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made up of free colored militiamen (previously organized by Confederate authorities) and even larger numbers of freed slaves were organized in Louisiana. With unconcealed enthusiasm, General David Hunter sought to mobilize blacks in the Sea Islands of South Carolina, explaining to the War Department that he had recruited no “fugitive slaves” but “a fine regiment of loyal persons whose late masters are fugitive rebels.” The Hunter project proved short-lived, largely because the government refused to recognize or assist it in any way, and aggressive recruitment tactics had antagonized both the freedmen and many of the northern white missionaries and teachers stationed there.11

Responding to new military reverses and stalemates, the War Department in August 1862 authorized the recruitment of a slave regiment in the Union Army—the 1st South Carolina Volunteers. In compliance with the proviso that white men serve as officers, Thomas Wentworth Higginson was appointed to command the regiment. Appropriately, this New England intellectual was also a fervid abolitionist and an old friend of John Brown. He eagerly accepted the commission, considering it a challenge that might well influence the entire course of the war and the destiny of black people in the United States. “I had been an abolitionist too long, and had known and loved John Brown too well,” he later wrote, “not to feel a thrill of joy at last on finding myself in the position where he only wished to be.”12

The 1st South Carolina Volunteers drew its recruits largely from the Sea Islands freedmen. Higginson insisted that his white officers treat the soldiers with respect, refer to them by their full names and never as “nigger,” and eschew any “degrading punishments.” After assuming command in November 1862, his first impressions were favorable, though heavily overladen with a condescending paternalism that characterized his New England contemporaries’ views of black people. He marveled at the religious devotions, songs, and “strange antics” that emanated from “this mysterious race of grown-up children.” He admired their inexhaustible “love of the spelling book.” He was impressed by their aptitude for drill and discipline and their capacity for imitativeness. To Higginson, they were always “a simple and lovable people, whose graces seem to come by nature, and whose vices by training.” He came to love them both as a military commander and as a father figure. “I think it is partly from my own notorious love of children that I like these people so well.” The immediate task at hand, as he interpreted his mission, was to educate these “perpetual children, docile, gay, and lovable,” to manhood and to mobilize them into an effective fighting force. He was fully confident of success.13

Against a background of military setbacks, mounting casualty lists, and unfilled recruitment quotas, President Lincoln issued in September 1862 a Preliminary Proclamation of Emancipation which stipulated that on January 1, 1863, in those states or portions of states still engaged in rebellion, the slaves would be “forever free.” Not only were Tennessee and the loyal border slave states thereby excluded but also the slaves in designated portions of Louisiana, Virginia, and West Virginia. Limited though it was and justified only as “a fit and necessary war measure,” the Proclamation marked a strategic shift in the President’s thinking about the military uses of black men. Henceforth, he decreed, they would be accepted into the armed forces for garrison duty and to man naval vessels. This fell far short of a commitment to a black army, but the wording was sufficiently vague to invite a variety of interpretations and proposals. “The best thing in the proclamation,” wrote a northern lawyer, “is the annunciation that the southern garrisons are to be Negros. We ought to have our standing army (after the rebellion) composed exclusively of Negros—a regular Janissary Corps, who propagate & recruit themselves.” The news was greeted with far less enthusiasm in the Union Army camps in the South, where white