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The war to save the Union had become, for scores of black people at least, nothing less than a war of liberation. This far-reaching change in the nature of the Civil War, like emancipation itself, had been achieved neither quickly nor easily.

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WHEN THE CIVIL WAR BROKE OUT, Frederick Douglass, a black abolitionist leader and former slave, immediately called for the enlistment of slaves and free blacks into a “liberating army” that would carry the banner of emancipation through the South. Within thirty days, Douglass believed, 10,000 black soldiers could be assembled. “One black regiment alone would be, in such a war, the full equal of two white ones. The very fact of color in this case would be more terrible than powder and balls. The slaves would learn more as to the nature of the conflict from the presence of one such regiment, than from a thousand preachers.” But the North was not yet prepared to endorse such a revolutionary move, any more than it could conceive of the necessity or wisdom of embracing a policy of emancipation.5

Along with most northern whites, even ardent Union patriots tended to view the enlistment of blacks into the armed forces as an incendiary act contrary to accepted modes of warfare and “shocking to our sense of humanity.” The specters of Nat Turner and Santo Domingo were regarded as sufficient warnings of what might happen if armed black men were unleashed upon white slaveholding families. The history of slave insurrections, a Republican senator from Ohio reminded his colleagues, demonstrated that “Negro warfare” inevitably produced “all the scenes of desolation attendant upon savage warfare.” Besides, a border state congressman told his constituents, “to confess our inability to put down this rebellion without calling to our aid these semi-barbaric hordes” would prove “derogatory to the manhood of 20 millions of freemen.”6

Early conceptions of the Civil War as “a white man’s war” with limited objectives were not the only deterrent to raising a black army. Even if black enlistments should be deemed desirable, few whites believed that black men possessed the necessary technical skills, intelligence, and courage to become effective soldiers. “If we were to arm them,” President Lincoln conceded in September 1862, “I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hands of the rebels.” No less threatening to many whites was the possibility that they were wrong and that the black man might actually prove himself in combat. “If you make him the instrument by which your battles are fought, the means by which your victories are won,” an Ohio congressman warned, “you must treat him as a victor is entitled to be treated, with all decent and becoming respect.” The use of black troops also threatened to undermine the morale of white Union soldiers, many of whom recoiled at the thought of serving alongside black comrades. “[I]t Will raise a rebelion in the army that all the abolisionist this Side of hell Could not Stop,” one Union soldier predicted. “[T]he Southern Peopel are rebels to the government but they are White and God never intended a nigger to put white people Down.”7

The exclusion of blacks from the armed forces, like President Lincoln’s reluctance to make emancipation a war objective, worked only so long as the government and northern whites remained confident of their ability to win the war. In the aftermath of Fort Sumter, with patriotic whites rallying to the flag, there seemed little reason to doubt that the rebellion would be easily and speedily crushed. Eighteen months later, the expected quick victory had not materialized, the war still raged with no end in sight, and a weary, frustrated North was forced to think about a different kind of war. Mounting casualties, the return home of the maimed and wounded, the alarming increase in desertions (more than 100,000 away without leave at the end of 1862), and the growing difficulty in obtaining enlistments encouraged a reassessment of the military value