Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [76]
Among both the soldiers and the laborers, the Civil War exacted a heavy price in human lives. Some one third of the black soldiers—an estimated 68,178 men—were listed as dead and missing, 2,751 of them killed in combat. For both white and black soldiers, the overwhelming majority of deaths resulted from disease rather than military action. Among the more unglamorous statistics of the Civil War is the fact that deaths from diarrhea and dysentery alone exceeded those killed in battle. And most diseases did not discriminate according to race any more than enemy fire in their devastation of the ranks. Despite the claim that blacks were less susceptible to diseases which felled whites, the death rate from disease was nearly three times as great for black soldiers as for whites.79
When blacks were first recruited, considerable doubt prevailed as to how they would perform as soldiers, particularly under enemy fire. “Many hope they will prove cowards and sneaks,” a New York newspaper perceived, while “others greatly fear it.” Two years of experience with black troops made believers of most of the doubters. The evaluations made by Union officers, while agreeing rather remarkably on the military capabilities of blacks, also revealed that the very qualities often stressed in racial stereotypes as marking blacks different from (hence “inferior” to) whites made them commendable soldiers. Since they were “more docile and obedient,” blacks were thought to be easier to control and command. “Their docility, their habits of unquestioning obedience,” one soldier observed, “pre-eminently fit them for soldiers. To a negro an order means obedience in spirit as well as letter.” Accustomed as they were to heavy menial labor, black soldiers were found to work “more constantly” and “obediently” than whites and to offer fewer “complaints and excuses.” Although blacks were considered to be excessive in their religious worship (“Their singing, praying, and shouting in camp had to be arrested, sometimes, at the point of the bayonet”), this characteristic, too, could be viewed as a military virtue. The fact that blacks were “a religious people” suggested to one Union officer “another high quality for making good soldiers,” while it prompted Major General David Hunter, who had organized the first slave regiment in South Carolina, to observe that “religious sentiment—call it fanaticism, such as you like … made the soldiers of Cromwell invincible.” The white man had also conceded to blacks a natural gift for music and rhythm, and this helped to explain their aptness for military drill and marching. “In mere drill they must beat the whites,” one soldier conceded; “for ‘time,’ which is so important an item in drilling, is a universal gift to them.” But even if blacks clearly had the potential for becoming good soldiers, the assumption prevailed that only white men could properly lead them, largely because blacks were accustomed to obeying whites and had too little regard for their own race. “They certainly need white officers for a while, and the best of officers, too,” a sympathetic white soldier argued, “for they will, like children, lean much on their superiors.”80
Although former slaves made up the largest portion of black troops, disagreement prevailed over whether they were better soldiers than the northern blacks who had never experienced bondage. Ignoring the question of motivation (which black commentators usually cited), a Union officer from New York thought the northern blacks had more self-reliance and came closer “to the qualities of the white man in respect to dash and energy”; several other officers in his unit concurred with this judgment and they unanimously agreed that slaves were less desirable as soldiers. The most vigorous defense of