Contains primary source material.

The Civil War stands vivid in the collective memory of the American public. There has always been a profound interest in the subject, and specifically the participation of black Americans in and reactions to the war and the war's outcome. Almost 200,000 African-American soldiers fought for the Union in the Civil War. Although most were illiterate ex-slaves, several thousand were well-educated, free black men from the northern states. The 176 letters in this collection were written by black soldiers in the Union army during the Civil War to black and abolitionist newspapers. They provide a unique expression of the black voice that was meant for a public forum. The letters tell of the men's experiences, their fears and their hopes. They describe in detail their army days - the excitement of combat and the drudgery of digging trenches. Some letters give vivid descriptions of battle; others protest against racism; still others call eloquently for civil rights. Many describe their conviction that they are fighting not only to free the slaves but to earn equal rights as citizens. These letters give an extraordinary picture of the war and also reveal the bright expectations, hopes, and ultimately the demands that black soldiers had for the future - for themselves and for their race. As first-person documents of the Civil War, the letters are strong statements of the American dream of justice and equality, and of the human spirit.

In the years after the Civil War, black and white Union soldiers who survived the horrific struggle joined the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)--the Union army's largest veterans' organization. In this thoroughly researched and groundbreaking study, Barba

Freedom's Soldiers tells the story of the 200,000 black men who fought in the Civil War, in their own words and those of eyewitnesses.

A renowned collector of Civil War photographs and a prodigious researcher, Ronald S. Coddington combines compelling archival images with biographical stories that reveal the human side of the war. This third volume in his series on Civil War soldiers contains previously unpublished photographs of African American Civil War participants—many of whom fought to secure their freedom. During the Civil War, 200,000 African American men enlisted in the Union army or navy. Some of them were free men and some escaped from slavery; others were released by sympathetic owners to serve the war effort. African American Faces of the Civil War tells the story of the Civil War through the images of men of color who served in roles that ranged from servants and laborers to enlisted men and junior officers. Coddington discovers these portraits— cartes de visite, ambrotypes, and tintypes—in museums, archives, and private collections. He has pieced together each individual’s life and fate based upon personal documents, military records, and pension files. These stories tell of ordinary men who became fighters, of the prejudice they faced, and of the challenges they endured. African American Faces of the Civil War makes an important contribution to a comparatively understudied aspect of the war and provides a fascinating look into lives that helped shape America.

In Show Thyself a Man, Gregory Mixon explores the ways African Americans in postbellum Georgia used the militia as a vehicle to secure full citizenship, respect, and a more stable place in society. As citizen-soldiers, black men were empowered to get involved in politics, secure their own financial independence, and publicly commemorate black freedom with celebrations such as Emancipation Day. White Georgians, however, used the militia as a different symbol of freedom--to ensure the postwar white right to rule. This book is a forty-year history of black militia service in Georgia and the determined disbandment process that whites undertook to destroy it, connecting this chapter of the post-emancipation South to the larger history of militia participation by African-descendant people through the Western hemisphere and Latin America.

Enlisting memory in a new fight for freedom From the Gilded Age through the Progressive era, labor movements reinterpreted Abraham Lincoln as a liberator of working people while workers equated activism with their own service fighting for freedom during the war. Matthew E. Stanley explores the wide-ranging meanings and diverse imagery used by Civil War veterans within the sprawling radical politics of the time. As he shows, a rich world of rituals, songs, speeches, and newspapers emerged among the many strains of working class cultural politics within the labor movement. Yet tensions arose even among allies. Some people rooted Civil War commemoration in nationalism and reform, and in time, these conservative currents marginalized radical workers who tied their remembering to revolution, internationalism, and socialism. An original consideration of meaning and memory, Grand Army of Labor reveals the complex ways workers drew on themes of emancipation and equality in the long battle for workers’ rights.