Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

off-duty behavior, a book about black veterans, and an analysis of one subset of
their white officers, as well as a collection of essays (Black Soldiers in Blue, edited
by John David Smith). In addition, there have been regimental histories, studies of
the atrocities Confederates committed on their black opponents, and a narrative of
one of the earliest campaigns in which black troops took part. 3
Nevertheless, the focus of scholarship has not changed a great deal since 1997,
when Brooks D. Simpson observed that
historians have concentrated on the consequences of military service for blacks
and for the whites who commanded them. Scholars view the enlistment of
blacks as a laboratory for social change. . . . Yet there were other dimensions to
the role of black soldiers in the war. Generals had to answer questions involving
their use as combat soldiers, as support personnel working behind the lines, and
as an occupation force. These specific issues in turn place the issue of employing
black troops in the wider context of civil and military policy during and after
the war. . . . By examining . . . the deployment of black regiments within the
context of large policies and problems of command, we gain a better sense of
the conflicting pressures upon white commanders as they sought to grapple with
the implications of arming African Americans. 4
This book will tell the story of how the Union Army’s black regiments came into
being, what they accomplished when they took the field, and how their conduct affected
the course of the war and the subsequent occupation of the defeated South. It
will deal with matters such as the organization, pay, and health of black troops only
so far as is necessary to tell this story. Most of the documentation comes either from
The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies,
published between 1880 and 1901, or from official correspondence in the National
Archives, most of it unpublished. Since state laws in the South prohibited teaching
slaves to read and write and poor educational opportunities in the North had the same
effect, the overwhelming majority of the source material was written by whites.
Freedom by the Sword begins with a chapter that sketches national factors
that affected the formation of all-black regiments: the racial attitudes of white
Americans, the symbiotic relationship that developed between soldiers and es-
3 James M. McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted During
the War for the Union; Ira Berlin et al., eds., The Black Military Experience; Joseph T. Glatthaar,
Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers; Noah A. Trudeau,
Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862–1865; Keith P. Wilson, Campfires of Freedom:
The Camp Life of Black Soldiers During the Civil War; Donald R. Shaffer, After the Glory: The
Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans; Martin W. Öfele, German-Speaking Officers in the U.S.
Colored Troops, 1863–1867; Richard M. Reid, Freedom for Themselves: North Carolina’s Black
Soldiers in the Civil War Era; John David Smith, ed., Black Soldiers in Blue: African American
Troops in the Civil War Era; Gregory J. W. Urwin, ed., Black Flag over Dixie: Racial Atrocities
and Reprisals in the Civil War; George S. Burkhardt, Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath: No Quarter
in the Civil War; Stephen V. Ash, Firebrand of Liberty: The Story of Two Black Regiments That
Changed the Course of the Civil War. See bibliography for full citations.
4 Brooks D. Simpson, “Quandaries of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Black Soldiers,” in
Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era, eds. David W. Blight
and Brooks D. Simpson (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997), pp. 123–49 (quotation, pp.
123–24).
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