Notes

Introduction

1. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952; repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1972), x; Glory, directed by Edward Zwick (TriStar Pictures, 1989), videocassette (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 1990); Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 12–13; Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), 4; Mary Frances Berry, Military Necessity and Civil Rights Policy: Black Citizenship and the Constitution, 1861–1868 (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1977), x; Chandra Manning, “Wartime Nationalism and Race: Comparing the Visions of Confederate, Black Union, and White Union Soldiers,” in In the Cause of Liberty: How the Civil War Redefined American Ideals, ed. William J. Cooper Jr. and John M. McCardell Jr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2009), 87. These numbers represent estimates from various sources, including U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. and Index (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), ser. 3, vol. 5, 138 (hereafter cited as OR); Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., The Black Military Experience, ser. 2 of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1871 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982), 14, 632; Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm: Black Troops in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (1956; repr., Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1987), ix; John David Smith, Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2002), xxii; Margaret Humphreys, Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War (Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press, 2008), 6, 11; John David Smith, Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2013), 2. The Union Navy also used black men, both contraband and enlisted men. An estimated 16 percent of Union seamen during the war were African American. See Steven J. Ramold, Slaves, Sailors, Citizens: African Americans in the Union Navy (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 2002), 55.

2. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 12; Versalle F. Washington, Eagles on their Buttons: A Black Infantry Regiment in the Civil War (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1999), 9, 30; OR, ser. 3, vol. 5, 138. Black males in Ohio served disproportionately to their population. The 1860 census counted 7,100 men ages fifteen to forty in the state. “Historical Census Browser,” Univ. of Virginia, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, accessed Sept. 27, 2002, and July 2, 2014, http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/state.php (hereafter cited as Historical Census Browser) and Auditor of State (Ohio), Special Enumeration of Negroes, 1863, Ohio History Connection, Columbus, Ohio, listed just over 800 males of all ages who entered the state in 1861 and after. Although a number of recruits came from Indiana and a significant portion from Kentucky, the hundreds of Ohioans who went to other Northern states, including Massachusetts and Rhode Island, were not credited to Ohio. Additionally, the figure 5,092 does not include those who were hired by the Union army as laborers, teamsters, and cooks. The 54th Massachusetts enlisted over 150 Ohio men, and the 55th muster rolls indicate that over 350 Ohio men served, the highest number from any state in their regiment. See Catherine Wilson, “The 54th and 55th Regiments of Massachusetts Infantry,” Ohio Genealogical Society Report 34, no. 3 (1994): 139–49. Over 11 percent of Ohio’s recruits were sent to the 16th USCT, which organized in Tennessee. Craig J. Blaine, “Forgotten Men: A Collective Biography of Black and White Ohioans in the Ranks of the Union Army” (MA thesis, Kent State Univ., 1973), 84.

3. Richard M. Reid, Freedom for Themselves: North Carolina’s Black Soldiers in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2008), 15–17. Although almost a hundred African American men received an offer’s commission during the war, no blacks commanded troops. Smith, Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops, 51; Donald R. Shaffer, After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans (Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 2004), 195.

4. The Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Cleveland’s Public Square that opened in 1894 includes the name of two white officers of the 27th USCT but no black soldiers. A few enlisted men from the 5th USCT are listed. See “Black Civil War Veterans to be Added to Cleveland’s Soldiers & Sailors Monument, Honored on Memorial Day,” Cleveland.com, last modified May 31, 2011, accessed June 10, 2011, http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/05/black_civil_war_vets_to_be_add.html.

5. Allison Shoecraft, Case Files of Approved Veterans Who Served in the Army and Navy in the Civil War and the War with Spain, 1861–1934, Records of the Veterans Administration, Record Group 15, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as Pension File); Allison Shoecraft, Compiled Military Service Records Twenty-seventh USCT, M1824, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as CMSR); “Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1938,” Missouri Narratives, vol. 10, Interview with Sim Younger, Library of Congress, accessed Feb. 8, 2007, http://www.memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/P?mesn:1:./temp/~ammem_pwBP:: (hereafter Interview with Sim Younger); Simpson Younger, CMSR; Simpson C. Younger Folder, William E. Bigglestone Papers, series I, subseries 1, Oberlin College Archives, Oberlin, Ohio; Catherine Bowman, telephone interview by author, Aug. 14, 2005; Champion Bowman, CMSR.

6. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 56, 17–26; Smith, Black Soldiers in Blue, 8.

7. J. Matthew Gallman, Defining Duty in the Civil War: Personal Choice, Popular Culture, and the Union Home Front (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2015), 4; John A. Casey Jr., New Men: Reconstructing the Image of the Veteran in Late-Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture (New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 2015), 133.

8. Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Boston: Little Brown, 1993), 16; Maris A. Vinovskis, Toward a Social History of the American Civil War: Exploratory Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990), vii; Maris A. Vinovskis, “Have Social Historians Lost the Civil War? Some Preliminary Demographic Speculations,” in Vinovskis, Toward a Social History, 1; Ian Michael Spurgeon, Soldiers in the Army of Freedom: The 1st Kansas Colored, the Civil War’s First African American Combat Unit (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2014), 7, 69.

9. Brian Taylor, “A Politics of Service: Black Northerners’ Debates over Enlistment in the American Civil War,” Civil War History 58, no. 4 (Dec. 2012): 452, 478, 480.

10. Chandra Manning explains that, like many others, her study depends upon the public letters and testimonies of black soldiers because so few private examples were recorded or have survived (What This Cruel War Was Over, 10). Fortunately, men in the 27th, as one of the Northern regiments that included fewer slaves and a higher number of literate soldiers, did leave behind private accounts.

11. CMSR; “About Fold3,” Fold3 by Ancestry, accessed Nov. 20, 2014, http://www.fold3.com/about; “Civil War Soldiers—Union—Colored Troops 26th–30th Infantry,” Fold3 by Ancestry, accessed Nov. 20, 2014, http://www.fold3.com/title_694/26th30th_infantry; Pension File; “Civil War and Later Veterans Pension Index,” Fold3 by Ancestry, accessed Nov. 20, 2014, http://www.fold3.com/title_57/civil_war_and_later_veterans_pension_index; “Civil War ‘Widows’ Pensions,’” Fold3 by Ancestry, accessed Nov. 20, 2014, http://www.fold3.com/title_24/civil_war_widows_pensions. When I began this project in 2001, the CMSR and pension files were available only at the National Archives and Record Administration in Washington, D.C., and had to be requested as individual files. But just after I started my research, the CMSR for the 27th were pulled for microfilming. Once this was completed, it was possible for me to look at as many of the files as I had time for, as opposed to only a limited number of pulls a day for the paper files. The pension index cards were available on microfilm, alphabetically and by regiment. See Index to Pension Files, 27th United States Colored Troops, T289, Records of the Veterans Administration, Record Group 15, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. and Organizational Index to Pension Files of Veterans Who Served between 1861 and 1900, T289, Records of the Veterans Administration, Record Group 15, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

12. Albert G. Jones Papers, 1851–1930, MS 4808, Container 1, Folder 4, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH (hereafter cited as Jones Papers); Albert Rogall Papers, Ohio History Connection, Columbus, Ohio (hereafter cited as Rogall Diary); Frank Levstik, “The Civil War Diary of Colonel Albert Rogall,” Polish American Studies 27, no. 1/2 (Spring–Autumn 1970): 33–79; Sarah Swan Weld Blake, Diaries and Letters of Francis Minot Weld, M.D. with a Sketch of His Life (Boston: Stetson Press, 1925). Two of the more popular online sources for U.S. Census records include Ancestry.com and Heritage QuestOnline.com.

13. “Soldiers and Sailors Database,” National Park Service, accessed Dec. 10, 2001, http://www.nps.gov/civilwar/soldiers-and-sailors-database.htm; Archie Hogan, CMSR; Peter M. Simpson, CMSR and Pension File. Another source that includes numbers for the regiment is the state adjutant general’s report in January 1865. It lists 1,046 men in the 27th USCT. See Ohio Executive Documents, Annual Reports for 1864, Made to the Fifty-sixth General Assembly of Ohio, at its Second Session, Begun and Held in the City of Columbus, January 3, 1865, Part II (Columbus: Richard Nevins, State Printer, 1865), 83. Charles H. Wesley states that 1,523 men served in the regiment but includes white company officers and the unassigned troops (Ohio Negroes in the Civil War [Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press for the Ohio Historical Society, 1962], 38).

14. Ohio Roster Commission, Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1866, vol. 1 (Akron: Werner, 1886–1895), iii, iv, 591–680 (hereafter cited as ROT); Paul LaRue, William Anderson Post 244, Grand Army of the Republic, United States Colored Troops, Washington Court House, Ohio, 1882–1912 (Washington Court House, OH: Washington High School, 2000), 27. Note that the official roster also includes the “Roll of Honor of Ohio Troops,” which includes information on soldiers in the 27th who died during the war (767–71).

15. In a few cases men were assigned to a company in the 27th who never joined the regiment. For example, Aaron Banner, George Lamb, George Mann, and Alfred Parker are all listed as members of Company I. In July 1864 the regimental commander of the 27th, Lt. Col. Albert M. Blackman, sent the four soldiers to work as cooks at Tod Barracks in Columbus. In October 1865 officials relieved the men from duty and sent them to Camp Chase for their final pay and discharge. Blackman may have selected these soldiers because of their ages, which ranged from thirty-five to forty-four. While three of the men later applied for and received pensions, they are not included in my group of 1,281 soldiers. Aaron Banner, George Lamb, George Mann, and Alfred Parker, CMSR; A. M. Blackman, July 29, 1864, Special Order no. 43, U.S. Colored Troops, Regimental Papers, 26–28th US Colored Inf., Box 25, 27th USC Infantry, Issuances, May 30, 1864–Mar. 19, 1866, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as Regimental Papers, Issuances).

16. Steven J. Ramold, Across the Divide: Union Soldiers View the Northern Home Front (New York: New York Univ. Press, 2013), 65; Reid, Freedom for Themselves, xiv.

17. Smith, Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops, 4.

18. Taylor, “A Politics of Service,” 480.

19. Mitchell Snay, “Democracy and Race in the Late Reconstruction South: The White Leagues of Louisiana,” paper presented at the 13th Annual Symposium on Democracy, Kent State Univ., Kent, Ohio, Apr. 24, 2012; Manning, “Wartime Nationalism and Race,” 95–96.

1. Free but Unequal

1. Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds., Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 130, 388; William Cheek and Aimee Lee Cheek, John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1989), 358.

2. Kelly D. Trenchard, “The Home Front Spheres in the North: Fannie Bailey and Oberlin, Ohio During the Civil War” (MA thesis, Kent State Univ., 1997), 9; Eugene H. Roseboom, The Civil War Era: 1850–1873, vol. 4, A History of the State of Ohio (Columbus: Ohio State Archeological and Historical Society, 1944), 357, 358; New York Times, Dec. 5, 1859.

3. John A. Copeland to Henry Copeland, Dec. 10, 1859, “Letter Home by John A. Copeland (1859),” Oberlin College Archives, accessed Mar. 22, 2004, http://www.oberlin.edu/archive/exhibits/john_brown_new/letter.html; Lancaster Ohio Eagle, Dec. 15, 22, 1859; New York Times, Dec. 17, 1859; Catherine M. Rokicky, James Monroe: Oberlin’s Christian Statesman and Reformer, 1821–1898 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 2002), 49–51; Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 359.

