Role Of African-Americans During The Civil War

8 Pages 2123 Words

ance ranged from the use of the Underground Railroad - a secret, organized network of people who helped fugitive slaves reach the Northern states and Canada - to the daily resistance or silent sabotage found on the plantations. Stokesbury acknowledges in, A Short History of the Civil War, the existence of the Underground Railroad but disagrees with other historians as to its importance. He notes that it never became as well organized or as successful as the South believed. Even with the groundwork having been laid for resistance, the prevalent racial climate in America in 1860 found it unthinkable that blacks would bear arms against white Americans. However, by 1865 these black soldiers had proven their value. Wilson writes in great detail describing the struggles and achievements of the black soldiers in his book The Black Phalanx. McPherson discusses in The Negro's Civil War that widespread opposition to the use of blacks as soldiers prevailed among northern whites. Whereas McPherson relates the events cumulating in the passage of two laws that aided black enlistment, Wilson focuses on the actual enlistment. He notes that the first regiment of free blacks came into service at New Orleans in September 1862 through the efforts of Butler. Wilson credits Butler's three regiments of blacks as the first officially mustered into Union ranks. North Carolina and Kansas also organized additional black units where minor skirmishes proved to be successful. Wilson also notes that "Kansas has ... the honor of being the first State in the Union to begin the organization of Negroes as soldiers for the Federal army." McPherson believes that up to this point President Lincoln had opposed the idea of blacks fighting for the Union but after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that slaves in states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, "shall be then, thence forward, and ...