Chapter 4
Free but Not Equal
All persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall
then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free. . ..
Such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United
States. . ..
President Abraham Lincoln in The Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863 [1]
On May 31, 1897, Civil War veterans from the 54th Massachusetts Infantry
marched in the rain across Boston Common past the newly unveiled memorial to
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and his regiment (fig. 4.1). The monument, a bas-relief
by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens erected more than three decades after the surrender of the rebel Confederacy, paid homage to the heroism and sacrifices of the
Union Army’s first black regiment. Eulogies by Mayor Josiah Quincy of Boston and
Governor Roger Wolcott of Massachusetts put into words the gratitude of the United
States for the deeds of its first black soldiers [2].
In fact, the fine words that preceded and followed the creation of the 54th
Massachusetts Regiment revealed only part of the wartime circumstances of 1863.
The establishment for the Union army of a ‘colored regiment’, as Governor Andrew
of Massachusetts defined it, was as much a pragmatic measure as an idealistic gesture. Then in its third year, the Civil War was continuing to scorch the American
landscape and torch its towns and cities, soaking the land with blood and strewing
it with bodies clad in both blue and grey. The Confederacy was nowhere near defeat
or surrender in 1863. In fact, it was about to inaugurate Jefferson Davis as its first
president.
The military forces of both sides were being depleted, however, and recruitment was flagging. Both armies urgently needed new sources of manpower. While
the South had enacted conscription in the Civil War’s second year, the North had
resisted this drastic, vociferously opposed measure. The one untapped source of volunteers for the North was able-bodied “men of color.” In Massachusetts, the governor
formed the 54th Regiment, and a vigorous multistate recruitment effort to staff it
met with quick success. Black leaders addressed meetings to encourage volunteers.
In Maryland, Frederick Douglass urged young men to sign up, and two of his sons
did so. Black men from states as far afield as Illinois joined the volunteers from New
England. As an inducement, the army offered each enlistee USD 13 a month pay, a
Fig. 4.1. Veterans of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry passing by the memorial to Colonel Robert G.
Shaw and the members of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, Boston Common, May 31, 1897. Courtesy
of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
USD 100 bounty, plus ‘Good Food and Clothing!’ (fig. 4.2, 4.3). Far more men offered
their services than were needed.
When initial recruitment was complete, the 1,007 black soldiers of the Massachusetts
54th would go to war under the supervision of forty white officers. Fully trained and
armed with Enfield rifles, the unit was ready to mobilize by late May 1863. Cheers
met the men as they marched through Boston past bunting-draped reviewing stands
on the way to Battery Wharf to board the steamer, De Molay. Their ship was bound
for the sea islands off South Carolina – that is, the entryway to the slaughterhouse
that was the Confederate stronghold of Charleston.
In battle after battle, the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts charged unflinchingly
in the face of torrents of musket and cannon fire. When the fighting was reduced to
hand to hand combat, they withstood the slashing of bayonets, swords, and handspikes. Their numbers diminished, as did those of the Rebel forces, but their skill,
courage, and determination did not.
Instead of gratitude and reward, however, they garnered insults. Fear of black
men bearing firearms engendered talk of disarming the soldiers of the Massachusetts
54th and equipping them just with pikes. And their pay, promised to equal to that of
their white comrades – USD 13 a month plus a USD 3.50 clothing allowance – was
deemed unwarranted. On July 2, 1863, Colonel Shaw wrote to Governor Andrew,
‘You have probably seen the order from Washington which cuts down the pay of
colored troops from USD 13 to USD 10. Of course if this affects Massachusetts
Free But Not Equal
53
Fig. 4.2. Recruitment poster for the 54th
Massaschusetts Infantry, 1863. Courtesy of the
Massachusetts Historical Society.
Fig. 4.3. Advertisement from the New Bedford
Mercury, February 1863. From the Norwood P.
Hallowell papers, courtesy of the Massachusetts
Historical Society.
regiments, it will be a great piece of injustice to them, as they were enlisted on the
express understanding that they were to be on precisely the same footing as all other
Massachusetts troops. . .’ [3]. From the reduced USD 10, another USD 3 would be
subtracted for clothing.
Rather than accept the arbitrary pay cut of almost 60%, which was exacerbated
by reduced rations, the 54th Massachusetts regiment continued to fight without
pay. It did so despite the crowning insult of a legal challenge to the men’s legitimacy as soldiers. The federal government enacted a law in 1864 that limited military service for ‘coloreds’ to only those men who had been free on April 19, 1861,
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and administered an oath: ‘You do solemnly swear that you owed no man unrequited labor on or before the 19th day of April, 1861. So help you God’ [4]. The
purpose, when a lump sum of back pay was offered to black soldiers, was to minimize the number of men who qualified – a transparent ploy at best. So all black
men serving in the US forces swore in the affirmative and pressed on with their
duties.
Finally, in September 1865, some twenty-eight months after its first mobilization,
a much-reduced 54th Massachusetts was mustered out of service. Exactly how many
men were present to be discharged is not known. Of the original one thousand seven,
one hundred forty-one had died in action or from combat injuries, but a great many
more had succumbed to illness. Of the regiment’s known dead, infectious diseases,
accidents, and unknown causes accounted for nearly two-thirds of its wartime deaths.
Other black regiments experienced even higher mortality, especially from causes
other than combat. The US 5th Colored Heavy Artillery regiment lost eight hundred
twenty-one soldiers, of whom six hundred ninety-eight died from noncombat-related
causes. Overall, 249,458 – nearly a 70% – of all 359,528 Civil War deaths of US troops
were attributable to causes other than combat [5].
Race and Rank: Differences in Diet and Susceptibility
As the Civil War progressed, the number of soldiers who died with specific diseases – that is, the case-fatality rate – increased. For example, among soldiers
who contracted typhoid fever between 1860 and 1864, the percentage of cases
that proved fatal rose from about 18% to nearly 60% [6]. A pronounced imbalance between black soldiers and white emerges in the wartime disease-related
fatality statistics. According to reports from the US Surgeon General’s Office,
white soldiers’ noncombat-related deaths were markedly fewer than among their
black counterparts (fig. 4.4) [7]. Black troops experienced higher incidence rates
of smallpox, tuberculosis, mumps, diarrhea, measles, scurvy, anemia, and other
diseases [8]. Steadily worsening malnutrition over the course of the Civil War
has been implicated as the main factor underlying the increase in disease-related
fatalities [9].
Night blindness was common in many regiments, but it occurred at a rate that was
more than twice as high among black than among white soldiers (textbox 4–1). The
number of soldiers affected with night blindness showed a clear peak in late spring
and summer; in those seasons, foods containing vitamin A are relatively scarce.
After the harvest season, vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables are more readily available. Civil War troops’ night blindness, therefore, gradually decreased from October
through January. Moreover, the seasonal pattern of night blindness correlated closely
with a prevalence of diarrhea – a related symptom of vitamin A deficiency (textbox
4–1; appendix).
Free But Not Equal
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