This ground-breaking book takes an insightful and close "New Look" at one of the most fascinating subjects of the Civil War--the long-overlooked battlefield contributions of the most forgotten fighting men of the Civil War, Black Confederates. With the release of the popular 1989 film Glory, the American public first learned about the heroism of the black troops of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and their courageous assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in July 1863. But what the American public failed to learn in viewing this popular film was the equally compelling saga of Black Confederates, including at least one defender, a free black soldier of the 1st South Carolina Artillery who defended Fort Wagner in July 1863. Significantly, large numbers of Black Confederates, slave and free, had already been fighting on battlefields across the South for more than two years before the famous assault of the 54th Massachusetts on Fort Wagner, including the war's first major battle at Bull Run. Although the vast of majority blacks served the Confederacy in menial and support roles, Black Confederates, free and slave, fought from 1861 to 1865 in regiments (infantry, cavalry, and artillery) that represented every Southern state.

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.

"America through time. Adding color to American history."

Contains correspondence, military records, and reminiscences from brave men who served what they considered their country.

A study of the role of Afro-Virginians in the Civil War.

Little has been written about the military role of African Americans in military campaigns of the United States despite the fact that men and women of color were involved in all national conflicts beginning with the Revolutionary War. Indeed, the thought of black men and women serving the Confederacy during the Civil War is difficult for some to believe because it appears to be a paradox. Yet the surviving narratives, writings of Civil War veterans and their family members, county histories, newspaper articles, personal correspondence, and recorded tributes to black Confederates, offer heartfelt sentiments and historical information that cannot be ignored--and demonstrate that they did serve the Confederacy as soldiers, bodyguards, sailors, construction workers, cooks, and teamsters. Since his 1995 publication of Forgotten Confederates: An Anthology about Black Southerners, author Charles Kelly Barrow has continued to collect source material for this second volume. Subscribers of Confederate Veteran magazine responded to Barrow's classified ads, and excerpts from other publications such as the Journal of Negro History (Vol. IV, July 1919) and Smithsonian Magazine (March 1979) are included here. One excerpt includes the surprising testimony by black Confederate Eddie Brown Page III for the U.S. District Court that helped determine if the Confederate battle emblem should be removed from the Georgia state flag. After Sergeant Page's testimony, the case was later dismissed. Full of surprising anecdotes, eloquent statements, tragic testaments, and admirable accounts of those blacks who fought for and with the South, this collection deserves a place on the shelf of anyone interested in the Civil War's lesser known aspects.

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.