4. V. Jacque Voegeli, Free but Not Equal: The Midwest and Negro during the Civil War (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967), 1; Historical Census Browser. According to the 1860 census, Ohio’s total population was 2,339,511. This included 2,302,808 “white persons,” 36,673 “free colored persons,” and 30 “Indians.” The fugitive slave law mentioned was the second federal Fugitive Slave Law, the first act having appeared in 1793. Both radical and moderate antislavery supporters were angry with the new and more restrictive rules. The 1850 law allowed suspected slaves to be arrested without warrant, the only thing necessary being a sworn testament of ownership. Any person aiding or abetting a runaway could be fined $1,000 and sentenced up to six months in jail. Furthermore, agents collecting slaves were to be paid, which increased the kidnaping of free Northern blacks. Leading Ohioans such as Salmon P. Chase and Benjamin Wade, both of whom had helped move the moral debate over slavery to the political and legal arena, voted against the bill. These and other antebellum Ohio politicians were willing to use the courts to overturn state and federal laws, and they played a prominent role in the Liberty Party, the Free-Soil Party, and the emerging Republican Party. For the most recent scholarship on the underground railroad, see Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015). Foner traces the use of the term “underground railroad,” as it related to the system of helping fugitive slaves, to as early as 1839 and says that it was understood enough by 1853 that a New York Times article proclaimed that it had “come into very general use.” Although he believes that claims about how organized and how many activities took place in direct relation to the “underground railroad” were probably exaggerated during the late antebellum era, Foner argues that fugitive slaves did escape through an “intercity, interregional enterprise” that in some cases was “a well-organized system.” What he describes was not a single entity but a “broad spectrum of individuals,” white and black, who operated a “quasi-public” system of “an interlocking series of local networks … which together helped a substantial number of fugitives reach safety.” Foner’s book focuses mainly on New York, but the same explanations can be applied to Ohio (6, 7, 10, 15, 21).

5. Charles J. Wilson, “The Negro in Early Ohio,” Ohio Archeological and Historical Quarterly 39 (Oct. 1930): 722–24; Historical Census Browser.

6. Charles Thomas Hickok, The Negro in Ohio, 1802–1870 (1896; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1975), 42; Nelson W. Evans, A History of Scioto County, Ohio, Together with a Pioneer Record of Southern Ohio (Portsmouth, Ohio: Nelson W. Evans, 1903), 612–13; David A. Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line 1860–1915 (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1976), 9, 11; Stephen Middleton, The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 2005), 3. See Matthew Salafia, Slavery’s Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) for an in-depth analysis of the economic, political, and social transitional spaces between Ohio and the Southern states along the Ohio River.

7. Hickok, Negro in Ohio, 41–42; Evans, A History of Scioto County, 613; James H. Rodabaugh, “The Negro in Ohio,” Journal of Negro History 31 (Jan. 1946): 15; Kevin F. Kern and Gregory S. Wilson, Ohio: A History of the Buckeye State (Malden, Mass.: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 188–189.

8. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 3; Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 11, 15; George W. Knepper, Ohio and Its People (1989; repr., Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 2003), 167, 199; Rodabaugh, “Negro in Ohio,” 16; Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 31–33; First Regular African Baptist Church of Christ of Chillicothe, Ohio History Central, accessed July 3, 2013, http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/First_Regular_African_Baptist_Church_of_Christ_of_Chillicothe; Historical Census Browser; William R. Scott and William G. Shade, eds., Upon These Shores: Themes in the African-American Experience 1600 to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2000), 124.

9. Rodabaugh, “Negro in Ohio,” 18; Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 18, 19; Henry N. Sherwood, “The Settlement of John Randolph’s Slaves in Ohio,” Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association Proceedings 5 (1911–1912): 39–59; “The Gist Settlement Archaeological Project,” accessed June 14, 2013, http://www.washingtonch.k12.oh.us/Senior_High/GIST_Pages/The%20Gist%20Settlement%20Archeological%20Project.htm; Logan County Will Book A, 1851–1865 (Bellefontaine, Ohio: Logan County Historical Society, 1994), 5–7: “The Lett Settlement,” Remarkable Ohio, accessed May 26, 2012, http://www.remarkableohio.org/HistoricalMarker.aspx?historicalMarkerId=106071. During the 1830s and 1840s, Ohio politicians reinvigorated the debate over Ohio’s Black Laws. There was a serious attempt to repeal them during this time period, but legislators had only a limited success. The state did not remove the last of the laws until 1887. See Middleton, Black Laws, 97–103,130–42, 258. Phoebe Jane Turner was born in 1851 at the Highland County Gist Settlement and married Benjamin Lay there in October 1866; Lay served with Company F in the 27th USCT and is buried in the Gist Settlement Cemetery (Benjamin Lay, Pension File). John Warwick of Amherst County, Virginia, freed Rueben Warwick along with the twelve-year-old’s parents and siblings in 1848, and by July 1850 the family of ten was residing in Richland Township in Logan County; Reuben Warwick enlisted in Company K of the 27th USCT in Aug. 1864 (U.S. Census Bureau, Seventh Census of the United States, 1850 M432 [Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1850] [hereafter cited as U.S. Census 1850]; Reuben Warwick, CMSR).

10. Wilson, “Negro in Early Ohio,” 724, 725; Nat Brandt, The Town That Started the Civil War (New York: Dell, 1991), 29, 30, 37, 38; Historical Census Browser.

11. Rodabaugh, “Negro in Ohio,” 17; Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 1, 2, 4; Kern and Wilson, Ohio, 212.

12. Hickok, Negro in Ohio, 80, 81, 90, 91; Ohio, Acts of a General Nature Passed by the Forty-sixth General Assembly of the State of Ohio, Begun and Held in the City of Columbus, December 6, 1847, and in the Forty-sixth Year of Said State, vol. 46 (Columbus: Chas. Scott’s Steam Press, 1848), 81–83. The state capital was seen as a relatively safe place for blacks, the location in the center of the state and distance from the Ohio River and Lake Erie made it ideal to hide from slave catchers. By 1860, Columbus blacks composed 5 percent of the local population, considerably higher than the state ratio. (James Felix, “The American Addition: the History of a Black Community” [PhD diss., Ohio State Univ., 1972], 2, 3, 14).

13. Acts of a General Nature Passed by the Fiftieth General Assembly of the State of Ohio: (First Session under the Constitution of 1851:) Begun and Held in the City of Columbus, November 15, 1852: And in the Fifty-first Year of Said State, vol. 51 (Columbus: Osgood and Blake, Printers, 1853), 441; Roseboom, Civil War Era, 193, 194; Statistics compiled from reports of the State Commissioner of Common Schools reported in Hickok, Negro in Ohio, appendix; Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 2.

14. Statistics compiled from reports of the State Commissioner of Common Schools reported in Hickok, Negro in Ohio, appendix; Roseboom, Civil War Era, 194; Middleton, Black Laws, 155–56.

15. David T. Thackery, A Light and Uncertain Hold: A History of the Sixty-sixth Ohio Volunteer Infantry (Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 1999), 10, 11; History of Champaign County, Ohio … (Chicago: W. R. Beers, 1881), 346; U.S. Census Bureau, Eighth Census of the United States, 1860, M653 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1860) (hereafter cited as U.S. Census 1860). Isaac Stillgess enlisted in the 27th USCT on December 22, 1863, where he served as a sergeant in Company A until the regiment mustered out on September 21, 1865 (Isaac Stillgess, CMSR).

16. U.S. Census 1850; U.S. Census 1860; Elijah Bunch, Pension File. Elijah Bunch volunteered for the 27th USCT on February 29, 1864, and served as a private in company F for three years, until the regiment mustered out on September 21, 1865 (Elijah Bunch, CMSR).

17. Knepper, Ohio and Its People, 185; Roseboom, Civil War Era, 195; Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 12, 19. The African Methodist Episcopal Church took control of Wilberforce in 1863.

18. Knepper, Ohio and Its People, 200, 201; Frederick A. McGinnis, The Education of Negroes in Ohio (Wilberforce, Ohio: 1962), 78, 79; Interview with Sim Younger; “Charles Younger Estate Inventory,” Kansas City Genealogist 31, no. 1 (Summer 1990); 11, 12. Simpson Younger volunteered for Company A of the 27th USCT on Jan. 5, 1864, CMSR. The black student body at Oberlin College did not exceed 5 percent in the years before the Civil War, but Oberlin and the surrounding Russia Township had about 20 percent black population in 1860. See U.S. Census 1860.

19. Ohio State Commissioner of Common Schools, Sixth Annual Report of the State Commissioner of Common Schools, 1860 (Columbus, 1861), 53–57.

20. Scott and Shade, Upon these Shores, 122; Leonard P. Curry, The Free Black in Urban America 1800–1850: The Shadow of the Dream (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981), 98; Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 62–66; Philip S. Foner, The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, vol. 2 (New York: International, 1950), 333. Cincinnati experienced race riots in 1829 and 1836 as well.

21. U.S. Census Bureau, Sixth Census of the United States, 1840, M704 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1840); U.S. Census 1850; U.S. Census 1860; Roseboom, Civil War Era, 7. Cincinnati had a larger black population but was less proportional to the white population. Aurelius and John Depp both enlisted on September 3, 1864, for one year and served as unassigned recruits credited to the 27th USCT; Jethro Hurst volunteered on August 9, 1864, and served as a private in Company H for one year (Aurelius Depp, John Depp, and Jethro Hurst, CMSR).

22. Scott and Shade, Upon these Shores, 125.

23. Curry, Free Black in Urban America, 121, 196–200; Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 20–22; Russell H. Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland From George Peake to Carl B. Stokes, 1796–1969 (Washington, D.C.: Associated, 1972), 74. Community in this larger sense refers to more than the geographic confines of Ohio towns or neighborhoods: it also includes common experiences, institutions, and sometimes values that create a shared consciousness for free Midwestern blacks. In this case, specifically referring to Ohio in the immediate years before the Civil War, both rural and urban blacks experienced daily interactions with whites in their residential and occupational positions. Yet their common social spaces such as churches and civic meeting places tended to be geographically concentrated. See Henry Louis Taylor Jr. and Vicky Dula, “The Black Residential Experience and Community Formation in Antebellum Cincinnati,” in Race and the City: Work, Community, and Protest in Cincinnati, 1820–1970, ed. Henry Louis Taylor Jr. (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1993), 96, 118.

24. Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland, 65–68; Logan and Winston, Dictionary of American Negro Biography, 382–84.

25. Richard B. Sheridan, “Charles Henry Langston and the African American Struggle in Kansas,” Kansas History 22 (Winter 1999/2000): 268–70.

26. Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland, 48–53.

27. Harry Reed, Platform for Change: The Foundations of the Northern Free Black Community, 1775–1865 (East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press, 1994), 4, 5; Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland, 65–70; Curry, Free Black in Urban America, 241. For a discussion of the Convention Movement, see Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, eds., Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840–1865, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1979–1980). Antebellum meetings were held in Ohio in 1852 and 1856. In Black Laws, Stephen Middleton provides a detailed examination of the pre-twentieth-century African American fight for civil and political rights through the elimination of the Black Laws in Ohio. He argues that from the territorial and early statehood period to the late 1880s, Ohio “grew from a state that denied fundamental rights to blacks to a state that eventually provided most, if not all, of the legal protections” (6).

28. Curry, Free Black in Urban America, 180, 184; Reed, Platform for Change, 4; History of Lower Scioto Valley … (Chicago: Inter-State, 1884), 795, 796, 865, 866; U.S. Census 1860.

29. Roseboom, Civil War Era, 7. According to the 1860 Census, just over 5 percent (1,473 of the 26,197) of Greene County residents were black or “mulatto.”

30. Roseboom, Civil War Era, 133, 328, 329, 341; Hickok, Negro in Ohio, 46.

31. Roseboom, Civil War Era, 341, 342. In December 1859 the Ohio Supreme Court declared the Visible Admixture act illegal in Alfred J. Anderson v. Thomas Millikin et al.

32. Votes as reported in the Ohio State Journal, Nov. 27, 1860. For a discussion of the four candidates and their support in Ohio, see Roseboom, Civil War Era, 364–71.

