another major issue that needs a lot of
concern. It mainly affects those with less income, like people of African origin. However, the
government has introduced many healthcare programs intending to enhance health equity, for
example, Medicare and Medicaid, and even the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that offers insurance
health cover for people with low income.
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Slavery never ended, that is because black people still face a lot of oppression today. That
can get seen through the brutal killings and how security officers balance with them compared to
their white counterparts (Johnson, 2021). That has affected social relations among the citizens.
Currently, there is a sense of slavery at heart. It is stuck in people's minds, leading to the current
high racial discrimination rate among the citizens. However, a lot of improvement has been made
towards enhancing equality among the citizens regardless of their racial backgrounds
(Ammouche, 2018). As a result, currently, People with African backgrounds hold high
managerial and leadership positions both in the private and public sectors. Various legislative
amendments have been made toward enhancing equality; through that, measures are out in a
place that limits racial discrimination.
Generally, black life matters are one of the significant social movements in the United
States. It majorly tends to protect African Americans' rights against police brutality and other
forms of racially motivated violence against the marginalized group, black people. The
movement comprises a broad array of people and organizations. Slavery never ended, that is
because black people still face a lot of oppression today. That is evidenced through the brutal
killings and how security officers balance with them compared to their white counterparts. That
has affected social relations among the citizens. Currently, there is a sense of slavery at heart. It
is stuck in people's minds, leading to the current high racial discrimination rate among the
citizens. Racial discrimination and a lot of disparity are still experienced in the United States. For
example, that can get witnessed through economic disparity along the racial line. There is a vast
economic difference between the Whites, White Hispanics, and other marginalized communities
in historical times. That has majorly been contributed by income levels in which most of the
African Americans live below the poverty level.
8
References
AMMOUCHE, M. F. Z. (2018). The Role of The Black Life Matter and The Civil Rights
Movement in Ending Violence and Systematic Racism Towards Black People in the
United States of America (Doctoral dissertation).
Boutwell, B. B., Nedelec, J. L., Winegard, B., Shackelford, T., Beaver, K. M., Vaughn, M., ... &
Wright, J. P. (2017). The prevalence of discrimination across racial groups in
contemporary America: Results from a nationally representative sample of adults. PloS
one, 12(8), e0183356.
Iceland, J. (2017). Race and ethnicity in America (Vol. 2). Univ of California Press.
Johnson, W. (2021). Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (2000). In Racism in
America (pp. 10-21). Harvard University Press.
Lande, J. (2016). Trials of freedom: African American deserters during the US Civil War.
Journal of Social History, 49(3), 693-709.
Noguera, P. A. (2017, April). Introduction to “racial inequality and education: Patterns and
prospects for the future”. In The Educational Forum (Vol. 81, No. 2, pp. 129-135).
Routledge.
Wolflink, A. (2019). Value Claims: From Aristotle to Black Lives Matter (Doctoral dissertation,
UC Santa Cruz).
9
Trials of Freedom: African American Deserters during the U.S. Civil War
Jonathan Lande
Journal of Social History, Volume 49, Number 3, Spring 2016, pp. 693-709
(Article)
Published by Oxford University Press
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/620509
Access provided by University of California, Davis (11 Jan 2017 04:32 GMT)
JONATHAN LANDE
Trials of Freedom: African American
Deserters during the U.S. Civil War
Abstract
In the tumultuous war years of 1861 to 1865, enslaved men, women, and children across the United States emancipated themselves. Nearly 180,000 African
American men, including thousands of former slaves, joined the Union Army to
fight for their freedom and for the nation. Historians tell the story of these brave
men as one of glory. Indeed, it was glorious. Despite unequal pay and racist officers, black men fought valiantly and earned their freedom. However, this history
does not capture the whole story. Experiencing freedom for the first time, many
black soldiers discovered the discipline and racism of the army reminiscent of
bondage and reacted angrily. Sometimes they rebelled as runaways had during enslavement—they ran. They deserted the army and its injustices to forge a freedom
worth living. The army captured many African Americans deserters, though, and
tried them in the courts-martial. White officers enforced enlistment contracts in the
courts-martial, imposing boundaries on freedom. Capturing another angle of
emancipation in the army, the trials of freedom explored here recast service as a
limiting—not liberating—experience.
On June 20, 1864, near Petersburg, Virginia, Union and Confederate soldiers
paused the Civil War for a hanging. A few days earlier, Private William Johnson
of the 23rd U.S. Colored Troops had abandoned his post. The Union army arrested Johnson and charged him with desertion and attempted rape. The white officers of the court-martial convicted Johnson and sentenced him to be hanged. On
June 20, engineers constructed gallows amidst the summer heat, placing it in
plain view of Union and Confederate lines. The Union army invited two photographers to capture the ceremony. Guards marched Johnson through the Union
line to the gallows. Johnson prayed with a Union army chaplain, and he admitted
deserting and changing his name to evade captors but said nothing about rape.
The executioner slipped Johnson’s head into a noose, secured the ropes around
Johnson’s neck, feet, and hands, and then lowered bandages over Johnson’s eyes.
At nine that morning, the drop fell. The deserter’s body was suspended about a
foot above the dirt. An examiner approached the body, pushed aside the ropes
around the deserter’s stilled wrists, and checked for a pulse. Provost Marshal
General Marsena Patrick confirmed, “He never knew anything after that.”1
Journal of Social History vol. 49 no. 3 (2016), pp. 693–709
doi:10.1093/jsh/shv063
© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
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Journal of Social History
Spring 2016
On July 6, the nation learned of Johnson’s desertion and hanging in the
pages of Harper’s Weekly Illustrated News. An article accompanied an image of
Johnson’s hanged corpse and described Johnson’s crime. Between the image and
the article, the Union army demonstrated that it gave rebellious black soldiers
“considerable importance” and that it had ritually displayed his death “in order
that the example might be made more effective.”2
The breadth of historical literature on African American soldiers during
the Civil War is wide, yet the resistance and punishment of black soldiers, including Johnson’s story, does not fit the two themes dominating scholarship. One
theme, represented in some of the earliest “Dunning School” historiography on
Reconstruction and in later mainstream history of the Civil War, focuses only on
the Lincoln Administration’s decision to liberate and arm African Americans.
