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American Civil War & Reconstruction: African American Soldiers

This guide includes a collection of resources on the American Civil War.

African American Soldiers

Buffalo Soldiers

By the end of the Civil War, nearly 200,000 black soldiers were serving in the Federal Army. After the war, many decided not to return to a life of sharecropping and racial oppression, instead volunteering to battle outlaws and Indian raiders along the western frontier. This program uses dazzling reenactments and the expertise of military historians to tell the multifaceted story of the Buffalo Soldiers, a name given to black troops by their Native American adversaries. Viewers learn about the daily lives and daunting assignments of these proud African-Americans, the harsh environments in which they conducted missions, and the deeds of individual Buffalo Soldiers such as Sgt. Emanuel Stance, Lt. George Burnett, and Henry Flipper—the first black cadet to graduate from West Point, whose promising career was ended by an unjust and later discredited court martial. Hosted by well-known TV judge Joe Brown. (43 minutes)

Source: Films on Demand

Black Soldiers (United States Colored Troops): The Civil War in Four Minutes 132,346 viewsJun 7, 2013

 

Join Historian Hari Jones as he summarizes the experiences of African American Civil War soldiers, from emancipation to the authorization of United States Colored Troops (USCT) to their experiences on the battlefield. This video is part of the American Battlefield Trust's In4 video series, which presents short videos on basic Civil War topics.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOyO75HJygI

Perspectives

Searching for Black Confederates

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans' gains in civil rights and other realms. Levin also investigates the roles that African Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers, an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history.

In the Cause of Liberty

In this remarkable collection, ten premier scholars of nineteenth-century America address the epochal impact of the Civil War by examining the conflict in terms of three Americas?antebellum, wartime, and postbellum nations. Moreover, they recognize the critical role in this transformative era of three groups of Americans?white northerners, white southerners, and African Americans in the North and South. Through these differing and sometimes competing perspectives, the contributors address crucial ongoing controversies at the epicenter of the cultural, political, and intellectual history of this decisive period in American history. Coeditors William J. Cooper, Jr., and John M. McCardell, Jr., introduce the collection, which contains essays by the foremost Civil War scholars of our time: James M. McPherson considers the general import of the war; Peter S. Onuf and Christa Dierksheide examine how patriotic southerners reconciled slavery with the American Revolutionaries? faith in the new nation?s progressive role in world history; Sean Wilentz attempts to settle the long-standing debate over the reasons for southern secession; and Richard Carwardine identifies the key wartime contributors to the nation?s sociopolitical transformation and the redefinition of its ideals. George C. Rable explores the complicated ways in which southerners adopted and interpreted the terms ?rebel? and ?patriot,? and Chandra Manning finds three distinct understandings of the relationship between race and nationalism among Confederate soldiers, black Union soldiers, and white Union soldiers. The final three pieces address how the country dealt with the meaning of the war and its memory: Nina Silber discusses the variety of ways we continue to remember the war and the Union victory; W. Fitzhugh Brundage tackles the complexity of Confederate commemoration; and David W. Blight examines the complicated African American legacy of the war. In conclusion, McCardell suggests the challenges and rewards of using three perspectives for studying this critical period in American history. Presented originally at the ?In the Cause of Liberty? symposium hosted by The American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar in Richmond, Virginia, these incisive essays by the most respected and admired scholars in the field are certain to shape historical debate for years to come.

The Negro's Civil War

How American Blacks Felt and Acted During the War for the Union In this classic study, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson deftly narrates the experience of blacks--former slaves and soldiers, preachers, visionaries, doctors, intellectuals, and common people--during the Civil War. Drawing on contemporary journalism, speeches, books, and letters, he presents an eclectic chronicle of their fears and hopes as well as their essential contributions to their own freedom. Through the words of these extraordinary participants, both Northern and Southern, McPherson captures African-American responses to emancipation, the shifting attitudes toward Lincoln and the life of black soldiers in the Union army. Above all, we are allowed to witness the dreams of a disenfranchised people eager to embrace the rights and the equality offered to them, finally, as citizens.

Black Soldiers in Blue

Inspired and informed by the latest research in African American, military, and social history, the fourteen original essays in this book tell the stories of the African American soldiers who fought for the Union cause. An introductory essay surveys the history of the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) from emancipation to the end of the Civil War. Seven essays focus on the role of the USCT in combat, chronicling the contributions of African Americans who fought at Port Hudson, Milliken's Bend, Olustee, Fort Pillow, Petersburg, Saltville, and Nashville. Other essays explore the recruitment of black troops in the Mississippi Valley; the U.S. Colored Cavalry; the military leadership of Colonels Thomas Higginson, James Montgomery, and Robert Shaw; African American chaplain Henry McNeal Turner; the black troops who occupied postwar Charleston; and the experiences of USCT veterans in postwar North Carolina. Collectively, these essays probe the broad military, political, and social significance of black soldiers' armed service, enriching our understanding of the Civil War and African American life during and after the conflict. The contributors are Anne J. Bailey, Arthur W. Bergeron Jr., John Cimprich, Lawrence Lee Hewitt, Richard Lowe, Thomas D. Mays, Michael T. Meier, Edwin S. Redkey, Richard Reid, William Glenn Robertson, John David Smith, Noah Andre Trudeau, Keith Wilson, and Robert J. Zalimas Jr.

YouTube Videos

Learn how blacks serving in WWII helped forward the Civil Rights Movement.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdjYSj_dq8o