Book Review - Through many challenges, they were soldiers

FREEDOM FOR THEMSELVES: North Carolina's Black Soldiers in the Civil War Era. By Richard M. Reid. University of North Carolina Press. 435 pages. $24.99.

This meticulous study of North Carolina's black Civil War soldiers by Richard M. Reid, an associate professor of history at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, blends a plethora of details with generalizations in what will surely become the definitive study of the subject.

All told, 179,000 black soldiers and 7,500 sailors fought for the North in the Civil War, the majority, of course, from the North. Among Southern slaves freed by Northern troops, North Carolina contributed some 6,000 soldiers who served in three infantry regiments, and one heavy artillery regiment that never saw action but served on construction and maintenance details and as prison guards.

Early in the war, the Lincoln administration faced the dual problems of what to do with escaping slaves and whether to make soldiers of some of them. President Lincoln had to be very careful not to alienate the four slave states that had not seceded, so he quietly acquiesced in Gen. Benjamin Butler's and others' practice of calling slaves who crossed the lines "contraband" of war.

After the Battle of Antietam in the summer of 1862, with things looking up, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation that went into effect Jan. 1, 1863, carefully excepting the border states. From then on, formation of Southern black military units proceeded amid much Northern ambivalence in the general population, in the government and in the army. Many doubted the ability of blacks to make good soldiers, and although racial attitudes changed as black soldiers proved their mettle, racism persisted.

Equal pay and treatment were slow in coming for black soldiers, but "Efficiency, the strategic needs of the army and any hope for a continued supply of black volunteers all worked in opposition to the social prejudices of the larger population."

Early in the war, the federal government captured Roanoke Island, New Bern, Beaufort, Fort Macon, Washington and other strategic points in the state. Reid explains in great detail the recruiting and formation of the four North Carolina black regiments. White officers, at first mostly from Massachusetts, were chosen for their military experience, support of abolition and temperance. Blacks had to learn how to be soldiers and laborers at the same time. Often, their work on defenses and camp details interfered with their military training. Other chronic problems included less and uncertain pay, inferior weapons, and the shortage of noncommissioned black corporals and sergeants.

Black North Carolina soldiers fought in South Carolina and Florida, but mostly in Virginia. Reid reports their military successes as well as occasional failures and cases of insubordination and desertion common to Army life. When Richmond fell, a detail of black soldiers got up early and were the first federals troops to enter the city, much to the disgust not only of Richmond residents, but of white soldiers and commanders. They included Gen. Edward O.C. Ord, who snapped at Gen. Edgar A. Wild, who never failed to stand up for his black soldiers: "You get these damned niggers of yours out of Richmond as fast as you can!"

Because Wild was outranked by Ord he had to comply, but his troops had made their point.

One black regiment spent a miserable year in Texas on the Mexican border before being mustered out in 1866.

The author deals with related topics such as the large number of black refugees in New Bern and the short-lived black settlement on Roanoke Island, as well as the wartime experiences of black families left behind in the Confederacy.

Only the most dedicated Civil War buffs will make it through the multitude of names and minutiae that constitute a large part of this book. The narrative is broadened from time to time by enlightening generalizations, such as that black soldiers experienced a significant step in the direction of respect and equal treatment in spite of continuing racism in and out of the Army.

Encyclopedic in detail, this study will be of most interest to Civil War historians, graduate students and those who have a special interest in the subject.

Howard Barnes is a professor of history at Winston-Salem State University.