Loblolly, Volume 19, Number 2, Summer 1992 Page: 48
72 p. : ill.View a full description of this periodical.
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against us that are now for us."
Perhaps black abolitionist Frederick
Douglass came closest to the real reason: "Once
let the black man get upon his person the brass
letters, U.S.; let him get an eagle on the
button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets
in his pocket, and there is no power on eart-
which can deny that he has earned tlh right
citizenship in the United States."
Gradually, under pressure from a
and the thousands of escaped slaves and Norther
free blacks who were volunteering their services
the mood began to change. By early 1862, some
generals were using blacks in labor battalion-
and as scouts. In August, Ben Butler, a
military governor of New Orleans, organized 1, 40,
freedmen into the Louisiana Native Guards--the
first official black regiment in the U.S. Army.
By now Lincoln himself, faced with heav>
casualties and expiring one-year enlistments, had
concluded that black troops were badly needed.
The formal Emancipation Proclamation made it
official: as of Jan. 1, 1863, black units would
be organized to fight for freedom. Recruitment
began on a massive scale.
But the glory still belonged to whites.
Black troops were paid less, denied commission as
officers, harassed and beaten and even fired on
by white soldiers and relegated at first to
building fortifications and driving cattle. If
captured; they were not considered legitimate
prisoners of war; many were returned to or sold
into slavery and some were executed. but
hundreds of white officers volunteered to train
and lead black troops, and soon thousands were
ready to prove their mettle in combat.
Many of war's great set-piece battles had
already been fought, but in the remaining 23
months of the conflict, black troops took part in
at least 39 major engagements and 410 minor ones.
By most accounts, they represented about 12
percent of the Union Army's manpower, 7 percent
of its desertions and a third of its deaths--
68,178, of which 2,751 were in combat and the
rest from wounds and disease. In August: 2D3348
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Gary High School. Loblolly, Volume 19, Number 2, Summer 1992, periodical, Summer 1992; Gary, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth613879/m1/51/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Panola College.