The other theme places African American soldiering in its proper central place,
yet it allows the celebration of the soldiers’ heroism to overshadow an examination of their occasionally unsoldierly actions, including desertion. W. E. B. Du
Bois pioneered this revisionist scholarship in Black Reconstruction in America
(1935), a powerful rebuttal to the dominant white supremacist interpretation
of African Americans as victims, dupes, and cowards.3 Though slow to gain legitimacy, Du Bois’s account of slaves as self-liberated and black soldiers as brave
freedom warriors prevailed. Historians today continue building on his thesis.
Foremost among them, the editors of the multiple volumes of Freedom: A
Documentary History etch a compelling yet nuanced narrative that reveals how
“black soldiers elevated themselves and transformed their own consciousness.”4
Figure 1. Private William Johnson deserted, yet the army caught him then court-martialed
him. Convicted, Johnson was hanged. To make an example of him, fellow soldiers
watched and a photographer captured his death. (Execution of William Johnson, 23 regt.,
USCT, Library of Congress.)
African American Deserters during the U.S. Civil War
695
The history of the 180,000 black soldiers who fought for the Union army
during the war is richer for the work of Du Bois and those who followed his
example.5 Indeed, many former slaves served courageously and felt liberated by
the army. Service secured their freedom, earned them a wage, and provided soldiers a sense of manly pride after being degraded by centuries of enslavement.
However, the triumphant and sometimes triumphalist narrative of black martial
heroism passes too quickly over black soldiers’ resistance as well as the army’s punitive reaction.
Johnson and many of his fellow soldiers never fully embraced service. They
deserted in individual acts of rebellion. By the end of the war, the army calculated
that 12,440 black deserters discarded their blue uniforms and took to the nearest
road or river.6 What was the source of their discontent? How did the army discipline these rebel soldiers, and what does the punishment of these rebellious soldiers tell us about black men’s freedom and black men’s service during the U.S.
Civil War?
Many black soldiers had a distinct past, making their service unique: over
146,000 black soldiers hailed from slave states.7 To many of these formerly enslaved black soldiers, strict military discipline conjured up memories of bondage.
Comparing freedom in the army to life on the plantation, one soldier even condemned white officers as “Union masters.“8 Like other struggles of the revolutionary Atlantic, the U.S. Civil War became a moment of tremendous slave unrest,
and slaves claimed their freedom as they had in Haiti and in rebellions in the
British West Indies and Latin America.9 Women and men throughout the
Atlantic defined their freedom and, in the process, as historian Rebecca Scott explains, reconstructed the very meaning of freedom.10 Likewise, many former
slaves serving in the army hoped to forge lives as free men, but expecting more
from freedom than from slavery, black soldiers found army discipline unjust. They
chafed at the strict labor regime, which often mirrored enslavement. Sometimes
they rebelled. As they had as slaves only months before, they did as soldiers—they
ran away.11
The army responded aggressively against black rebel soldiers. Under military
law, the complexity of resistance was flattened into desertion. The army tried deserters before the courts-martial. Union commanders generally dealt with problems as they arose, but in violations of the code of conduct, soldiers faced the
court-martial, a tribunal of five to thirteen officers that heard testimony for crimes
disrupting military order, judged the accused according to procedures outline in
the Army Regulations, and sentenced the convicted.12 In addition to rigorous
training, the courts-martial became venues for enforcing order, especially in
capital crimes including desertion. The courts-martial served as a space for both
soldiers and the army officers to articulate beliefs. Indeed, the soldiers’ testimonies
are often read as former slaves arguing for justice and articulating freedoms.
However, the accused effectively entered a losing game, where the rules were
bound to work against them and the outcome was predetermined.
Specifically, the courts-martial consistently drew on a slippery and limited
language of contractual freedom. White officers in the U.S. Colored Troops
(USCT) framed black soldiers’ military service as an act in support of the Union
cause and African American freedom, but the nature of that freedom often differed from the way freedom was conceived by the black enlistees. The USCT had
an entirely white officer corps, selected for their commitment to abolition in
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Journal of Social History
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addition to their competence as leaders. Army regulations required black soldiers
facing the courts martial by judged by officers from the USCT. In the courtsmartial decisions, these white officers drew on popular abolitionist thought,
which had valorized a new ideal of contractual labor, and framed abolition as a
matter of liberalized labor, not social revolution. In opposing punitive and coercive slave regimes, they depicted free labor arrangements as automatically grounded in mutual consent. Officers brought this same understanding of labor freedom
to their relationships with black soldiers. By virtue of enlistment, they argued,
African American soldiers had signaled their consent to the conditions of military life, extending to the most draconian forms of army discipline. It was thus the
runaway’s rebellion committed—and not the physical and symbolic violence to
which he had been subjected in the army—that would be regarded as a violation
of that contract. Although they often saw themselves as stewards and patrons of
African American emancipation, white officers thereby imposed limits on
freedom, making military service not emancipatory but coercive in practice.
Despite the emancipated men’s hope for autonomy, the trials of deserters reveal
that black soldiers’ freedom fell within the finite boundaries of their service to the
Union.
Enslaved men and women ran away for freedom long before the Confederate
guns fired on Fort Sumter, but after the U.S. Civil War began, they fled in a mass
exodus making the U.S. Civil War, as historian Steven Hahn ventured, the greatest modern slave rebellion.13 The rebellious slaves arrived at Union lines and presented an asset to the Union war effort. However, President Abraham Lincoln
acted cautiously.
From the start of the war, black men attempted to join the Union army, but
the government turned them away, convinced an all-white army was sufficient.
Many white Americans detested and feared the idea black soldiers as well.14
However, as morale and enlistment waned when death tolls grew, white
Americans became more receptive to arming black men. Charles Graham
Halpine’s poem confessed, “Sambo” too “had the Right to be Kilt.”15 Finally, on
January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, not only freeing
slaves in Confederate-controlled territory but also sanctioning the use of black
soldiers.16
Lincoln’s decision to arm black men created a stir. Initially, many whites
feared Lincoln encouraged slave insurrection in the preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation, writing that the army would not “repress” slaves “in any efforts they
may make for their actual freedom.” Perhaps responding to critics, he implored
slaves in the final version to “abstain from all violence” except to protect themselves while insisting freedpeople “labor faithfully for reasonable wages” rather
than drag on the Union.17 Despite his edits, white Americans, including supporters of emancipation, remained fearful.