33. Fremont Journal, Jan. 4, 1861; Cincinnati Daily Press, Jan. 8, 1861; Roseboom, Civil War Era, 376.

34. Ohio’s population at the beginning of the war was approximately 2,343,700, about one-eighth of the total United States population; this included 500,000 men of military age (The Union Army: A History of Military Affairs in the Loyal States 1861–65—Records of the Regiments in the Union Army—Cyclopedia of Battles—Memoirs of Commanders and Soldiers, vol. 2, New York, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio [Madison, Wis.: Federal, 1908], 313, 314, 322, 323). Ohio created thirteen volunteer regiments from this initial response, as well as holding some in reserve.

35. Christian Recorder, Apr. 27 and May 11, 1861; Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (1953; repr., New York: Da Capo Press, 1989), 24, 28; William E. Peters, Athens County, Ohio (Athens, 1947), 61; Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 383; Wesley, Ohio Negroes, 15, 22. Many of the Wilberforce students later joined the Massachusetts regiments. Milton M. Holland served as a sergeant in Company C in the 5th USCT, where he earned the Medal of Honor.

36. Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 383; Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 29; Roseboom, Civil War Era, 388; Edward L. Ayers, ed., “A House Divided”: A Century of Great Civil War Quotations (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997), 73.

37. Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland, 69, 77.

38. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 5, 7, 9, 15; Fred A. Shannon, “The Federal Government and the Negro Soldier, 1861–1865,” Journal of Negro History 11, no. 4 (Oct. 1926): 565.

39. George H. Porter, Ohio Politics during the Civil War Period (1911; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1968), 96, 97; Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 14, 18, 34, 35; Willison H. Lofton, “Northern Labor and the Negro during the Civil War,” Journal of Negro History 34 (July 1949): 253; Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 28.

40. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 18, 20–23, 26, 28, 29, 33, 58; Benjamin F. Butler, Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler during the Period of the Civil War, vol. 2 (Norwood, Mass.: Plimpton Press, 1917), 131–33.

41. Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 6 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1953), 374; Ira Berlin, “Who Freed the Slaves? Emancipation and Meaning,” in Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War, ed. David W. Blight and Brooks D. Simpson (Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 1997), 111–12, 120; Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., The Destruction of Slavery, vol. 1, ser. 1, of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1687 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985), 30–31; Smith, Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops, 23. In November 1862 the attorney general, Edward Bates, claimed that free American-born blacks were citizens. His decision to recognize national citizenship did little more than that, as most understood that blacks would still not have equal rights, but it helped make African American military service possible.

42. Christian Recorder, July 19 and Aug. 16, 1862. James H. Payne volunteered on February 23, 1864. He served in Company G and as quartermaster sergeant of the 27th USCT, CMSR. The Union Party was a coalition of Republicans and prowar Democrats in Ohio during the Civil War. It lasted until 1868.

43. New York Times, Jan. 3, 1863; Smith, Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops, 3; John T. Hubbell, “Abraham Lincoln and the Recruitment of Black Soldiers,” in “For a Vast Future Also”: Essays from the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, ed. Thomas F. Schwartz (New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1999), 66.

44. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 55; Lancaster Ohio Eagle, July 16, 1863 (emphasis in the original); James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), 591, 596, 597.

45. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 61, 62.

46. Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 387; Gallman, Defining Duty, 232; Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland, 77; U.S. Census 1860. The argument for this refusal and the April 19 rejection was based on the state constitutional amendment in 1850 that read “all white male citizens” perform militia duty. David Tod, a Youngstown Democrat, was elected in November 1861 on the Union Party ticket. He served from 1862 to 1864, replacing Dennison.

47. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 42, 98; James M. McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted during the War for the Union (New York: Ballantine Books, 1965), 164.

48. Noah Andre Trudeau, Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War 1862–1865 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998), 10–16, 26–27; Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 3–5; Spurgeon, Soldiers in the Army of Freedom, 5; James G. Hollandsworth Jr., The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience During the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1995), 16–17, 25, 72–79.

49. Peter H. Clark, The Black Brigade of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, Ohio: Joseph B. Boyd, 1864; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1969), 5, 25 (emphasis in the original). An Allen Cruse served in Company G of the 27th USCT, Allen Cruse, CMSR. In the Columbus, Ohio, 1890 Special Schedule census of surviving servicemen and their widows, Cruse (or sometimes Cruise), reported his Civil War enlistment dates as 1862–1865 (U.S. Census Bureau, Special Schedules of the Eleventh Census [1890] Enumerating Union Veterans and Widows of Union Veterans of the Civil War, M123 [Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1890] [hereafter cited as U.S. Census 1890]).

50. Clark, Black Brigade, 9–11, 15, 25; Thomas Bowman, CMSR. Thomas Bowman, who served in Company I of the 54th Massachusetts, went to Reading, Pennsylvania, to enlist before Ohio began recruiting blacks for the 5th and 27th USCT.

51. Ayers, “A House Divided,” 74, 76; Christian Recorder, Apr. 20 and 27, 1861. After the war, Parham served as a superintendent and then principle. In 1874 he received a degree from the Cincinnati Law School, the first African American to do so. He also served in the Ohio Legislature for Hamilton County from 1896 to 1897.

52. Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 183; Christian Recorder, Nov. 8, 1862; Scioto Gazette, Feb. 24, 1863; History of Ross and Highland Counties, Ohio, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches (Cleveland: W. W. Williams, Printer, 1880), 191; Edwin S. Redkey, “Black Chaplains in the Union Army,” Civil War History 33, no. 3 (Dec. 1987): 350. The First Colored Baptist Church in Chillicothe was also called the First Anti-Slavery Baptist Church.

53. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 37, 101; Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 158; Allen G. Bogue, “William Parker Cutler’s Congressional Diary of 1862–63,” Civil War History 33: no. 4 (Dec. 1987): 329.

54. U. S. Congress, House, “Speech of Hon. William Allen, of Ohio, on the Enlistment of Negro Soldiers; Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 2, 1863,” Washington, D.C., 1863; Bogue, “William Parker Cutler’s Congressional Diary,” 329.

55. Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 390, 391. Numerous articles and books have been written on the 54th Massachusetts, including Peter Burchard, One Gallant Rush: Robert Gould Shaw and his Brave Black Regiment (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965) and Luis F. Emilio, A Brave Black Regiment: History of the Fifty-fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, rev. ed. (Boston: Boston Book, 1894). For a more thorough discussion on the multiple African American opinions on the purposes and goals related to black enlistment, see Taylor, “A Politics of Service,” 451–80.

56. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 123; Lancaster Ohio Eagle, July 16, 1863.

57. Lancaster Ohio Eagle, July 9 and 16, 1863; Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 125, 126; The Negro in the Military Service of the United States, 1639–1886, M858, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., roll 2, 1190 (hereafter cited as Negro in the Military); Ayers, “A House Divided,” 82.

58. General Orders no. 143, OR, ser. 3, vol. 3, 215, 216; David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1989), 166, 167; Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 99; “White, Chilton Allen, (1826–1900),” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress 1774–Present, accessed July 30, 2014, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=W000360.

59. Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland, 78, 79; Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 392–95; J. Brent Morris, Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism: College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2014), 236; Ohio State Journal, May 22, 1863; Negro in the Military, roll 2, 1241. Orindatus Simon Bolivar Wall went by his initials, O. S. B.

60. Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 391, 394; James W. Bray later joined Company H of the 27th USCT, CMSR and Pension File; Wilson, “54th and 55th Regiments,” 139–49.

61. Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 396; Hickok, Negro in Ohio, 70; McPherson, Negro’s Civil War, 182; Bob Luke and John David Smith, Soldiering for Freedom: How the Union Army Recruited, Trained, and Deployed the U.S. Colored Troops (Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press, 2014), 41. A total of 351 Ohioans served in 55th Massachusetts, more than from any other state. Of the 158 who served in 54th Massachusetts, two-thirds had skilled or semiskilled occupations.

62. Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 81, 192; Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen, Generals, and Soldiers, vol. 1 (1867; repr., Columbus: Eclectic, 1893), 69–80; Noel Fisher, “Groping toward Victory: Ohio’s Administration of the Civil War,” Ohio History 105 (Winter–Spring 1996): 35.

63. Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 393, 395, 403; David R. Contosta, Lancaster, Ohio, 1800–2000: Frontier Town to Edge City (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1999), 65; Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland, 78.

64. OR, ser. 3, vol. 3, 229.

65. OR, ser. 3, vol. 3, 372, 380, 381.

66. Porter, Ohio Politics, 118, 119.

67. Hickok, Negro in Ohio, 71, 72; Ohio, Messages and Reports to the General Assembly and Governor of the State of Ohio for the Year 1863, pt. I (Columbus: Richard Nevins, State Printer, 1864), 274; OR, ser. 3, vol. 3, 403. In April 1861 the Ohio state senate passed an appropriations bill that provided $1,000,000 to raise, train, equip, and transport soldiers in preparation for federal duty. Over the course of the war they would pass several more such bills. On May 10, 1861, they passed an act to tax property for use of relief for volunteers’ families while in service, and in the case of death, for a year after their demise. These funds were supplemented by funds raised by local counties and towns.

68. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 1, 12, 13; Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 396, 397, 402, 403; Scioto Gazette, Apr. 7, 1863; Newark Advocate, June 26, 1863. The federalization of black troops shifted the decision of using African Americans away from state governments and made possible the large-scale organization and participation of what grew to be almost 10 percent of the Union army. While states still retained some control over recruitment, could suggest white men to serve as commissioned officers, and counted the black soldiers toward quota requirements, Lincoln’s decisions and actions to allow black enlistment focused on the desire for military success and the preservation of the Union. This also meant that the federal government controlled the decisions regarding the degree of equality afforded to black troops during the war and set the stage for the national government’s postwar actions that resulted in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.

69. Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 397, 399, 402–10; OR, ser. 3, vol. 1, 234, and ser. 3, vol. 3, 419; Ohio, Messages and Reports, 275; Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 363; Smith, Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops, 67; Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 13. White USCT officers took on a growing role in recruitment. They worked in the larger Northern cities and took care of the official aspects of recruitment, but they often used local blacks to make contacts and encourage enlistments.

70. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 13–15; Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 404, 405; Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland, 78.

71. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 12; Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 406; Massillon Independent, Sept. 11, 1863. Different sources offer a wide number of cavalry figures, from 1,700 to 3,000.

72. Xenia Sentinel, Sept. 8, 1863; Delaware Gazette, Aug. 7 and Nov. 6, 1863; Ohio, Messages and Reports, 276.

73. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 36; OR, ser. 3, vol. 4, 25. The 5th had planned to fill their ranks with Southern blacks, but so too did the dozens of other USCT forming at the time. In August 1864 the 5th resumed recruiting in Ohio. Regiments generally were composed of ten companies of a hundred men each.

74. Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 408, 409; Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (1990; repr., Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2000), 179.

2. The Making of a Regiment

1. Celestine Caldwell Hollings, Bennie Latimer, and Peggy Sawyer Williams, Our Ancestors (Detroit, MI: Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War 1861–1865, Sarah M. W. Sterling Tent no. 3, 1996), 1–11; James Hammond, CMSR; Christian Recorder, Jan. 30, 1864.

2. McPherson, Negro’s Civil War, 177; Weekly Anglo-African, as quoted in C. Peter Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers, vol.3, The United States, 1830–1846 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1991), 59.

3. Richard H. Kohn, “The Social History of the American Soldier: A Review and Prospectus for Research,” American Historical Review 86 (June 1981): 556, 560; Donald R. Shaffer, “Towards a Collective Biography of the USCT: The Prewar Backgrounds of Black Civil War Soldiers,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Military History, Bethesda, Maryland, Apr. 9, 1994, 5.

4. Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952), 299, 302; Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 15; George W. Bryan, Gaston Cableton, Thomas Jefferson Tabler, Charles Higgins, Charles Julius, and William Chambers, CMSR. The ages of the soldiers are based primarily on what officers recorded on the muster-in and descriptive rolls as included in the CMSR. In cases where the age was not recorded, I used the ROT, U.S. Pension Files, U.S. Census records, death certificates, burial records, and in some cases family Bibles. Of 1,281 soldiers, I was unable to find an age for only one man.

5. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 15; Reid Mitchell, The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), 5; Shaffer, “Towards a Collective Biography,” 1; Wiley, Life of Billy Yank, 303; J. Matthew Gallman, The North Fights the Civil War: The Home Front (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1994), 67; Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1987), 26. Elizabeth A. Regosin and Donald R. Shaffer state that the average age for both black and white soldiers during the Civil War was 25 years, and that the largest number of those men was 19 years old (Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau Files [New York: New York Univ. Press, 2008], 52). Gallman reported a medium age of 23.5 years. Overall, the makeup of the 27th was similar to other Northern free black regiments. See James M. Paradis, Strike the Blow for Freedom: The 6th United States Colored Infantry in the Civil War (1998; repr., Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane Books, 2000) and Edward A. Miller Jr., The Black Civil War Soldiers of Illinois: The Story of the Twenty-ninth U.S. Colored Infantry (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1998). For sources used to determine ages, see note 4 above. Of 1,280 men, 228 were reported as 18 years old.

6. To determine the number of substitutes and drafted men in the 27th USCT, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT. Of 1,281 men, 209 served as substitutes and 45 were drafted. The number of eighteen-year-old substitutes was 76, or just over 36 percent of all substitutes. In February 1864 Congress amended the Enrollment Act to apply the draft and enlistment requirements to all blacks, free or slave. It also restricted commutation to one year. As a result of these changes, local and state bounties increased, as did the amount required to obtain a substitute. Since the 27th had just begun recruiting, this affected choices made by many of the men who served in the regiment.

7. Shaffer, “Towards a Collective Biography,” 1; U.S. Census 1860; Gallman, North Fights the Civil War, 67; Andrew Jackson Carter, CMSR; Ohio Adjutant General, Grave Registration Cards A–Z, Soldiers Buried in Ohio from the Revolutionary War to World War II, ca. 1810–1967, Ohio History Connection, Columbus, Ohio (hereafter cited as Grave Registration Cards). Thirty-five-year-old Joseph Black of Company A told officers that he was born in Augusta, Virginia, when he enlisted in Cleveland, Ohio, CMSR. His death certificate filed in Cuyahoga County listed his place of birth as Africa. George Bryant files show Haiti and Greene County, Ohio, as his place of birth. There is a Muster and Descriptive Roll card for Archia Hogan, born in Ireland, and with blue eyes and red hair, who enlisted in Columbus as an alien substitute in August 1864. His name was not “borne on muster rolls” of the regiment, and there is no evidence he ever served with the 27th USCT. The five men born in Canada (three listed as Canada, two as Canada West) all joined after the equal pay issue was settled, and three were substitutes. As Richard M. Reid explains, this is when the number of black British North American volunteers increased; he has identified at least 835 Canadian-born men who joined the USCT (African Canadians in Union Blue: Enlisting for the Cause in the Civil War [Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press, 2014], 8, 48). Several sources were used to determine and corroborate the location of each soldier’s birth. This information was recorded on muster-in and descriptive rolls, so I used the CMSR for most of the men. For those left records left blank or that included conflicting information, I used available U.S. Pension Files and U.S. Census records. I was unable to find birth information for 20 of the 1,281 men, many because they did not know themselves. The number of men born in free states include Ohio, 342; Pennsylvania, 21; Indiana, 14; New York, 6; Illinois, 4; Vermont, 1; and Kansas, 1.

8. Scott and Shade, Upon these Shores, 127; Henry Carter, Pension File. Henry Carter volunteered for Company A of the 27th USCT. John Miles joined the 27th in December 1863, and his brother William Miles enlisted in August 1864 (John Miles and William Miles, CMSR). See the previous note for sources used to determine the number of Ohio-born soldiers.

9. U.S. Census 1860; John Elder, CMSR and Pension File; William Darlington, CMSR; William Kinney, CMSR and Pension File.

10. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 14; John David Smith, Black Judas: William Hannibal Thomas and The American Negro (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 2000), 11; William Mayberry, Pension File; John W. Phillips, CMSR and Pension File; Gallman, North Fights the Civil War, 68. USCT statistics are from Shaffer, “Towards a Collective Biography,” 4. Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn’s quantitative study reports that 90 percent of free blacks who joined the Union army were farmers or laborers (Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 2008], 189). The sources used to determine the occupation of each soldier in the 27th at enlistment come from the CMSR, including volunteer and substitution forms and muster-in and descriptive lists. A number of the files included two different occupations, in which case I recorded the one on the original volunteer or substitute enlistment form. Of the 1,281 men, 60 did not have an occupation listed.

11. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 12; Christian Recorder, Apr. 2, 1864; Simon P. Pleasant, CMSR; U.S. Census 1860; James H. Payne, CMSR and Pension File.

12. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 14, 15; Shaffer, “Towards a Collective Biography,” 4; Scott and Shade, Upon these Shores, 124; John D. White, James H. Taylor, and Younger Simpson, CMSR; Interview with Sim Younger. For example, Lucious Johnson, a barber from Columbus, received a $100 bounty after enlisting for one year in September 1864 (CMSR). Thomas Payne, a cooper from Hocking County, was drafted in May 1864 (CMSR). Richard N. Jones, a thirty-one-year-old tailor from Springfield Township, Summit County, received a $100 bounty after enlisting in Cleveland in February 1865 (CMSR). Waiting to enlist also made the men available for the draft, and this happened to some of the skilled workers. Percentages here are based on the number of reported occupations as described in note 10 above.

13. Book Records of Vol. Union Org., 27th USCT Infantry, Descriptive Book, Company A, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; ROT, 627–30; Silas McIntosh, CMSR; Jethro Davison, CMSR and Pension File.

14. Audrey Smedley, “‘Race’ and the Construction of Human Identity,” American Anthropologist 100, no. 3 (Sept. 1998): 675, 690–702; Barbara J. Fields, “Ideology and Race in American History,” in Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, edited by J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1982), 144, 168, 169.

15. Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War, 141–44; Fields, “Ideology and Race,” 156; Roseboom, Civil War Era, 341, 342; Hickok, Negro in Ohio, 70, 98, 99.

16. Shaffer, “Towards a Collective Biography,” 5. The sources used that identified the “color” of each soldier in the 27th are those included in the CMSR, including volunteer and substitution forms and muster-in and descriptive lists. Of the records of 1,281 men, only 9 failed to include this information. The terms used that I identified as indicating mixed race include “mulatto,” “yellow,” “tawny,” “copper,” “florid,” “light,” “fair,” and “sallow.” The other descriptive words used by officers were “black,” “brown,” “colored,” “dark,” and “sable.”

17. Weekly Anglo-African, July 11, 1863, as quoted in McPherson, Negro’s Civil War, 183–84; Basler, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 6, 445. Historians have uncovered a variety of soldiers’ motives. A list of the most common reasons reiterate and expand upon Lincoln’s observations to include the preservation of the Union, antislavery beliefs for moral and economic reasons; gratitude of recent immigrants; sense of duty to country or God; honor, patriotism, masculinity, and manhood; political ideologies; and personal ambitions for career, money, excitement, and peer pressure. James M. McPherson claims it was the ideological principals they feared were at risk, for their benefit and for future generations, and that “patriotism … was the credo of the fighting soldier.” Of the 1,076 soldiers in his study, 647 fought for the Union. (James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War [New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997], x, 13, 103, 178). Gerald F. Linderman believes that volunteers enlisted out of a sense of honor and duty born out of the nineteenth-century ideals of masculinity and Protestant Christianity, reinforced by society’s perceptions of courage (Embattled Courage, 7–17, 61–65). In Larry M. Logue’s study to determine who fought in the Civil War and “how they responded to the developments of their era,” he found that although patriotism was clearly an issue, youth and economic factors prevailed over the soldiers’ decision making (To Appomattox and Beyond: The Civil War Soldier in War and Peace [Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996], xiv, 13–17). Unfortunately, most studies on soldier motivations, for a variety of reasons, leave out any significant reference or evidence concerning black soldiers. Studies that specifically look at USCT regiments or the black military experience offer limited contributions. Herbert Aptheker claims that Northern blacks viewed the war as an opportunity to end slavery (Herbert Aptheker, The Negro in the Civil War [New York: International, 1938], 8–10). Benjamin Quarles argues that Northern blacks actively fought for abolition and equality at home and on the battlefield (Negro in the Civil War, vii–xiv, 99, 349–60). Edwin S. Redkey, in his edited volume A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), states that Northern blacks entered the Union army to free slaves and to preserve Union, but even more they fought for equality and citizenship (xii, 1, 2, 5, 8, 206). William Seraile argues that these men fought to maintain the Union and destroy slavery but admits that another reason could be for the financial opportunities (William Seraile, New York’s Black Regiments during the Civil War [New York: Routledge, 2001], 2, 3, 31–34). Versalle F. Washington recognizes that Ohio blacks who joined the 5th USCT had motivations different from ex-slaves. He asserts that they joined the army to prove they deserved equal rights as male citizens, for the preservation of the Union, defeating slavery, to gain political equality, and for the opportunity to prove their race worthy of such gains and denies any financial motivations (Eagles on Their Buttons, xi–xiv, 10–11).

18. Redkey, A Grand Army, 1, 2; Aptheker, Negro in the Civil War, 10; New York Times, May 27, 1864; Cornish, Sable Arm, 5, 6.

19. Athens Messenger, Feb. 4, 1864.

20. Redkey, A Grand Army, 8, 206; Christian Recorder, Aug. 20, 1864.

21. Hollings, Latimer, and Williams, Our Ancestors, 1–11; James Hammond, CMSR.

22. Jeremiah Dickins, CMSR; Andrew Jackson, CMSR and Pension File.

23. A February 1864 amendment to the Enrollment Act allowed slaves to be drafted. It would not be until July that the federal government allowed Northern states to recruit in slave states. Although there were probably more, at least three other men who joined the 27th USCT were still considered slaves when they mustered in. Several sources were used to determine the location of each soldier’s birth. This information was recoded on muster-in and descriptive rolls, so I used the CMSR for most of the men. For those left records left blank, I used available pension and census records. I was unable to find birth information for 20 of the 1,281 men. The number of border state birthplaces include Kentucky, 240; Maryland, 12; Missouri, 10; and Delaware, 1.

24. Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over, 125–28; James H. Payne, CMSR, Pension File; Rev. Horace Talbert, The Sons of Allen: Together with a Sketch of the Rise and Progress of Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio (Xenia, Ohio: Aldine Press, 1906), 241–43; The Christian Recorder, Apr. 2, 1864; Western Christian Advocate, Dec. 14, 1864, as cited in Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 163 (emphasis in the original).

25. Daniel Mischal, CMSR; Daniel Mischal to Dear Sister, Sept. 20, 1864, James E. Scott, Pension File; Western Christian Advocate, Dec. 14, 1864, as cited in Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 163.

