Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Conclusion 505
to load and fire their weapons and to form line of battle. The determinants of performance
were training and practical experience. 21
The most enduring accomplishment of the Union’s black soldiers was to assert
their right to full citizenship and, by extension, that of all their kin. Lincoln recognized
this claim as early as March 1864, when he urged the new governor of Louisiana
to extend the franchise to “the very intelligent” among the freedmen, “and
especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks.” This was merely a private
suggestion, he told the governor, but hundreds of black Southerners reached the
same conclusion independently during the months that followed. “We want two
more boxes, beside the cartridge box,” Sgt. Henry J. Maxwell told a convention at
Nashville in August 1865, “the ballot box and the jury box.” In the years to come,
black veterans in other parts of the country would base petitions for full civic
participation on their military service during the war. They had answered fully the
question that Treasury Agent Edward Pierce had posed in the summer of 1863:
“Will they fight for their freedom?” Another century and five more wars would
pass before most Americans began to acknowledge the answer. 22
21 Maj Gen G. Weitzel to Col C. H. Whittlesey, 26 Nov 1865, Entry 2063, U.S. Forces on the
Rio Grande, Letters Sent, pt. 2, Polyonymous Successions of Cmds, RG 393, U.S. Army Continental
Cmds, NA. On fatigue duty, training, and discipline, see above, Chapters 2–5, 7, 9, 11, 12.
22 Basler et al., Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 7: 243; Colored Tennessean (Nashville),
12 August 1865; Edward L. Pierce, “The Freedmen at Port Royal,” Atlantic Monthly 12 (September
1863): 291–315 (quotation, p. 291). Petitions of black veterans and remarks of black orators are in
Berlin et al., Black Military Experience, pp. 817–18, 822–23; Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So
Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Knopf, 1979), pp. 532–33, 537–38.