The specter of slave revolts and the Haitian Revolution loomed.18 The
Cincinnati Daily Enquirer condemned Lincoln for using “servile insurrection” as
an “instrument” of war.19 Proslavery Baltimore dentist and wartime political cartoonist, Adelbert Volck imagined Lincoln as a monster emancipating slaves, portraying the president scratching out the Emancipation Proclamation with a pen
dipped an inkwell nourished by the Devil; vultures circled outside, and behind
the cartoon Lincoln, a painting of Haitians spearing babies and carrying women
off hung.20 In his poem “The Proclamation,” abolitionist John Greenleaf
African American Deserters during the U.S. Civil War
697
Whittier declared to slaves “Arise and flee!” but, he pleaded, your “oppressor
spare, / Heap only on his head the coals of prayer.”21
Of the daring women and men that rebelled across the Confederacy, the
army began recruiting runaways and rebels. However, while men went directly
into the Union army, women were unable to join. According to Union policy,
women pursued freedom through marriage, the only state-sanctioned route for
women’s liberation, or they broke gender conventions, mobilizing their own fight
as “stateless” insurgents.22 For men, the armed services promised freedom and
dignity through violence.23 Given the chance to fight for the Union, black men
also battled for the manhood denied under slavery. As historian James Oliver
Horton writes, “slavery demanded that black men forego the intellectual, emotional, and temperamental traits of manhood,” making docile men ideal slaves
while tempestuous men became troublesome property.24 In the war, then, fighting
and killing white men in particular served as a mode of liberation.25 Abolitionists
emphasized fighting too.26 “To fight for the government in this tremendous war,”
Frederick Douglass proclaimed, “is to fight for nationality and for a place with all
other classes of our fellow citizens.”27 Almost a panacea for the ills of bondage
and race, formerly enslaved men joined the army to earn their freedom, redeem
their manhood, and serve their country.
Recruiters started enlisting African American men to black regiments of the
USCT in 1863 and inevitably took black men who resisted enslavement. The
slaves abandoning plantations were the same youthful, intelligent men of
Figure 2. Adelbert Volck, “Writing the Emancipation Proclamation,” (Porter & Coates
[reproduction], 1886), Maury A. Bromsen Collection of Confederate Etchings, John Hay
Library, Brown University.
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Journal of Social History
Spring 2016
considerable courage that military recruiters pursued.28 However, these freedmen
enlisted in a precarious freedom when they joined the army.
White Americans’ widespread fears and beliefs about black men’s inclination
to irrational violence followed black men into freedom, including military
service. Officers in black regiments passed rigorous screening to guarantee they
did not practice virulent racism, but officers showed latent paranoia that black soldiers would rebel through an obsession with control.29 Officers believed discipline
and firm punishments for insubordinate soldiers would break black men’s tendencies toward rebellion.30 Racist ideas also associated blackness with weakness and
conventionally feminine qualities, leading officers to believe that black men
lacked self-control and bravery.31 Officers devoted months and energy to drilling
black troops before committing their regiments to battle to overcome these perceived inadequacies.32 Even the militant Massachusetts abolitionist who supported John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
questioned black men’s ability to fight. Higginson disciplined the men of the 1st
South Carolina Volunteers to excise the “slavish” qualities, though he employed
self-reliance and moral teachings rather that retain common, violent punishments
overseers and the army both used. Higginson adopted less demeaning techniques.
He demanded that officers refer to the men by their first names—never
“nigger”—and stressed to black troops that military order was fair not arbitrary.33
Not all commanders departed from the brutal punishments common in the army,
however. At times, black soldiers did not respond quickly enough to discipline, so
they had to be taught, as Colonel Robert Cowden of the 59th USCT remarked,
“at the point of the bayonet.”34
Discipline and punishment for black and whites soldiers could degenerate
into cruelty. Writing in the wake of the war, veteran and early historian John
Billings said soldiers “cannot think with equanimity of punishments,” and scarred
soldiers cursed former commanders for past discipline.35 Officers often deserved
soldiers’ contempt. In one instance, an officer brutalized Private Samuel Dixon
when Dixon failed to turn out his light. The officer forced Dixon to carry heavy
lumber, beat Dixon over the head, tied Dixon up for hours. The violence left permanent damage. When he applied for a pension, doctors examining Dixon determined the officers’ actions caused “derangement of the mind.”36
White soldiers complained about discipline, comparing treatment to slavery,
and black troops linked army life and slavery too.37 However, black soldiers eschewed metaphor. For them—it felt like slavery. As one New Orleans man saw it,
“our white officers may be union men but [they were] Slave holders at heart.”38
Over the nineteenth century, slaveholders engineered the “pushing system” to
make slaves pluck cotton at astonishing rates. If they failed to meet their quota,
historian Edward Baptist explains, slaves “face[d] unpredictable but potentially
extreme violence.”39 After escaping such a violent life the forced labor, austere
discipline, and negative incentives in the army reminded many black soldiers of
bondage. Brigadier General Commanding William Dwight recognized it, dismissing a “proslavery” colonel of a black regiment for his violent discipline. Dwight
commented on the “physical terror” used to discipline troops and saw officers
acting “the part of bad and brutal overseers.”40 Service echoed slavery, and while
black soldier distinguished soldiering from slavery, they referred to army life as a
distinct form of enslavement. Indeed, the “Collored [sic] population has got two
[masters] a rebel master and a union master,” wrote the black New Orleans man;
African American Deserters during the U.S. Civil War
699
“they both want our Services,” he continued: “one wants us to make Cotton and
Sugar” whereas “the union masters wants us to fight the battles.”41
Most black soldiers adjusted to military life and proved courageous, but for
many black men military service felt nearer to unfreedom than freedom.
Understanding freedom on a spectrum of experience rather than as one side of an
abstract slavery-freedom binary, obedience to white officers enforcing discipline
with violence violated these black soldiers’ vision of freedom. They did not risk
their lives and their family’s lives to be reenslaved. So they did what slaves did for
centuries before. They ran. When they ran, the army deemed them “deserters.”
