Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [78]
But even as black soldiers were said to be creating “a revolution in thinking” in the Union Army, the initial sources of hostility were not so easily displaced, and deeply entrenched racial antipathies still had a way of surfacing. For some whites, the black soldiers were never more than comic relief. “There are about three regiments of darkies raised here for Wilde’s brigade,” a Massachusetts soldier wrote home, “regular Congoes with noses as broad as a plantation and lips like raw beefsteaks, Yah!” Although some white officers warned that they would withhold their troops from any engagement in which blacks were placed in command as commissioned officers, this never became a problem. Far more serious were the racial antagonisms that erupted into bloody encounters between white and black soldiers. After one such clash at Ship Island, Mississippi, white gunners disregarded orders to cover the advance of three black companies; instead, they turned the field pieces on their black comrades.85 But such occurrences proved to be rare. The conduct of the black soldier was such as to convince even white Yankees who refused to give up their racial hatreds that military necessity dictated a policy of recognition and cooperation. “I never believed in niggers before,” a Wisconsin cavalry officer confessed, “but by Jasus, they are hell in fighting.”86
Not only did the black soldier impress many of his white comrades but he proved himself to his own people, did wonders for their racial pride, and gave them some genuine heroes and prospective leaders. “Dey fought and fought and shot down de ‘Secesh,’ and n’er a white man among ’em but two captains,” a newly freed slave boasted to one of the white missionary teachers. When Robert Smalls, hero of the Planter affair, visited New York City in 1862, he was acclaimed and feted by the black populace for having performed a military feat “equaled by only a few events in any other war.” The black people of his native South Carolina would honor him in the next several decades by electing him to the state legislature and to the United States Congress. But even if few blacks reached such heights, the uniform and the rifle, as Douglass had predicted, were capable of effecting significant changes in the demeanor of many black men. “Put a United States uniform on his back and the chattel is a man,” one white soldier observed. “You can see it in his look. Between the toiling slave and the soldier is a gulf that nothing but a god could lift him over. He feels it, his looks show it.”87
The fact that black men had played a significant role in liberating their enslaved brethren and preserving the Union would remain a source of considerable pride, even as it led them to expect much of the future. Once the war ended, the black soldier expected that a grateful nation would accord him and his people the rights of American citizens. He had demonstrated his loyalty. He had fought for his country’s survival. On the battlefields of the South—at Port Hudson, Battery Wagner, Milliken’s Bend, Olustee, and Petersburg—he had disproved those widely held notions about his inability to handle firearms or meet the test of fire. What more could white Americans expect of him? Like any victor, was he not entitled to share in the triumph?