26. William E. Jackson, CMSR; Cleveland Press, Feb. 8, 1946; James Bray, CMSR and Pension File; History of Logan County and Ohio … (Chicago: O. L. Baskin, 1880), 304; U.S. Census 1860; U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census of the United States, 1870, M593 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1870) (hereafter cited as U.S. Census 1870); U. S. Census Bureau, Tenth Census of the United States, 1880, T9 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1880) (hereafter cited as U.S. Census 1880); U.S. Census 1890; U.S. Census Bureau, Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, T623 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900) (hereafter cited as U.S. Census 1900); “A Guide to the United States Army 27th Colored Infantry Regiment Muster and Payroll 1864,” Alderman Memorial Library, Special Collections Department, Univ. of Virginia, accessed July 27, 2005, http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=uvasc/viu01444.xml; James W. Shuffelton, CMSR. A number of the white officers in the 27th USCT had personal servants. Quartermaster Nicholas A. Gray wrote to Lt. Albert G. Jones that his servant was “crazy” with typhoid fever in July 1865 while stationed in Wilmington. Capt. David H. Pugh’s pay voucher for Mar. 18 to June 30, 1864 listed John Washington, who was paid $11.00 a month plus a $2.50 clothing allowance (N. A. Gray to Albert G. Jones, June 20, 1865, Jones Papers; Pugh’s pay voucher is in the collection of the author).

27. Zephaniah Stewart to My Dear Wife, Apr. 26, 1864, Zephaniah Stewart, Pension File; Zephaniah Stewart, CMSR; Thomas Clark, CMSR and Pension File.

28. William Scott, CMSR; U.S. Census 1880; Cincinnati Daily Commercial, Aug. 5, 1864; Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 15.

29. Ramold, Across the Divide, 35; Gallman, The North Fights the Civil War, 103, 104; Lofton, “Northern Labor and the Negro,” 251–53, 256–59; Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 28.

30. Peter Howard, CMSR and Pension File.

31. Redkey, A Grand Army, 229–31; Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 63, 370, 371, 391–94; Negro in the Military, roll 2, 1351, 1352, 1413. In March 1864 the 3rd South Carolina was consolidated into the 21st USCT.

32. Negro in the Military, roll 2, 1351; Bernard C. Nalty, Strength for the Fight: A History of Black Americans in the Military (New York: Free Press, 1986), 39; Cornish, Sable Arm, 187–89.

33. Clinton Republic, Jan. 8, 1864; Columbus Crisis, Apr. 27, 1864; Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 370.

34. Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 402; Scioto Gazette, Feb. 2, 1864.

35. Christian Recorder, Feb. 20 and 27, Apr. 2 and 16, and June 25, 1864. The Committee on Military Affairs had been debating the issue during the spring of 1864. On June 15, 1864, Congress passed legislation to guarantee USCT equal pay. For free blacks, the law was retroactive to any enlistments from April 19, 1861. See Negro in the Military, roll 3, 2349 and 2400.

36. Christian Recorder, Jan. 9 and 30, Feb. 20 and 27, and Apr. 16, 1864; Clinton Republic, Mar. 25, 1864; Xenia Sentinel, Feb. 16, 1864; Richard Hedgepath to Mr. Vickers, May 10 1865, Edmund Coursey, Pension File; G. H. Guy to Dear friend, July 30, 1864, George H. Guy, CMSR; George H. Guy, Pension File; Consolidated List of Civil War Draft Registration Records, 1863–1865, Record Group 110, Records of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau, 1863–1865, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., Ohio Fifteenth Congressional District, Vol. II, Athens County, Rome Township, 7–8, and Ohio Fifteenth Congressional District, Vol. III, Athens County, Rome Township, 4.

37. G. H. Guy to Dear friend, July 30, 1864, George H. Guy, CMSR.

38. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 163; Scioto Gazette, May 24, 1864; Christian Recorder, June 25 and July 9, 1864; Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 366, 367.

39. Scioto Gazette, May 24, 1864; Eugene C. Murdock, Ohio’s Bounty System in the Civil War (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press for the Ohio Historical Society, 1963), 5, 8, 9.

40. Athens Messenger, Jan. 21, 1864; G. Gibson to Cap. D S Brown, Feb. 17, 1864, William Johnson and John McDonald, CMSR.

41. Murdock, Ohio’s Bounty System, 10, 17, 18.

42. Highland Weekly News, July 28, 1864; Scioto Gazette, Nov. 29, 1864; Robert Leech, CMSR and Pension File; U.S. Census 1870; U.S. Census 1880; W. K. Dunkhurst to Mr. Vickers, May 10, 1865, Edmund Coursey, CMSR; Edmund Coursey, Pension File. Murdock, in Ohio’s Bounty System, states that in July 1864 blacks could only receive a $10 federal bounty (9).

43. Moses Jones to Dear Wife, June 1, 1865, Moses M. A. Jones, Pension File; Moses M. A. Jones, CMSR; James E. Scott to Dear Mother, Aug. 12, 1864, and Dear Mother, Aug. 20, 1864, and J E Scott to Deare Mother, Dec. 25, 1864, James E. Scott, Pension File.

44. James E. Scott, CMSR and Pension File; Richard Hedgepath to Mr. Vickers, May 10, 1865, Edmond Coursey, Pension File; Richard Hedgepath and Edmond Coursey, CMSR; Murdock, Ohio’s Bounty System, 26, 27, 34.

45. M. J. Williams to Gov. Brough, Dec. 17, 1864, and John Brough to Col. A. M. Blackman, Dec. 27, 1864, US Colored Troops, Regimental Papers, 26–28th US Colored Inf., Box 25, 27th USC Infantry, Letters, Jan. 20, 1864–Oct. 6, 1865, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as Regimental Papers, Letters); Daniel J. Miner to Sir, Sept. 9, 1864, Daniel J. Miner, CMSR; John Barney, Zebedee Cain, James D. Gillas, and Hezekiah Stewart, CMSR. William A. Dobak states that fraud by officers was “prevalent in black regiments” (William A. Dobak, Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867 [2011; repr., New York: Skyhorse, 2013], 18).

46. James Beverly, CMSR.

47. James Beverly, CMSR; Proceedings of general courts-martial in the case of John Beverly and Everly, 27th USCT, OO-593, Court-Martial Case Files, 1809–1894, Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General, Army, Record Group 153, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as GCM).

48. Paradis, Strike the Blow for Freedom, 100; Eugene C. Murdock, One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1971), 179–80, 206; James W. Geary, We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1991), 138, 147; Dock Leech, CMSR and Pension File; Jeremiah Stewart, CMSR. In their random sample of USCT, Costa and Kahn found that 7 percent of all black troops were substitutes (Heroes and Cowards, 63). To determine the number of substitutes in the 27th USCT, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT. Of 1,281 men, 209 served as substitutes.

49. Daily Ohio Statesman, Sept. 7, 1864; Murdock, Ohio’s Bounty System, 36.

50. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 111, 112; William J. Nelson to His Excellency Govenor Brough, Feb. 11, 1865, William J. Nelson, CMSR. There is another William Nelson, who served in Company K. A letter written by William J. Nelson is misfiled in William Nelson’s CMSR. The only CMSR for William J. Nelson is one card from the List of Prisoners confined in Military Prison at Wheeling, VA.

51. Murdock, Ohio’s Bounty System, 4, 5. Some historians question if in fact the fee prevented many in the working class from using the commutation system. For a discussion on different historian’s interpretations, see Geary, We Need Men, 142–44.

52. Geary, We Need Men, 38; Scioto Gazette, May 17, 1864.

53. The May–July 1864, September–Oct. 1864, and February–April 1865 calls all required a draft, Murdock, Ohio’s Bounty System, 9; Peter Levine, “Draft Evasion in the North during the Civil War, 1863–65,” Journal of American History 67 (1981); 816; Roseboom, Civil War Era, 440; Scioto Gazette, July 26, 1864.

54. Roseboom, Civil War Era, 440; Murdock, Ohio’s Bounty System, 5–6; Champion Bowman, CMSR; Berry, Military Necessity, 103–14. In their random sample of USCT, Costa and Kahn found that 2 percent of all black troops were drafted (Heroes and Cowards, 63). The commutation clause was repealed in July 1864, causing substitute money to increase dramatically. There were a number of other men drafted who, although initially marked by officials as unassigned members of the 27th, never joined the regiment. The provost marshals assigned some of these men to locations in Ohio, and others were discharged without ever serving in any capacity. To determine the number of drafted men who served in the 27th USCT, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT. Of 1,281 men, 45 were drafted.

55. Basler, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 6, 445.

56. Isaac Stillgess, Eaton Banks, Exum Wade, Richard James, Calvin Gales, and Artis Watson, CMSR. Hugh G. Earnhart, “The Administrative Organization of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau in Ohio, 1863–65,” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 37 (Summer 1965): 89; New York Times, May 7, 1863. The Fourth District included Champaign, Logan, Miami, Shelby, and Darke counties.

57. Perry Carter and Isaac Noble, CMSR. The Fourteenth District in Ohio included Lorain, Medina, Ashland, Wayne, and Holmes counties. Norwalk, in Huron County, was in the Ninth District.

58. Negro in the Military, role 2, 1341. Stanton granted permission for the second regiment on January 11, 1864 (role 3, 2320).

59. Ohio Auditor of State (Ohio), Special Enumeration of Negroes, 1863, Ohio History Connection, Columbus.

60. The 1860 Ohio census reports a population of 7,100 black males between the ages of 15 and 40. More than 5,900 black men have been credited to Ohio’s Civil War contributions. This indicates that Ohio black males served disproportionately to their population compared to white male involvement. It is important to note that some of the blacks credited to state actually came from Kentucky, Indiana, and a few other states, but equally significant is the fact that hundreds of recruits who enlisted in the 54th and 55th Massachusetts applied to Massachusetts’s contribution numbers, not Ohio’s. Overall, more than 15 percent of the 1860 Northern black population served in Union army, and the USCT made up almost 10 percent of all Union troops (Negro in the Military, roll 3, 2327). Ohio added quota numbers by enlisting runaways from Kentucky. To appease the border state, Lincoln had agreed to the provision that no Kentucky slaves could enlist in Kentucky if the state’s quota could be filled by whites. Instead of waiting for this to happen, many Kentucky blacks fled northward to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and also southward to Tennessee. This helped fill the other states’ quotas at the expense of Kentucky’s quotas, and in 1864 Union men in the state had the policy reversed (Victor B. Howard, “The Civil War in Kentucky: The Slave Claims his Freedom,” The Journal of Negro History 67, no. 3 [Fall 1982]: 250; Victor. B. Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 1862–1884 [Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1983], 58).

61. Xenia Sentinel, Dec. 29, 1863; Scioto Gazette, Jan. 12, 1864.

62. Delaware Gazette, Dec. 18, 1863; Lancaster Gazette, Dec. 24, 1863; Clinton Republic, Dec. 11, 1863.

63. Porter, Ohio Politics; Scioto Gazette, Jan. 26, 1864; Weekly Anglo-African, Feb. 13, 1864, as cited in McPherson, Negro’s Civil War, 197, 198; U.S. Census 1860.

64. Scioto Gazette, Jan. 19 and Mar. 1, 1864. The editor is using the term “butternut” in a derogatory means to reference those who opposed Northern participation in a war to end slavery.

65. Richmond Enquirer, Dec. 17, 1863 as cited in the New York Times, Jan. 1, 1864; Negro in the Military, roll 3, 2349 and 2400; Redkey, A Grand Army, 231; Delaware Gazette, Feb. 26, 1864.

66. Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 10–13; Shannon, “Federal Government,” 575; Cornish, Sable Arm, 235, 239; Luke and Smith, Soldiering for Freedom, 38–40.

67. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 93.

68. Ripley Bee, Apr. 23, 1864; Stuart Seely Sprague, ed., His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 8; Logan and Winston, Dictionary of American Negro Biography, 480,481; Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky, 63.

69. Levi Beer and James Palmer, CMSR; Ronald D. Palmer, “James Palmer and Other African American Civil War Soldiers Buried in Fayette County, Pennsylvania,” Journal of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society 15, no. 2 (1996): 90, 91.

70. Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 61, 64, 71, 72; Christian Recorder, Apr. 2, 1864; ROT, 627–58; John Hope Franklin, ed., The Diary of James T. Ayres, Civil War Recruiter (1947; repr., Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1999), xvii; Cornish, Sable Arm, 235.

71. Grayson Jones, CMSR; James H. Payne, Pension File; Sidney Vicks, CMSR and Pension File; Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 15, 16. The practice of assigning recruits to districts that needed numbers became more common during the three Ohio drafts later in the war.

72. James A. Hart, CMSR; James Henry Gooding, On the Altar of Freedom: A Black Soldier’s Civil War Letters from the Front, ed. Virginia M. Adams (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1991), 5; William A. Gladstone, Men of Color (Gettysburg, Pa: Thomas, 1993), 67. Discrepancies concerning race and place of birth are also evident when comparing the volunteer enlistment form to the Company Muster-in and Descriptive Roll cards contained the soldier’s Compiled Military Service Records. The most common category of information is the conflicting listings for occupation. “Laborer” was written on almost all of the Company Muster-in and Descriptive Roll cards, despite a wide range of occupations listed on the volunteer enlistment forms.

73. James H. Payne, Pension File; Robert Riggs and Ludwell Walker, CMSR.

74. Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 11; Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 21–22.

75. See for example Thomas R. Kemp, “Community and War: The Civil War Experience of Two New Hampshire Towns,” in Vinovskis, Toward a Social History, 31–77.

76. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 15; Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 102–3; William Ross, Daybury Butler, and Elbridge Butler, CMSR. Elbridge Butler’s age is reported differently depending on the source. His enlistment papers state that he was eighteen, but his obituary in the Chillicothe Gazette asserts that he was sixteen at enlistment. The 1900 U.S. Census lists his birth as June 1849, which would have made him fifteen years old (Butler-Eldridge, Obituary Files, Genealogy Room, Chillicothe and Ross County Public Library, Chillicothe, Ohio). Some USCT used white men to serve as noncommissioned officers, especially during the formation of the regiments. There is no evidence that the 27th had any white officers other than those commissioned to companies and the field and staff. Although Stanton changed his position in February 1865, only a few blacks held commissioned posts, including eight surgeons, twelve chaplains, and seventy-four officers (John W. Blassingame, “The Selection of Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers of Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1863–1865,” Negro History Bulletin 30 (Jan. 1967): 8–11). To determine the number of noncommissioned officers in the 27th, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT.

77. John W. Hicks, CMSR and Pension File; William Darlington, CMSR; Charles E. Taylor, CMSR and Pension File; U.S. Census 1860; U.S. Census 1870. To determine the race and number of noncommissioned officers in the 27th, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT.

78. J E Scott to Dear Mother, Sept. 21, 1864, James E. Scott, Pension File; Blaine, “Forgotten Men,” 99, 142. ROT, 627–28; Everett Byrd, Everett Bird, George L. Gilbert, and Wilson T. Morton, CMSR. Blaine provides a comparison of 6.7 percent of white soldiers to only 0.2 percent of black Ohioans who served as sergeants. Morton was also accused of misrepresentation, inciting a riot among the men, and grossly lying to his captain. To determine the number of noncommissioned officers in the 27th, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT.

79. Nicholas A. Gray, Isaac N. Gardner, Joseph J. Wakefield, Herman Niedermeyer, Albert G. Jones, Charles F. Wilson, George W. Doty, and Charles A. Beery, CMSR; Isaac N. Gardner, Pension File.

80. George W. Doty, Isaac N. Gardner, Alexander S. Hempstead, Matthew R. Mitchell, Daniel Murphy, William G. Neilson, Norvell W. Taylor, and Joseph J. Wakefield, CMSR; “88th Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry (Three Years Service),” Ohio Civil War Central, accessed July 13, 2013, http://www.ohiocivilwarcentral.com/entry.php?rec=44&PHPSESSID=0068d44627ed900de9f492844b2f3a5a. I used the CMST and ROT to determine the date of the officers’ muster-in and arrival in camp.

81. Cornish, Sable Arm, 217, 218; Negro in the Military, roll 2, 1261–62; Shannon, “Federal Government,” 578. As a result of the low passage rates, the Philadelphia Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments created a thirty-day training program for men who wanted to prepare before taking the U.S. Bureau of Colored Troops examination. They then opened a free military school for applicants. It does not appear that any of the officers of the 27th USCT attended the school.

82. Cornish, Sable Arm, 208, 209; Negro in the Military, roll 2, 1353, 1415; Mark M. Boatner III, The Civil War Dictionary (1959; repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1988), 257; Lonnie R. Speer, Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1997), 69; Clifford L. Swanson, The Sixth United States Infantry Regiment, 1855 to Reconstruction (2001; repr., Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007), 181. Blassingame listed the cities with examination stations as Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, St. Louis, New Orleans, Davenport, Iowa, and Richmond (“Selection of Officers,” 8).

83. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 53; Cornish, The Sable Arm, 208, 210–13.

84. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 44–53; Blassingame states that the men had to pass all areas (“The Selection of Officers,” 8); Cornish, Sable Arm, 208; Ohio Adjutant General, Report of Examination of Candidates for Officers in Colored Regiments, 1863, Ohio History Connection, Columbus, 3, 15 (hereafter cited as Examination of Candidates); Charles A. Beery and James W. Shuffelton, CMSR; Martin W. Öfele, German-Speaking Officers in the U.S. Colored Troops, 1863–1867 (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2004), 97.

85. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 39–43, 53; Cornish, Sable Arm, 222, 223; Michael E. Stevens, ed., As If It Were Glory: Robert Beecham’s Civil War from the Iron Brigade to the Black Regiments (1997; repr., Lanham, Md.: Rowan and Littlefield, 1999), ix, xi.

86. Negro in the Military, roll 2, 1415, 1416; Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 17–26; Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, xx.

87. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 18, 20, 21; Negro in the Military, roll 2, 1422; Examination of Candidates, 9; Edwin F. McMurphy and Frederick J. Bartlett, CMSR. Langston and Wall recommended Shurtleff, whom they knew from Oberlin. Shurtleff had been a captain in the 7th OVI when he was captured at Cross Lanes, VA, in July 1861. He returned home to Oberlin after being in a rebel prison for thirteen months.

88. Tiffin Weekly Tribune, Sept. 13 and Oct. 25, 1861, Apr. 11, 1862, and June 5, 1863; Letters Received by the Commission Branch of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1863–1870, B615, 1864, M1064, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as Letters Received by the Commission Branch); Albert M. Blackman, CMSR and Pension File; “49th Ohio Volunteer Infantry,” accessed October 21, 2007, http://my.ohio.voyager.net/~lstevens/49oh.html; “49th Ohio Infantry,” Ohio in the Civil War, accessed October 21, 2007, http://www.ohiocivilwar.com/cw49.html; U.S. Census 1870. In April 1862 Blackman was treated for diarrhea. Later a military surgeon reported that Blackman had rheumatism and fibrous tumors in the front of his larynx and supported Blackman’s request for a disability certificate, noting that since Blackman was a physician he would know that his condition was too serious to serve. Also, the 49th endured a strenuous march with little food and water in September 1862 in the weeks just before Blackman’s resignation.

89. “Letter from John A. Andrew to Frances Shaw, January 30, 1863,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections Online, accessed June 3, 2015, http://www.masshist.org/database/1786; Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 17–26. For comparison, I am using numbers compiled by Joseph T. Glatthaar and Keith P. Wilson. Glatthaar’s appendix provides a sample that works out to 28 percent farmers, 42 percent skilled laborers and artisans, 26 percent commercial, white collar or students, almost 24 percent professionals, and just under 6 percent laborers (Forged in Battle, 267). Wilson based his numbers on the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Troops in Philadelphia. He states that the officers were 25 percent farmers, 30 percent skilled laborers and artisans, 26 percent commercial, white collar, or students, and 16 percent professionals. He did not provide a number for laborers (Keith P. Wilson, Campfires of Freedom: The Camp Life of Black Soldiers during the Civil War [Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 2002], 5). To determine the ages and occupations of the white officers in the 27th, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT, supplemented by U.S. Census data. There were forty-six men who served as officers for the 27th USCT.

90. According to Wilson, 9 percent had been officers in regular army, 42 percent non-com officers, 25 percent privates, and 24 percent civilians (Campfires of Freedom, 5). Two officers later left the 27th to join other black regiments. Albert Rogall went to the 118th USCT and Daniel Miner moved to the 23rd USCT. To determine the previous service of the white officers of the 27th, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT.

91. Wilson, Campfires of Freedom, 27; Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 12–21; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 150; May 30, 1864, Rogall Diary.

92. Albert Rogall, John A. Eberhardt, John Cartwright, John W. Donnellan, and Daniel Murphy, CMSR; Examination of Candidates, 4; U.S. Census 1880. John W. Blassingame states that an estimated 250 foreign officers from 18 counties served in the USCT (“Selection of Officers,” 11). Martin W. Öfele has counted 265 men from German speaking countries alone that served in the USCT (German-Speaking Officers, xv). Glatthaar provides a sample that suggests the number of officers closer to 700 (Forged in Battle, 265–66).

93. History of Delaware County and Ohio … (Chicago: O. L. Baskin, 1880), 300, 303, 304; Negro in the Military, roll 2, 1422; U.S. Census 1870; “Delaware in the Civil War,” Local History Files, Delaware County District Library, Delaware, OH; Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 18, 19.

94. Gooding, On the Altar of Freedom, 5; Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 27; Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 113.

95. Negro in the Military, roll 2, 1107–10; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 131, 837. The board did make a few minor adjustments, and with the revisions Lincoln and Secretary of War Stanton approved the edition on March 9, 1863.

96. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 104, 105, 108; Gladstone, Men of Color, 215; Wiley, Life of Billy Yank, 53.

97. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 30; Gooding, On the Altar of Freedom, 6, 7, 16, 18; Donald Yacovone, ed., A Voice of Thunder: The Civil War Letters of George E. Stephens (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1997), 235, 236; William Kinney, Pension File; Delaware Gazette, May 20, 1864.

98. Gooding, On the Altar of Freedom, 6; Christian Recorder, Apr. 2, 1864.

99. Herbert Chavous, CMSR and Pension File; Elias Brown, CMSR; Wesley Hines, Pension File; U.S. Census 1860; Wiley, Life of Billy Yank, 125–27.

100. Herman Niedermeyer, CMSR; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 152; Wesley Haines, Pension File. Dover’s Powders, made of powder of ipecac and opium, was prescribed to relieve pain and induce sweating to reduce fevers.

101. William Redman, CMSR; Book Records of Vol. Union Org., 27th USCT Infantry, Morning Reports, Companies A-I, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as Book Records, Morning Reports); Delaware Gazette, Apr. 8, 1864.

102. Edgar F. Love, “Registration of Free Blacks in Ohio: The Slaves of George C. Mendenhall,” Journal of Negro History 69 (Winter 1984): 38–47; Richmond Mendenhall, CMSR; Alexander Napper, CMSR and Pension File; ROT, 767–71.

103. Book Records, Morning Reports, Co. B; Thomas Green and John Miles, CMSR.

104. Negro in the Military, roll 3, 2423; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 66; James Balis, Elias Smith, and George West, CMSR; Delaware Gazette, Apr. 22, 1864; Reid, Freedom for Themselves, 14; Book Records of Vol. Union Org., 27th USCT Infantry, Order Book, Companies A–K, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as Book Records, Order Book). The other regiments assigned to the IX Corps include the 19th, 26th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 32nd, 39th, and 43rd USCT and the 1st Michigan Infantry (Colored), and the 29th and 30th Connecticut Colored Infantries.