Early in the war, the army assumed black men lacked what one commander
called the “restless, aggressive spine” that stirred white men’s courage to face the
enemy as well as desert. Yet, as the army soon learned, men in the USCT were as
brave as any and deserted like white men. By the end of the war, 201,397 soldiers
deserted the Union army.42 Of that, 12,440 were black soldiers.43 Like all soldiers,
USCT soldiers ran away for reasons rooted in their lives outside the army. Unlike
whites, black soldiers’ motivations reflected their experiences as racialized subjects
and former slaves.
White and black soldiers deserted because they grew weary of service and
longed for their families and homes. Former slaves suffered the added difficulty of
emancipation, which left the black population of the South displaced, hungry,
and sick. As historian Jim Downs movingly describes, freed men, women, and
children welcomed emancipation but also suffered during the war and transition
from slavery to freedom. For black families, many left in refugee camps or in
bondage, the war wrought severe hardships.44 Women struggled to care for their
families while many black men joined the army, and the women did the most effective means of receiving aid: they wrote to their husbands to return home. Jane
Wallis wrote directly to the army instead, asking them to release her conscripted
husband, James, on December 10, 1863. She explained that James was “not competent to bee A Soldier,” and if the army was to “keep him,” she explained, “they
leave me, and 3 children to get along, the best we can” though she and one child
were “very Sick.”45 Often compelled by the manly duty to protect their wives and
children in dire straights like the Wallises, soldiers deserted to feed and care their
kin or to protect their families harassed by cruel masters.46 One officer appealed
to his superior to understand that “black soldiers deserted by the score because
their families were starving” and proposed a policy to increase black men’s pay.47
Men serving in the 3rd U.S. Colored Artillery returned home to Memphis,
showing more loyalty to family than country.48 Likewise, three free black conscripts from Danbury, Connecticut, sought replacements, explaining that they
wished to stay with their families and keep their civilian jobs.49
Disputes over pay sparked many conflicts in black regiments. When black
soldiers enlisted they were promised $13, the same pay white soldiers earned.
However, black soldiers received only $7. The continued inequality outraged
Massachusetts Governor John Andrew and Colonel Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, who both complained that to the War Department and Congress.50
Soldiers protested too. Feeling cheated and disgraced, Sergeant William Walker
of the 3rd South Carolina famously staged a mutiny and was executed for his demonstration.51 54th Massachusetts Corporal James Gooding wrote letter to Lincoln
on September 28, 1863 asking: “Are we Soldiers, or are we Laborers?” He declared
to Lincoln, we have done a Soldier’s Duty. Why Can’t we have a Soldier’s pay?”52
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In less articulate though no more salient protests, black soldiers worked the
bounty system to earn higher wages. Soldiers like Private Richard Johnson protested with his feet. In February 1864, Johnson rode the transport train from the
training camp near Philadelphia to Baltimore. After stopping at the Union
Volunteer Refreshment Room, the men fell back to the train, but the only sign of
Johnson was his gun and knapsack. An officer searched for the missing man. He
questioned Johnson’s comrades, yet most never heard of a “Richard Johnson.”
They knew a “Richard Young” and “Dick Young” but no “Richard Johnson.”
This confusion was the work of an artful dodger unhappy with his pay, working
the bounty system, and trafficking in several names to avoid detection.53 Less
skilled bounty-jumpers like Henry Jackson were duped by enlisters who convinced the soldier to enlist, desert, and reenlist but disappeared with the first
bounty before the deserter liberated himself from camp.54
Soldiers also deserted when their officers abused them. A captain strung one
soldier up by his thumbs as a punishment. Although a common disciplinary technique, the soldier thought the punishment unfair. Writhing free from the ropes,
the man escaped and took to the road.55 Private John Mitchell despised being
“kicked and cuffed,” and rather than simply run, he petitioned for transfer.
He was not picky, admitting, “I was willing to into any other company in the
Regiment.”56 His transfer never came though, so on November 22, 1863, he
abandoned his post, taking work as a cabin boy on the Mississippi steamer,
the Shenango.57
Abiding by a larger emancipation program within the military order, the
army censured these black deserters. To offset desertion, the army studied the
causes, and commanders went to great lengths to capture and punish deserters in
the courts-martial.58 For the white officers endeavoring to forge soldiers of former
slaves, the courts-martial became sites to impose control when deserters resisted
and indict soldiers’ expressions of freedom. In these trials of freedom, officers instilled in deserters that they were employees of the army. Officers enforced enlistment contracts as the paradigm of freedom and to encapsulate the nature of
military service—the black soldiers were personnel not armed ideologues—while
implanting the value of free labor. Far from sanctioning slave insurrections, military authorities meant to discipline former slaves in the courts-martial, denying
black men agency at the very moments that they were most likely to test their
freedom.
The courts-martial operated in distinct ways from civilian courts, yet officers
considered them to be as just and legitimate as any common law court. Unlike civilian courts, officers sat in judgment, not citizens, and precedent and commonlaw principles did not apply. Judge Advocates prosecuted defendants who could
mount their own defense or request another soldier lead their case. Many officers
lacked legal training, but the exigencies of war demanded accommodations. As
Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson reflected having spent time on many tribunals, “One sits on court-martial,” he wrote in awe, “. . . and decides on the life
of a fellow-creature, without being asked any inconvenient questions as to previous
knowledge of Blackstone.”59 Nonetheless, the lack of formal legal knowledge of officers did not necessarily mean the courts-martial unfairly tried men. Higginson
thought the system “sift[ed] out the truth” and upheld justice, succumbing neither
to inquisitions nor naked prejudices.60 Many soldiers saw the courts’ cumbersome
procedures as evidence of their fundamental fairness. Military regulations mandated
African American Deserters during the U.S. Civil War
701
that every hearing “keep a complete and accurate record of its proceedings,” with
each page systemically stitched together and numbered, convincing Higginson that
courts-martial were “much more formal and careful than those civil courts.”61
For black regiments, the army set up procedures to ensure justice, generating
the illusion of impartiality. For one, only officers from black regiments could sit
on the court, decide the verdict, and sentence soldiers.62 The government also
tried blacks and whites together and allowed black testimony against whites, practices not generally allowed in southern civilian courts. When no judgment could
be reached or convictions relied on too little evidence, cases were thrown out. All
of the procedures signaled an objective legal system for black soldiers, but the relatively equitable courts belie deeper biases.63 Searching the transcripts only for explicit anti-black derisions and obvious actions that undermined black equality
ignores negotiations happening in cases.
