African American Soldiers of the Civil War

At the end of the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln announced that the freed African Americans “would be received into the armed service of the United States…” Lincoln believed that this would weaken the Confederacy and strengthen the Union. The recruitment of the newly freed African Americans took laborers from the South and placed these men into the Union army. President Lincoln also felt that seeing the African Americans fighting against the Confederacy would have a psychological effect upon the Southern troops. As of January 1, 1863, the North began recruiting African Americans soldiers but, recruitment was slow at first. In the spring of 1863 only two African Americans regiments existed, however, this grew to sixty regiments by December 1863. By 1864, the number of African Americans regiments had expanded to over 80. The 54th Massachusetts Colored Regiment single-handedly numbered over 1,000 soldiers. This all-volunteer regiment, led by the white colonel Robert Shaw, helped begin the twenty-two month land and sea assault on Charleston, South Carolina. After leading an unsuccessful hand-to-hand attack on Fort Wagner in Charleston, this regiment engaged in one of the most famous African American contributions of the Civil War and suffered from approximately 44 percent fatalities, including Colonel Shaw. Their performance in this battle helped to make the blacks more widely accepted throughout the Union army.

As other issues, such as slavery’s expansion into the territories, sharpened the sectional divide, abolitionism and its vocabulary of freedom and race toleration gained basic legitimacy. Although most white Americans still saw abolition as a threat to the carefully balanced peace between Northerners and Southerners, and between African Americans and whites, abolitionists had made emancipation a part of the nation’s moral imagination. With the coming of war, there was no better time than a moral crusade to free the enslaved. President Abraham Lincoln’s shift toward emancipation must be viewed as an extraordinary transformation. Without a doubt, Lincoln’s response had strategic objectives. President Lincoln hoped that the Emancipation Proclamation would eventually persuade the South to become a part of the Union again.