105. Bogue, “William Parker Cutler’s Congressional Diary,” 330; Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 583; OR, ser. 2, vol. 6, 533; Delaware Gazette, Dec. 11, 1863.

106. Brainard Dyer, “The Treatment of Colored Union Troops by the Confederates, 1861–1865,” Journal of Negro History 20, no. 3 (July 1935): 281, 283; Athens Messenger, Feb. 4, 1864; Samuel Jordan, CMSR; Delaware Gazette, Mar. 11, 1864. See also Charles W. Sanders Jr., While in the Hands of the Enemy: Military Prisons of the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2005), 215–19. The 1st Mississippi became the 51st USCT on March 11, 1864.

107. Scioto Gazette, Apr. 19, 1864; Delaware Gazette, Apr. 22, 1864; Clinton Republic, Apr. 22, 1864; Smith, Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops, 59; Gregory J. W. Urwin, “‘We Cannot Treat Negroes … as Prisoners of War’: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in Civil War Arkansas,” in Black Flag Over Dixie: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in the Civil War, ed. Gregory J. W. Urwin (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2004), 132, 134–35, 137, 140. A guidon is a small swallow-tailed flag on a staff carried at the right front of a company or regiment behind the commanding officer. The 2nd Kansas Colored Infantry retaliated on April 30 when they refused to quarter to Southern soldiers along the south side of the Saline River at Jenkins Ferry during the Red River Expedition. On December 13, 1864, the U.S. Bureau of Colored Troops designated the 1st Kansas the 79th USCT and the 2nd Kansas became the 83rd USCT (Spurgeon, Soldiers in the Army of Freedom, 212–15, 218–19, 223).

108. Delaware Gazette, Apr. 22, 1864; Xenia Sentinel, Apr. 26, 1864; New York Times, Apr. 19, 1864; Negro in the Military, roll 3, 2489. Lincoln was referring to the incident at Fort Pillow. The original Special Order no. 117 from Secretary of War Stanton in the War Department on March 14,1864 requested that the following USCT regiments proceed to Annapolis as soon as they could make arrangements: 19th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 32nd, 39th, 43th, 1st Michigan Infantry (Colored), and the 29th and 30th Connecticut Colored Infantries. The 1st Michigan became the 102nd USCT on May 23, 1864, and the U.S. Bureau of Colored Troops consolidated the 30th Connecticut with the 31st USCT on May 18, 1864.

3. Baptism under Fire

1. Delaware Gazette, Apr. 22, 1864; Ohio State Journal, Apr. 26, 1864; Rogall Diary, Apr. 19, 1864.

2. William G. Neilson, CMSR; Book Records, Morning Reports; Frank Welcher, The Eastern Theater, vol. 1 of The Union Army 1861–1865: Organizations and Operations (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1989), 428; Rogall Diary, Apr. 23, 1864.

3. Brooks D. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822–1865 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 220–21; Jean Edward Smith, Grant (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 259.

4. Brooks D. Simpson, Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1991), 44–45; Brooks D. Simpson, “Quandaries of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Black Soldiers,” in Blight and Simpson, Union and Emancipation, 128; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 328; Smith, Grant, 259–60; Edward G. Longacre, Army of Amateurs: General Benjamin F. Butler and the Army of the James, 1863–1865 (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1997), 3, 50.

5. William Glenn Robertson, “From the Crater to New Market Heights: A Tale of Two Divisions,” in Smith, Black Soldiers in Blue, 170; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 428; Negro in the Military, roll 3, 2423. Lincoln had assigned Burnside the command of the IX Army Corps once before, and he had served from June 1862 until Lincoln reappointed him as commander of the Army of the Potomac in November. By late January 1863, Burnside’s inferior leadership had led to his dismissal.

6. Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 277; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 428.

7. Christian Recorder, July 30, 1864; Book Records, Order Book.

8. Rogall Diary, Apr. 24, 29, 1864; Charles W. Long, Pension File; Charles Woodson, Pension File. Seven hospitals operated at City Point during the siege of Petersburg. One of them, Depot Field Hospital, covered over two hundred acres. Army surgeons and civilian agencies such as the United States Sanitary Commission and the United States Christian Commission attended up to ten thousand patients at the Union’s largest field hospital During the summer of 1864, a separate hospital was set up at City Point to serve the USCT. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant established his headquarters at City Point on June 15, 1864.

9. Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 (1941; repr., Chicago: Time Life Books, 1980), 393–94; James H. Rickard, “Services with the Colored Troops in Burnside’s Corps,” in Personal Narratives of Events in the War of the Rebellion, being Papers Read Before the Rhode Island Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society, 5th Series, no. 1 (Providence: Rhode Island Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society, 1894), 16; Smith, Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops, 92; Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 338; Scioto Gazette, May 10, 1864; Zephaniah Stewart to My Dear Wife, Apr. 26, 1864, Zephaniah Stewart, Pension File; Rogall Diary, Apr. 26, 1864.

10. Christian Recorder, June 18 and July 30, 1864.

11. Christian Recorder, June 25 and July 30, 1864.

12. Book Records, Morning Reports, Co. C; Christian Recorder, July 30, 1864; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 280, 428–29; John Cartwright, CMSR; OR, ser. 1, vol. 33, 1046; Rogall Diary, Apr. 29, 1864.

13. Rogall Diary, Apr. 27, 1864; John Cooley, CMSR; Edward A. Miller Jr., “Volunteers for Freedom: Black Civil War Soldiers in Alexandria National Cemetery, Part 1,” Historic Alexandria Quarterly (Fall 1998): 7.

14. Book Records Order Book; Thomas Gladdish, Richard Redman, and Charles E. Taylor, CMSR; OR, ser. 1, vol. 37, pt. 1, 698–700.

15. Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 394; Janet B. Hewett, et al., eds., Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, vol. 77 (Wilmington, N.C.: Broadfoot, 1998), 566, 567; William G. Neilson, CMSR.

16. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 153; Levi Beer, Allen Bobson, Allen Robson, John Horton, Benjamin McCoglin, and Preston Mosby, CMSR; OR, ser. 1, vol. 36, pt. 1, 205; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 429; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 761. By early summer the 1st Division also included the 30th, 39th and 43rd USCT. Ferrero gave command of the 2nd Brigade, which included the 19th, 23rd, 28th, 29th, and 31st USCT, to Col. Henry Goddard Thomas, a Maine lawyer, one of the earliest regular army officers to accept a colonelcy of black troops when he was appointed to the command of the 79th USCT on March 20, 1863.

17. Rogall Diary, May 4, 5, 1864; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 280, 429.

18. Benjamin McCoglin, Fielding McCoglin, John McCoglin, Levi Beer, Allen Bobson, Allen Robson, Preston Mosby, and John Horton, CMSR.

19. OR, ser. 1, vol. 36, pt. 1, 987, 988; Rickard, “Services with the Colored Troops,” 17; Rogall Diary, May 6, 1864; Stevens, As If It Were Glory, 168; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 429.

20. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 281, 430; Levi Beer, CMSR and Pension File; Ronald D. Palmer, “Western Pennsylvania and the United States Colored Troops Regiments in the Civil War,” Westmoreland History 3, no. 3 (Fall 1997); 50; Rogall Diary, May 6, 1864.

21. Rogall Diary, May 7, 8, 1864; D. Bates to Father, May 16, 1864, “The Civil War Letters of Delavan Bates,” NE GenWeb Military Resource Center, accessed Apr. 1, 2004, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~necivwar/CW/bates/genbate1.html (hereafter cited as Bates Letters).

22. Rogall Diary, May 8, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 36, pt. 1, 988; Rickard, “Services with the Colored Troops,” 19; D. Bates to Father, May 16, 1864, Bates Letters.

23. Rogall Diary, May 10–13, 1864.

24. Rogall Diary, May 14–15, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 36, pt. 1, 986; William G. Neilson, CMSR; Regimental Papers, Letters. On May 12, 1864, the governor’s office reported to the state adjutant general that Blackman’s eight officers (from Companies H, I, and K) were still in Ohio (Regimental Papers, Letters).

25. Rogall Diary, May 16–18, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 36, pt. 1, 989, 990.

26. Levi Beer, CMSR and Pension File; Benjamin McCoglin, CMSR and Pension File; Preston Mosby and Allen Bobson, CMSR; Darrell Laurant, “Black Civil War Veteran Honored at Old City Cemetery,” The News & Advance, accessed Apr. 23, 2012, http://www.newsadvance.com/news/local/black-civil-war-veteran-honored-at-old-city-cemetery/article_da3efb48-3b16-559a-8d0c-235c2aebff67.html.

27. Rogall Diary, May 20, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 36, pt. 1, 986.

28. Rogall Diary, May 21–24, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 36, pt. 1, 989, 990; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 431.

29. Rogall Diary, May 22–30, 1864; Delavan Bates to Father, May 26, 1864, Bates Letters; OR, ser. 1, vol. 36, pt. 1, 990, 991.

30. Christian Recorder, June 25, 1864; Rogall Diary, May 31–June 11, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 36, pt. 1, 991; Edward G. Longacre, A Regiment of Slaves: The 4th United States Colored Infantry, 1863–1866 (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2003), 78.

31. Rogall Diary, June 8, 11, 1864; Charles Qualls, CMSR and Pension File; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 157.

32. Christian Recorder, June 18, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 36, pt. 1, 989, 991.

33. Levi Beer, CMSR and Pension File.

34. Delaware Gazette, June 10, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 36, pt. 1, 991, and ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, 200; Rogall Diary, June 12, 1864.

35. Hewett, Supplement to the Official Records, vol. 77, 620; Rogall Diary, June 16–18, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, 594–95; Michael A. Cavanaugh and William Marvel, The Battle of the Crater: “The Horrid Pit,” June 25–August 6, 1864 (Lynchburg, Va.: H. E. Howard, 1989), 3; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 282, 434, 848–49. The siege, which began on June 16, 1864, lasted until April 3, 1865.

36. William C. Davis, Death in the Trenches: Grant at Petersburg (Alexandria, Va.: Time Life Books, 1986), 8, 40; Delaware Gazette, July 1, 1864; Jeff Kinard, The Battle of the Crater (1995; repr., Abilene, Tex.: McWhiney Foundation Press, 1998), 14, 15.

37. Robert Garth Scott, ed., Forgotten Valor: The Memoirs, Journals, and Civil War Letters of Orlando B. Willcox (Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 1999), 542; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Battle of the Crater, 3; Hondon B. Hargrove, Black Union Soldiers in the Civil War (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1988), 180.

38. Robertson, “From the Crater,” 178; Rogall Diary, Apr. 16, May 9, May 14, May 23, June 12–24, 1864. Rogall’s diary provides evidence of a bitter man. He resigned his position as a captain in the 54th OVI after being injured in battle at Shiloh. The next year the Hardin County resident attempted to get an appointment with the Invalid Corps but was not accepted. He then sought an officer’s position in the USCT, but from his muster-in with only the same rank as he held previously, he continued to seek a higher commission. His unhappiness grew as he endured the overwhelming second-class treatment afforded to USCT regiments, yet the lure of a higher commission led him to accept the leadership of the 118th USCT as lieutenant colonel in December 1864 (Albert Rogall, CMSR and Pension File).

39. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 434; Rogall Diary, June 24, 27, July 14, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, 594, 595; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 158.

40. OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, 200; Rogall Diary, June 19, 22, 1864; Jim Leeke, ed., A Hundred Days to Richmond: Ohio’s “Hundred Days” Men in the Civil War (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1999), 92–94, 182; N. A. Gray to Dear Ann, Nicholas A. Gray, Pension File.

41. Rogall Diary, June 20, 1864; Joshua King, Pension File; William Darlington, CMSR and Pension File.

42. OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, 594, 595; D. Bates to Father, June 27, 1864, Bates Letters; Henry Early, Pension File; William J. Anderson, CMSR and Pension File; Rogall Diary, June 25, 26, 1864.