Although no investigation of the internal workings of courts-martial was
made in the 1860s, something close to such an effort happened in 1951, when
civil rights attorney and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall traveled
to Korea to investigate the mistreatment of black soldiers. With all-white officers
and all-black enlisted men, as had been the case in Civil War era regiments,
Marshall found that many black men were charged with cowardice. However, not
one white soldier faced a charge of cowardice. Marshall also learned that bigoted
white officers “despise[d] nigger troops” and loathed commanding black soldiers
in battle. Marshall discovered disheartened black soldiers. Many black men
thought they would never receive justice, so they gave up defending themselves
in cases.64 Speaking of the same courts-martial system black soldiers faced during
the Civil War, Marshall concluded that the soldiers sat before a biased courtmartial populated by racist officers. He determined that the officers’ racial ideology forged a “pattern of injustice.”65 The structural problems leading to injustice
undergirded Civil War cases too, he argued. Unlike the bigots Marshall encountered in Korea, many Civil War Union officers felt pride in their regiments and
demonstrated a concern for justice. Civil War officers believed in emancipation.
Nonetheless, Civil War officers’ racialized beliefs about black men and concern
with abolition influenced their decisions and shaped black soldiers’ freedom.
To place black soldiers under the supervision of empathetic, non-prejudiced,
and often-abolitionist officers, the army fashioned an officer corps dedicated to
a very specific program of emancipation. Looking for men to lead the 54th
Massachusetts in 1863, the Bay State’s Governor, John Andrew sought men of
“firm anti-slavery principles, ambitious, superior to vulgar contempt for color, and
having faith in the capacity of colored men for military service.”66 As black regiments ballooned, the army standardized officer selection, but military recruiter
Lorenzo Thomas kept high moral standards with the expanding bureaucracy. He
even booted overt racists.67 Eventually, a group of abolitionists working with the
government’s support and approval kept up the Free Military School outside
Philadelphia. The school for white soldiers established as rigorous program to
train white men as officers to lead black soldiers. Abolitionist administrators believed that without proper leadership armed black men would not be civilized soldiers and might even become savages if uncontrolled. Embarrassing reports of
black solders would make it difficult for African Americans to become contributing citizens in the future. The school’s vetting process was strenuous and lessons
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Journal of Social History
Spring 2016
emphasized not only military and leadership training but also cultivated the officers’ ethics and comportment to ensure officers ethically guided black men.68
The result was an army campaign that built an officer corps dedicated to a
larger project of helping slaves become free men. As Northern white men, the officers were largely raised under the tutelage of free labor. They were also aware of
the history of emancipation in the British West Indies and Haiti, which were
framed by many as violent and economically disastrous and informed policy considerations on abolition throughout the antebellum era. In 1862, 1863, and 1866,
Democrat John Van Evrie even republished Free Negroism, a text written in the
1850s warning the nation of emancipation to sway the wartime debate over abolition.69 Officers brought the concerns about black men as soldiers and about
African Americans after slavery and the war to influence in the courts-martial.
These questions of labor and rebellion structured their agenda as officers. Charles
Francis Adams, Jr., became a Lieutenant Colonel in the 5th Massachusetts
Colored Cavalry, and captured the spirit driving many officers of the corps.
Describing the army as a “school of skilled labor and self-reliance” and its mission
in addition to Union victory to make “black citizens, old soldiers and masters of
some form of skilled labor.”70
Without much knowledge of Blackstone, officers worked with what they
knew in determining cases. Contracts defined black soldiers place in the army
as personnel. Americans in the nineteenth century widely understood army enlistment as a labor contract, and the army operated on this principle. As Justice
James Thompson of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court remarked in 1863,
“Voluntary enlistment, as by contract, was the general method of raising armies”
in the Anglo-American tradition.71 Desertion was legally a breach contract. The
Army Regulations operated on the same principle, requiring multiple copies of
enlistment papers to enforce contracts. To prevent questions of coercion in contracts that would place the contract’s validity in question, Army Regulations
further stipulated, under the duties of recruiters, that no man be “deceived or inveigled into the service by false representations” and required recruiters to
“explain the nature of the service . . . to every man before he signs the enlistment.” To ensure their consent to the contract would be beyond doubt, the army
mandated that all soldiers “desiring to enlist in the Army” attach their signature
to an oath with witnesses watching.72
Born into these cultures, white officers took contracts seriously. Contracts
also had a special meaning for the white USCT officers. In the 1830s, as historian
Amy Dru Stanley argues, abolitionists adopted contract theory, making it “the
language of [their] insurgent popular politics.”73 By the time the war began, wagelabor contracts embodied abstract rights of freedom. White officers hoping that
emancipation would succeed took the opportunity to implement the moral labor
regime and judged the army and the soldiers in the language of contracts. When
the equal pay crisis erupted, Higginson spent hours petitioning Congress to raise
black troops’ pay. Angry that the government failed to pay equal salaries, he wrote
that the government treated black men like slaves, and that equal pay was “not a
question of abstract justice, but of the fulfilment [sic] of an express contract.”74
After reviewing the conviction of a soldier who deserted, Union Brigadier
General John Hawkins, commander of the 1st Division, offered a sterling articulation of the contract theory of enlistment. Hawkins declared that black soldiers
must be “made to understand the severe punishment they must suffer for not
African American Deserters during the U.S. Civil War
703
being faithful to their oath of service to the Government.” Changing the deserters’ hard-labor sentence to death by firing squad, Hawkins said, “It is time they
learn the just punishment due a deserter.”75
Like Higginson and Hawkins, officers serving on the courts-martial enforced
contracts and described black soldiers as employees. Republicans committed to
teaching black workers the value and finer points of free labor.76 Likewise, in the
army, officers taught freedmen that if they signed a contract, they needed to fulfill
it. Officers imposed a specific knowledge regime that limited agency. It also replicated a larger pattern of disciplining labor. Unlike civilian free-labor disciplinarians, though, the army officers had the power to execute, and the courts censured
and even killed black soldiers if they overstepped the boundaries. Operating
on contract logic, amidst the negotiation of freedom’s limits, the prosecution
attempted to prove that soldiers willingly enlisted and then deserted with equal
volition.
The courts-martial put the army’s bureaucracy to work validating consent
and proving enlistments applied to specific individuals. For all desertion cases,
the court began by reading the charge, always including the soldier’s name and establishing, in this consistent phrasing to echo the soldiers’ commitment, the
soldier had “been duly enlisted.” This reasoning structured sentencing as well, the
courts always repeating soldiers “duly enlisted.” To prove the validity of the enlistment, Judge Advocates often resorted to bureaucratic reports, suggesting an increasing reliance on growing central-state authority that generated thousands of
enlistment records. To prove that an accused bounty-jumper was the same man
with two names, the court-martial drew up a descriptive list. The list included
soldiers’ physical appearance, which would invalidate aliases. The courts verified
the soldier signed a second contract without regular discharge from the first.77
After validating the enlistment contract, many Judge Advocates produced the
enlistment and muster papers as well as the pay rolls for deserting troops, showing
a contract existed and the deserter’s original willingness to join. A lieutenant put
on the stand told the court the deserter not only “voluntarily enlisted and was
sworn into the service” but also that, while enlisting, the officer employed “no
force or threats of any kind.”78
Freedmen opted into the legal fiction to make their cases too, arguing they
never actually deserted. Rather, seeking sympathy, they blamed circumstances
outside their control to defuse volition. One man headed back to his regiment
from furlough, but a burnt bridge over the Cumberland River kept him from rejoining.79 Another pinned his mishap on a liquored-up sergeant who told the
alleged deserter the transport was leaving at the wrong time.80 However, neither
man went as far to honor his contract as a soldier that lost his regiment in the
field and explained to the courts-martial that he joined the Quartermaster’s
Department to stay “in the employ of the government all the time.”81
Contracts played a fundamental role in determining whether disheartened
soldiers deserted or not, and in the trials, the army and the deserters wrestled over
whether the deserter legitimately enlisted. The army needed to prove enlistment
while soldiers argued recruiters bullied them into joining. In December 1865, in
the trial of Private Soloman Faquay, a soldier serving in the 111 USCT near the
Mississippi River, the Judge Advocate pulled the enlistment records and asked
the enlisting officer, Captain R. C. Hamilton, to confirm that Faquay volunteered
willingly. On the stand, Hamilton verified Faquay enlisted for three years on
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Journal of Social History
Spring 2016
February 23, 1864, in Pulaski, Tennessee. Hamilton also explained that Faquay
deserted March 4, 1865, before he was mustered in on August 23. Apparently captured but not tried, Hamilton said Faquay deserted again after officially joining
the 111 USCT on September 23, 1865. When Hamilton’s testimony ended, the
defense countered, calling a fellow soldier to the stand. The defense proceeded
undermining the prosecution’s use of the enlistment contract and Hamilton’s
defense. The defense asked the witness what he knew of Faquay. The witness told
the court he became acquainted with the defendant about two years ago and said
Faquay had been sick the entire time, “complaining more or less of pains.” The
defense then asked if the deserter willingly enlisted; the witness answered: “No
sir, he didn’t want to hold up his hand to be sworn.” The witness said Faquay protested to Hamilton that “he was not healthy,” yet Hamilton insisted Faquay and a
“right smart” amount of men raise their hands to enlist. The Judge Advocate
stepped in and asked if Hamilton “threatened” Faquay. The witness could not remember. The Judge Advocate asked if Hamilton did anything but “tell them all
to hold up their hands.” The witness muttered, “No.” Although the defense undermined the contract, the court considered the contract legitimate because
forced enlistment could not be unequivocally proven. The case closed, and the
court convicted Faquay of desertion, sentencing him to be dishonorably discharged. They also ordered Faquay be drummed out of camp with one side of his
head shaved as a mark of shame.82
Late in the war, even Sergeant Christian Fleetwood realized service did not
patently mean existential fulfillment or a place for future black uplift. Fleetwood
served in the 4th USCT, earning the Medal of Honor after heroically carrying
the colors in the face of stubborn rebels who shot down a dozen other colorbearers. Proud of his achievement and his service, Fleetwood applied for an
officer commission, but when denied in the summer of 1865, he came to realize
“no matter how well and faithfully they may perform their duties” black troops
“will shortly be considered as ‘lazy nigger sojers.’” In despondence, Fleetwood
concluded that black soldiers were disciplined to be merely “drones in the great
hive.”83
Over 130,000 black men experienced emancipation in the army. As freedpeople around the Atlantic had, black troops carried unique ideas of freedom.
Martial glory earned through violence dignified the process and gave many a
freedom worth fighting and dying to protect. Others, however, suffered white officers’ discipline as a form of enslavement. In anger, they ran. Their desertion reflected violated expectations for freedom. The army responded harshly to soldiers’
defiant expressions of self-emancipation, and officers disciplined deserters in the
courts-martial. These trials of freedom attest that liberation did not arrive with
blue uniforms and gold buttons. The deserters bear witness that if black soldiers
survived combat they endured for a freedom bounded by the terms of a contract to
the Union.
Endnotes
For his comments on multiple drafts, I thank Michael Vorenberg. I thank Matthew Pratt
Guterl for engaging the project from the start. Catherine Clinton, Jim Downs, Françoise
Hamlin, Jennifer Lambe, and Seth Rockman offered productive feedback on earlier drafts,
and I am grateful for their time and wisdom. I also appreciate the valuable comments from
two anonymous referees. And many thanks to Craig D’Ooge for his support in Washington
African American Deserters during the U.S. Civil War
705
and to DeAnne Blanton for direction at the National Archives when I first began tracking
Civil War deserters. Address correspondence to Jonathan Lande, Department of History,
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02906. Email: Jonathan_Lande@brown.edu.
1. Marsena Rudolph Patrick, Inside Lincoln’s Army: The Diary of Marsena Rudolph Patrick,
Provost Marshal General, Army of the Potomac, ed. David S. Sparks (New York, 1964), 386;
Case file LL2967, Record Group 153, National Archives Building, Washington,
D.C. (hereafter cited as RG153); Harper’s Weekly, July 9, 1864; Deborah Willis and
Barbara Krauthamer, Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery
(Philadelphia, 2013), 102.
