Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Chapter 15
Conclusion
Although the presence of nearly 4 million slaves in the Confederacy and the
loyal border states made it inevitable that black people would play a prominent
role in the Civil War, the federal government’s eventual decision to enlist black
soldiers was as hesitant as its approach to the entire question of emancipation. In
the first place, the prevailing racial attitudes of white Americans meant that the
presence of black people would be discounted, if not ignored, as much as possible
and for as long as possible. Moreover, the geopolitical necessity of securing the
loyalty of slaveholding border states ensured that the approach would be hesitant
and oblique. Rail connections to the nation’s capital ran through Maryland; beyond
the Mississippi River, the state of Missouri controlled routes to the Pacific Coast
and the Rocky Mountains, both sources of wealth necessary to the federal treasury;
between Maryland and Missouri lay Kentucky, with its river boundary shared by
three large and populous free states. Until the border states were secured to the
Union, Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet believed that they had to proceed cautiously.
Early attempts to preserve the Union were thus tentative and soft. In the
opening months of the conflict, Union generals assured white Southerners that they
came only to reassert federal authority, not to free slaves. Only in July 1861, when
a Confederate army rebuffed an attempt to oust it from the vicinity of Washington,
D.C., did the Northern public accept the fact that the country faced a long war. 1
During the next year, Union armies advanced on all fronts, despite well-publicized
reverses in Virginia. They occupied Nashville, New Orleans, Norfolk, and
Memphis; marched through Arkansas; and established beachheads in the Carolinas
and Florida. Everywhere they went, the region’s enslaved black residents thronged
their camps, hoping for an escape from bondage. Army quartermasters and engineers
quickly put the new arrivals to work, often competing for their services with
agents of the Treasury Department who wanted the freedpeople settled on plantations
and producing cotton to finance the war. Meanwhile, the president rejected
attempts by generals in Missouri, South Carolina, and elsewhere to free slaves or
to enlist them as soldiers. In the summer of 1862, when the federal advance had
1 U.S. Census Bureau, Agriculture of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1864), pp. 223–45; Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy
Toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 8–11,
23–46.