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By Root 1832 0

white troops) was a military success. The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts lost half its men in the failed assault on Fort Wagner. But in all these places, black soldiers performed heroically, proving themselves, Stanton wrote, “among the bravest of the brave in fighting for the Union.” Fort Wagner, in particular, was a turning point in recognition of blacks’ capacity to serve in the army. The battle, commented the New York Tribune, would become for them what Bunker Hill had been for whites during the War of Independence (forgetting that blacks had also fought at Bunker Hill).7

By August 1863, Lincoln was writing to General Grant that he hoped “at least a hundred thousand” could quickly be enrolled. Grant responded that emancipation was “the heaviest blow yet given to the Confederacy” and that “by arming the negro we have added a powerful ally.” His letter reflected a broad evolution of opinion within the army. To be sure, “aversion to the negro,” as Harper’s Weekly reported, remained widespread in the ranks. Two of Grant’s officers resigned rather than cooperate in raising black troops. But Grant himself recognized that the new policy required not only enlisting black soldiers but also “removing prejudice against them.”8

Increasingly, the army actively encouraged the disintegration of slavery, even in places exempted from the proclamation. “While in the field I am an abolitionist,” one officer wrote to his wife from Tennessee in 1863. More and more Union soldiers embraced the change in the character of the war. Few whites had joined the army to abolish slavery. But increasing numbers saw the institution as a barrier to the country’s mission of exemplifying “the great principles of liberty and self-government.” They now fought for a new nation without slavery rather than the restoration of the prewar Union and accepted the necessity of using black soldiers to that end. Encountering the harsh reality of bondage in the plantation South reinforced support for emancipation. “Since I am here,” a Democratic colonel wrote from Louisiana,” I have learned and seen…what the horrors of slavery was…. Never hereafter will I either speak or vote in favor of slavery.” All in all, as James A. Garfield declared in January 1864, “the rapid current of events has made the army of the republic an Abolition army.”9

Black soldiers played a part in this transformation. By the war’s end, more than 180,000, the large majority recently emancipated slaves, had served in the Union army—over one-fifth of the nation’s adult male black population under age forty-five and about 10 percent of all the soldiers who fought for the Union. Many originated in the border states and Tennessee, where the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply and military service, for most of the war, offered the only legal route to freedom. Here, black enlistment pushed the administration’s commitment to abolition beyond the terms of the proclamation. At first, Lincoln authorized only the enrollment of free blacks and the slaves of disloyal owners. In October 1863, however, he extended recruitment to all slaves in Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee, with compensation to loyal owners of $300 (the same amount a free person could pay to secure exemption from the draft). All slaves who enlisted “shall forever thereafter be free.” Because of vehement opposition from Kentucky, the War Department did not set up a recruiting post for black soldiers in the state until January 1864, and not until June did it begin enlisting slaves there without the consent of their owners. Governor Thomas E. Bramlette informed Lincoln that anyone encouraging a slave to leave his master, including military officers, would be prosecuted under state law. But by the end of the war, nearly 24,000 black soldiers had served from Kentucky, a majority of the state’s eligible black men and a total second only to that of Louisiana. Early in 1865, Congress freed the families of all black soldiers. Well before its legal demise, black enlistment undermined slavery in Kentucky.10

“The government,” wrote Orestes