2. Harper’s Weekly, July 9, 1864.
3. David Blight, Race and Reunion: The American Civil War in American Memory
(Cambridge, 2001), 2.
4. Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland,
“The Black Military Experience,” Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the
Civil War (New York, 1992), 223; Keith P. Wilson, Campfires of Freedom: The Camp Life of
Black Soldiers During the Civil War (Kent, 2002), xii.
5. Noah Andre Trudeau, Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862–1865
(Boston, 1998), 466.
6. Ella Lonn, Desertion during the Civil War (Lincoln, 1998 [originally 1928]), 150; OR, ser.
1, 28: 329.
7. James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–
1865 (New York, 2013), 383.
8. Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, Freedom’s Soldiers: The Black Military
Experience in the Civil War (New York, 1998), 109.
9. For the transnational networks connecting slave revolts, see Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie,
“Slave Revolt Across Borders,” Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage 2, no. 1
(May, 2013), 65–92.
10. Rebecca J. Scott, Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery (Cambridge,
2005), 10.
11. For the prevalence and significance of slaves’ resistance as running away, see John
Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation
(New York, 1999). For the breadth of rebellion, see Herbert Aptheker, American Negro
Slaver Revolts (New York, 1983 [originally 1943]).
12. Article 38 in the 1861 version and Articles 64 through 93 in the revised section.
Revised United States Army Regulations of 1861, 125–7, 495–500. (Hereafter cited as Army
Regulations.) George James Stansfield, “A History of the Judge Advocate General’s
Department United States Army,” Military Affairs 9, no. 3 (Autumn, 1945), 219–237.
13. Steven Hahn, The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom (Cambridge, 2009), 78. Du
Bois, 55–84; David Williams, African American Self-Emancipation in the Civil War Era
(New York, 2014); Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the
Civil War South (Cambridge, 2013), 310–57;
14. Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (New York, 1989 [originally 1953]), 31.
Mary Frances Berry, Military Necessity and Civil Rights Policy: Black Citizenship and the
Constitution, 1861–1868 (Port Washington, 1977), 22–33.
15. Charles Graham Halpine, “Sambo’s Right to be Kilt,” in American Anthology, 1787–
1900, ed. Edmund Clarence Stedman (Boston, 1900), 454–455.
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Journal of Social History
Spring 2016
16. Berry, 56; James M. McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and
Acted During the War for the Union (New York, 1965), 170.
17. Both drafts are in Michael Vorenberg, Emancipation Proclamation: A Brief History with
Documents (New York, 2010), 59–61, 70–72.
18. Carole Emberton, Beyond Redemption: Race, Violence, and the American South after the
Civil War (Chicago, 2013), 105–35.
19. January 3, 1863, in Vorenberg, Emancipation Proclamation, 74.
20. Adelbert Volck, “Writing the Emancipation Proclamation,” Porter & Coates reproduction, 1886, Maury A. Bromsen Collection of Confederate Etchings, John Hay Library,
Brown University.
21. John G. Whittier, “The Proclamation,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 11, no. 64 (Feb., 1864),
240–241.
22. Amy Dru Stanley, “Instead of Waiting for the Thirteenth Amendment: The War
Power, Slave Marriage, and Inviolate Human Rights,” American Historical Review 115, no.
3 (June, 2010), 732–765. Thavolia Glymph, “Rose’s War and the Gendered Politics of a
Slave Insurgency in the Civil War,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 3, no. 4 (Dec., 2013),
517–9.
23. Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
(New York, 2008), 55.
24. James Oliver Horton, “Freedom’s Yoke: Gender Conventions among Antebellum Free
Blacks,” Feminist Studies 12, no. 1 (Spring, 1986), 53.
25. Faust, 55.
26. Carole Emberton, “Only Murder Makes Men”: Reconsidering the Black Military
Experience,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 3 (Sept., 2012), 369–93.
27. Douglass’ Monthly, April 1863.
28. For runaways’ profile, see Franklin, 210, 224; Oakes, 375. For recruiters’ ideal soldiers,
see Luke, Soldiering for Freedom, 97, 33–38.
29. Glatthaar, 108.
30. Glatthaar, 115.
31. John Stauffer, “Embattled Manhood and New England Writers,” in Battle Scars:
Gender and Sexuality in the American Civil War, ed. Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber
(New York, 2006), 132; Jim Cullen, “I’s a Man Now’: “Gender and African American
Men,” in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, ed. Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber
(New York, 1992), 76–91.
32. Bob Luke and John David Smith, Soldiering for Freedom: How the Union Army
Recruited, Trained, and Deployed the U.S. Colored Troops (Baltimore, 2014), 67–77.
33. Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York, 1980),
68. Wilson, 19–21.
34. Quoted in McPherson, Negro’s, 172.
35. John D. Billings, Hard Tack and Coffee Or the Unwritten Story of Army Life (Boston,
1887), 144.
African American Deserters during the U.S. Civil War
707
36. Soldier’s Certificate No. 254,987, Samuel Dixon, Company B, 1st Pennsylvania Light
Artillery, Civil War Pension Files, Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Record
Group 15, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.
37. James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
(New York, 1997), 46–8. Wilson, 30; Ira Berlin, Joseph Reidy, and Leslie Rowland, eds.,
Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867, Series II: The Military
Experience (New York, 1983), 438.
38. Quoted in Berlin, Freedom’s Soldiers, 110.
39. Edward Baptist, The Half that has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American
Capitalism (New York, 2014), 118.
40. Quoted in Fred Harvey Harrington, “The Fort Jackson Mutiny,” Journal of Negro
History 27, no. 4 (Oct., 1942), 429.
41. Quoted in Berlin, Freedom’s Soldiers, 109
42. OR, ser. 3, 5: 677.
43. Ella Lonn, Desertion during the Civil War (Lincoln, 1998 [originally 1928]), 150; OR,
ser. 1, 28: 329.
44. Jim Downs, Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil
War and Reconstruction (New York, 2012), 3.
45. Jane Wallis quoted in Ira Berlin and Leslie S. Rowland, Families and Freedom: A
Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era (New York, 1997), 69.
46. Berlin, Freedom, 697, 690.
47. OR, ser. 3, 4: 227.
48. Andrew L. Slap, “The Loyal Deserters: African American Soldiers and Community in
Civil War Memphis,” in Weirding the Civil War: Stories from the Civil War’s Ragged Edges,
ed. Stephen Berry (Athens, 2011), 245.