43. Rogall Diary July 3, 1864; Henry Early, CMSR and Pension File; William J. Anderson, Joseph Ward, William Ross, and Henry Alexander, Pension Files.

44. Rickard, “Services with the Colored Troops,” 23; Blassingame, “Selection of Officers,” 9; OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 2, 550, and ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 3, 735; Rogall Diary, June 17, 1864; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 160; William G. Neilson, Frederick J. Bartlett, and Thomas Perry, CMSR; Charles A. Beery, Pension File; Letters Received by the Commission Branch, W949, 1864. Ferrero reported on April 30 that Capt. John Cartwright commanded the regiment, but by May 4 and until August he listed Wright (OR, ser. 1, vol. 33, 1046, and ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 2, 617).

45. OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, 200; Rogall Diary, June 25, 26, July 2, 8, 23, 1864.

46. Delavan to Father, July 16, 1864, Bates Letters; James H. Payne, Pension File; Henry Alexander, Pension File. Several of Meade’s staff members used this description when referring to the 4th Division (Cavanaugh and Marvel, Battle of the Crater, 17).

47. Christian Recorder, Aug. 6, 1864; Rogall Diary, July 13, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 3, 241; Jeremiah Ward, Pension File; Hancock Jeffersonian, July 29, 1864.

48. Christian Recorder, Aug. 6, 1864; Rogall Diary, July 23, 1864; Robert Cannon, Pension File; Henry Alexander to Dear Wife, July 20, 1864, Henry Alexander, Pension File; Albert G. Jones to May, July 9, 1864, Jones Papers.

49. Rogall Diary, July 8, 1864; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 853; Kinard, Battle of the Crater, 24, 35, 37, 38. Only four tons of explosives were used.

50. Noah Andre Trudeau, The Last Citadel: Petersburg, Virginia, June 1864–April 1865 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991), 105–6; Henry Goddard Thomas, “The Colored Troops at Petersburg,” Century Magazine 34, no. 5 (Sept. 1887): 777; Rickard, “Services with the Colored Troops,” 25–26; E. Ferrero to Major C. W. Foster, July 9, 1864, and C. W. Foster to Col. J. H. Potter, July 14, 1864, Albert M. Blackman, CMSR.

51. OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 3, 304; Henry Pleasants Jr., The Tragedy of the Crater (Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1938), 62; Stevens, As If It Were Glory, xxi; Rogall Diary, June 25, July 2, 8, 23; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 160; Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 357–58. In his diary, Lt. J. J. Scroggs of the 5th USCT mentioned “The usual amount of artillery and rifle practice” only once during the month of July (Larry Leigh, ed., J. J. Scroggs’ Diary and Letters, 1852–1865 [n.p., 1996], 330).

52. OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, 595, and ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 3, 446–47; Rogall Diary, July 19, 23, 1864.

53. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 161; Rogall Diary, July 23–30, 1864.

54. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 362–64; Simpson, “Quandaries of Command,” 130; Smith, Grant, 383; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 107, 108; Davis, Death in the Trenches, 74; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Battle of the Crater, 23.

55. Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 777; Scott, Forgotten Valor, 554, 555; Christian Recorder, Aug. 20, 1864; Rickard, “Services with the Colored Troops,” 26.

56. Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 777, 778; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Battle of the Crater, 26, 37; Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 359.

57. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 854, 855; Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 778, 779; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 115; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 238–39; Leigh, J. J. Scroggs’ Diary and Letters, 345.

58. Richard Slotkin, No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, 1864 (New York: Random House, 2009), 370 n.6; Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 779–81; James Ferguson, Jerry Warren, and Isaac Noble, Pension Files.

59. Slotkin, No Quarter, 235, 237, 337; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 163; Rogall Diary, July 30, 1864; Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 781; OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, 595–97; James W. Bray, Pension File; Urbana Union, Aug. 24, 1864.

60. Rickard, “Services with the Colored Troops,” 27; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 855; OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, 597.

61. Slotkin, No Quarter, 263; Matthew Hill, Pension File; Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 782; Rogall Diary, July 30, 1864; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 855; James E. Scott and Alexander Hemstead, Pension Files.

62. Cavanaugh and Marvel, Battle of the Crater, 92, 97, 98; Kinard, Battle of the Crater, 65; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 855; Pleasants, Tragedy of the Crater, 85; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 118–20.

63. Cavanaugh and Marvel, Battle of the Crater, 99; Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 156; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 855; Slotkin, No Quarter, 291, 337.

64. Simon Banks, Thomas Bibb, Robert Cannon, Levi Beer, Richard Fox, James Hammond, William Underwood, Alfred W. Pinney, John Cartwright, Amos Richardson, Seymour A. Cornell, Edwin C. Latimer, Sidney Vicks, and Andrew Ely, Pension Files; Rogall Diary, July 30, 1864; Ramold, Across the Divide, 84.

65. Rogall Diary, July 31, 1864; Rickard, “Services with the Colored Troops,” 30; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Battle of the Crater, 104.

66. John W. Phillips, CMSR and Pension File; Jordan Arnich, James R. Carrothers, James Griffee, James W. Johns, Napoleon Lucas, and Anderson Smith, CMSR; Rickard, “Services with the Colored Troops,” 29; Stephen M. Weld, “The Petersburg Mine,” in Petersburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, vol. 5 of Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts (Boston, 1906), 212; Slotkin, No Quarter, 302, 307, 309, and 376 n.19; Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 366. The exact number of USCT taken prisoner is unknown, and the estimates vary greatly.

67. Cavanaugh and Marvel, Battle of the Crater, 106; Slotkin, No Quarter, 308; Sumner U. Shearman, “Battle of the Crater and Experiences of Prison Life,” Personal Narratives of Events in the War of the Rebellion Being Papers Read before the Rhode Island Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society, 5th ser., no. 8 (Providence: Rhode Island Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society, 1898), 16–18.

68. Edwin C. Latimer, Pension File; John W. Phillips, CMSR and Pension File; Jordan Arnich, James Griffee, James W. Johns, Napoleon Lucas, and Anderson Smith, CMSR; Margaret Humphreys, Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2013), 10, 293, 301; George W. Adams, Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War (New York: Henry Schuman, 1952), 47, 48; Humphreys, Intensely Human, 38, 57, 67–71; ROT, 627; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 160, 161; Jim Downs, Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2012), 32–33; Levstik, “Civil War Diary,” 44 n. 17; Henry Alexander to Dear Wife, July 20, 1864, Henry Alexander, Pension File. Niedermeyer’s daily routines are unclear, as records for the regiment’s morning sick call are largely missing from the available regimental records, although they exist for the period after the war ended when the 27th is on occupational duty in North Carolina. Lt. Col. John W. Donnellan reported that the “original books and records” of the regiment were lost somewhere between Faison Station and Raleigh when in pursuit of Johnson’s army in April 1865, in U.S. Colored Troops, Regimental Papers, 26–28th U.S. Colored Inf., Box 25, 27th USC Infantry, Miscellaneous, Jan. 11, 1864–Feb. 1866, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as Regimental Papers, Miscellaneous).

69. Therrygood Manley, CMSR and Pension File; James Ferguson, Pension File.

70. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 165, 166.

71. Edmund H. Smith, CMSR.

72. Ohio State Journal, Aug. 9, 1864; Rogall Diary, Aug. 1, 1864.

73. Ohio State Journal, Aug. 9, 1864; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Battle of the Crater, 105; Samuel Christian, Pension File.

74. Rogall Diary, Aug. 3, 1864; Blake, Diary and Letters, 164; Matthew R. Mitchell, CMSR and Pension File; Christian Recorder, Sept. 17, 1864. The casualty numbers for the Petersburg front come from the CMSR and ROT.

75. OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, 548, 567; Aleck to My dear Lizzie, Aug. 3, 1864, William Gladstone Collection, 1862–1890, Box 1, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

76. John A. Bodamer Journal, July 30, 1864, Schoff Civil War Collection, William L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Negro in the Military, roll 3, 3275; Christian Recorder, Aug. 20, 1864.

77. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 366; Kinard, Battle of the Crater, 69; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 124, 127; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Battle of the Crater, 108; Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 365.

78. Scott, Forgotten Valor, 550; Ohio State Journal, Aug. 9, 1864; Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 366; Statistics for the regiment in OR show six men and three officers killed, forty-four men and two officers wounded, and twenty men captured or missing for a total of seventy-five casualties. OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, 246. On August 12, Lt. Col. Albert M. Blackman reported to Brig. Gen Lorenzo Thomas that the 27th lost five officers, three killed, one missing who he believed to be dead, and one wounded who had since succumbed to the injury. He reported that casualties for his black troops included forty-five wounded, twelve missing, and seven killed (Regimental Papers, Miscellaneous). After the reports were filed, the casualty numbers changed, as some men were located and others died of their wounds. For the total killed, wounded, and missing, I used the CMSR and ROT. A joint congressional investigation the following spring found Burnside guilty of misconduct, and he resigned the following April. The court also censured Ledlie and Ferrero for hiding during the battle and Willcox for lack of leadership. They also acknowledged that Meade’s decision to remove the USCT from the lead charge contributed to the failure of Burnside’s plan (Cavanaugh and Marvel, Battle of the Crater, 110, 111).

79. Rogall Diary, Aug. 2–8, 1864; Wesley Haines, Pension File.

80. Wesley Haines and Robert Hackley, Pension Files; John C. Duster, CMSR and Pension File; Rogall Diary, Aug. 8, 1864; Ohio State Journal, Aug. 24, 1864; Albert G. Jones to May, Aug. 11, 1864, Jones Papers.

81. Delaware Gazette, Aug. 5, 19, and 26, 1864; Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 150; James M. McPherson, ed., The Atlas of the Civil War (New York: Macmillan, 1994), 142; Rogall Diary, Aug. 9, 1864; Albert M. Blackman, CMSR; OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, 248.

82. Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 618, 619.

83. Scott, Forgotten Valor, 565.

84. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 284, 859; Albert G. Jones to May, Aug. 11, 1864, Jones Papers.

85. James E. Scott, Pension File; Davis, Death in the Trenches, 101; Rogall Diary, Aug. 17, 1864; Ohio State Journal, Aug. 24, 1864.

86. Trudeau, Last Citadel, 160, 161; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 865; Ohio State Journal, Aug. 24, 1864; Rogall Diary, Aug. 18, 1864.

87. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 860; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 164, 165; Rogall Diary, Aug. 19, 1864; Dear Mother, Aug. 20, 1864, and Deare mother and father, Sept. 12, 1864, James E. Scott, Pension File.

88. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 284, 435.

89. McPherson, Atlas of the Civil War, 184; Negro in the Military, roll 3, 2756, 3297.

4. The Labors of War

1. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 436–37; Albert M. Blackman, John W. Donnellan, and Albert G. Jones, CMSR; Regimental Records, Letters.

2. Ohio State Journal, Sept. 14, 1864; Francis M. Weld, Charles F. Woodson, and George L. Smith, CMSR; Matthew R. Mitchell to Dear Folks, Sept. 11, 1864, Maj. Matthew R. Mitchell, Civil War Document Collection, Box 81, Folder 15, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle Barracks, PA (hereafter cited as Mitchell, Civil War Document Collection).

3. Rogall Diary, Sept. 24, 1864.

4. Christian Recorder, Sept. 10, 1864; Ohio State Journal, Sept. 14, 1864.

5. Ohio State Journal, Sept. 14, 1864; Davis, Death in the Trenches, 136; Daniel Mischal and James E. Scott, Pension Files; Albert G. Jones to May, Sept. 12, 1864, Jones Papers.

6. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 872–76, 881; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 207–9; Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 56.

7. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 872, 874.

8. Richard J. