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By Root 1113 0

constant and consistent defender of colored soldiers’ rights and claims.” Rather than accept a economic opportunities, and black people shared to some extent in the wartime prosperity. While a black resident of Washington, D.C., described a substantial increase in black employment, a white Bostonian was complaining that “the blacks here are too comfortable to do anything more than talk about freedom.” Nor did northern blacks feel as intensely that inducement of freedom which moved their southern brethren to enlist in far greater numbers; some insisted that they could serve their race more effectively if they remained at home, where important campaigns also needed to be waged. “I am pleased to learn that you were fortunate enough to escape the draft,” William H. Parham, a black school principal in Cincinnati, wrote to a prominent Philadelphia black leader, “as I believe you will be able to do more for the race where you are than you could by going to the battlefield. When this war is over, the next struggle will be against prejudice, which is to be conquered by intellect and we shall need all the talent that we have among us or can possibly command. Then will be your time to be found in the thickest of the fight; where the battle rages fiercest and the danger is most imminent.” When Parham himself was enrolled under the Conscription Act and thereby made subject to the draft, he searched desperately for some way to avoid military service. “Many have escaped the enrollment,” he wrote, “but I am not one of the fortunate ones.… If I am drafted, I do not think I shall go.” Aside from his obvious reluctance to serve in the Army, Parham had heard “discouraging” reports that black soldiers were not being accorded the same pay, bounties, and treatment as white recruits.35

4

WITH THE ENLISTMENT of black men, the question of how they would be treated in the United States Army quickly surfaced. It was understood from the outset that blacks would serve in separate regiments and be commanded largely by white officers. But still other questions required clarification, and some blacks demanded answers before committing their services. “What are to be the immunities of the colored soldiers?” one black newspaper asked. “Will they receive bounties, as well as the white? If they are maimed for life, will they receive pensions from the Government? If they are captured by the enemy, will they be treated as prisoners of war?—or will they be hung up by the rebels, shot or quartered, as the case may be, without redress?”36 These were not easy questions to answer, and many of the problems they raised were never satisfactorily resolved.

Although the War Department stipulated on several occasions that black soldiers were entitled to the same pay and benefits accorded whites, there was no legal basis for such promises. But most of the recruits had no way of knowing this, and they generally assumed they would be treated like other troops. After all, one black soldier wrote, “we were mustered in reduction in the bounties paid to black enlistees, Delany refused to do any more recruiting for the Rhode Island regiment. Frederick Douglass, after protesting the failure of Federal authorities to ensure equal protection and treatment to black troops, also vowed to discontinue his recruitment activities. “I owe it to my long abused people, and especially those of them already in the army,” he explained, “to expose their wrongs and plead their cause. I cannot do that in connection with recruiting.… The impression settles upon me that colored men have much overrated the enlightenment, justice and generosity of our rulers at Washington. In my humble way I have contributed somewhat to that false estimate.” Hoping to regain his faith in the government’s assurances, Douglass requested a meeting with President Lincoln.39

Readily conceding that inequalities existed between white and black soldiers, Federal officials argued that expediency justified and perhaps even demanded the maintenance of racial distinctions, for the self-respect of the common Yankee soldier