49. NN745, RG153.
50. Howard C. Westwood, “The Cause and Consequence of a Union Black Soldier’s
Mutiny and Execution,” in Black Troops, White Commanders, and Freedmen during the Civil
War (Carbondale, 1992), 125–41.
51. MM 1320, RG 153; William Wells Brown, Negro in American Rebellion: His Heroism &
His Fidelity (Boston: A. G. Brown & Co., 1880 [originally 1867]), 252. also Howard
C. Westwood, “The Cause and Consequence of a Union Black Soldier’s Mutiny and
Execution,” in Black Troops, White Commanders, and Freedmen during the Civil War
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 125–41. For the discrepancies on
pay, see OR, ser. 3, 3: 250–52, 404–5, 420.
52. James Henry Gooding to Abraham Lincoln, Sept. 28, 1863, in On the Altar of Freedom:
A Black Soldier’s Civil War Letters from the Front, ed. Virginia M. Adams (University of
Massachusetts Press, 1991), 119. Gooding’s emphasis.
53. NN 1259. Adolphus Reeper, alias Adolphus Relf, pulled a similar move on his way
from Camp Penn to Brazos Santiago, Texas, in 1865. OO 1395.
54. LL 2900, RG 153, NA.
55. LL2378, RG153.
56. Berlin, Freedom, 450.
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Journal of Social History
Spring 2016
57. Berlin, Freedom, 451.
58. OR, ser. 3, 5: 677–9.
59. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Life in a Black Regiment (New York, 2002), 42.
60. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters of
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, edited by Christopher Looby (Chicago, 2000), 166. Steven
Ramold, Baring the Iron Hand: Discipline in the Union Army (DeKalb, 2010), 302, 315; Bell
Irvin Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Solider of the Union (Baton Rouge, 1993
[originally 1952]), 209–10.
61. Army Regulations, 125–6. Higginson, The Complete Civil War Journal, 182.
62. OR, ser. 1, 41: 719–29. The army stuck to this regulation for the most part, though
Andrew Thompson, Charles M. Johnson, and Henry Jackson faced an all white tribunal
that had no officers from a black regiment. LL 2900, RG153.
63. Glatthaar, 119; Christian Samito, Becoming American Under Fire: Irish Americans,
African Americans, and the Politics of Citizenship during the Civil War Era (Ithaca, 2009), 84–
86; Berlin, Freedom, 433–442. When a court-martial tried two soldiers together, violating
rule 892, Article 38, and when the court did not swear in Judge Advocate in the cases of
three men, breaking rule 891, Article 38, the reviewer threw out the cases and acquitted
the men. Army Regulations, 125; OO1786, NN1502, OO368, RG153. While most historians agree the army maintained justice, Steven Ramold argues that black army soldiers suffered unfair treatment. Steven J. Ramold, Slaves, Sailors, Citizens: African Americans in the
Union Army (DeKalb, 2002), 152–165.
64. Thurgood Marshall, His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions, and Reminiscences,
edited by Mark V. Tushnet (Chicago, 2001), 135.
65. Marshall, 135.
66. Quoted in Glatthaar, 37.
67. Glatthaar, 35. Luke, 55–9.
68. John H. Taggart, Free Military School for Applicants for Commands of Colored Troops,
Second Edition (Philadelphia, 1864), 29–43. Keith Wilson, “Thomas Webster and the
‘Free Military School for Applicants for Commands of Colored Troops,’” Civil War History
29, no. 2 (June, 1983), 101–22.
69. Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the
American Civil War (Baton Rouge, 2008), 290.
70. Dudley Taylor Cornish, “The Union Army as a School for Negroes,” Journal of Negro
History 39, no. 4 (Oct., 1852), 379, 380.
71. Quoted in Mark E. Neely, Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict
in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill, 2011), 130. The Maryland Supreme Court alluded
to the same understanding in 1821. See David Montgomery, Citizen Worker: The
Experience of Workers in the United State with Democracy and the Free Market during the
Nineteenth Century (New York, 1993), 36–7.
72. Army Regulations, 130–131, 132, 521.
73. Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in
the Age of Emancipation (New York, 1998), 18.
74. New York Tribune, August 12, 1864.
75. LL2350, RG153. Berlin, Freedom, 451.
African American Deserters during the U.S. Civil War
709
76. Heather Cox Richardson, Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the
Post-Civil War North, 1865–1901 (Cambridge, 2001), 7–13.
77. OO368, RG153.
78. OO1489, RG153.
79. LL2900, RG153.
80. NN3048, RG153.
81. NN3048, RG153. See also Thomas Williams’s case, OO599, RG153.
82. MM3810, RG153. MM1916, RG153. See also Daniel Faquay’s case, MM3810,
RG153.
83. Christian A. Fleetwood to Dr. James Hall, June 8, 1965, Carter G. Woodson Papers,
Library of Congress.
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9 pts
10 pts
Successful
8 pts
Use of
Use of
7 pts
Use of
evidence
6 pts
Use of
evidence
in both
use of
evidence
evidence for
evidence in
either
historical or
in both
needs
both
portions
some
sections
Use two or more sources from assigned
readings; additional sources that detail the
contemporary issue are reliable and appropriate;
demonstrate a clear and persuasive
understanding of readings; direct quotations
and paraphrased concepts are well-chosen,
properly contextualized, and integrated with
student's own ideas
of the
work in
needs
historical and
contemporary
portions of
one
10 pts
paper
needs
significant
work
section
paper
contemporary
portion needs
some work,
but is
successful in
the other
portion
some
and
work
significant
work in
the other
Structure
5 pts
Successful or needs only
minimal work
4 pts
Needs some
3 pts
Needs significant
work
work
Introduction suggests structure paper will
follow; paragraphs with topic sentences that
indicate scope; each paragraph is centered on
coherent ideas; clear transitions and logical
progression throughout paper
5 pts
Clarity
Appropriate length; proper use of citations;
writing is stylistically strong
enough that
student's intended meaning is clear
5 pts
Successful or needs only
minimal work
4 pts
Needs some
3 pts
Needs significant
work
5 pts
work
Total Points: 30
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