U.S. Civil War
The history of African Americans in the U.S. Civil War is marked by 186,097 (7,122 officers, 178,975 enlisted) African American men, comprising 163 units, who served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and many more African Americans served in the Union Navy. Both free African Americans and runaway slaves joined the fight. On the Confederate side, blacks, both free and slave, were used for labor, but the issue of whether to arm them, and under what terms, became a major source of debate amongst those in the South. At the start of the war, a Louisiana Confederate militia unit composed of free blacks was raised, but never accepted into Confederate service. On March 13, 1865 the Confederate Congress enacted a statute to allow the enlistment of African Americans but fewer than fifty were ever recruited.
Read more about this topic: Military History Of African Americans
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil and/or war:
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“During the Civil War the area became a refuge for service- dodging Texans, and gangs of bushwhackers, as they were called, hid in its fastnesses. Conscript details of the Confederate Army hunted the fugitives and occasional skirmishes resulted.”
—Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
““... War is for everyone, for children too.
I wasn’t going to tell you and I mustn’t.
The best way is to come uphill with me
And have our fire and laugh and be afraid.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)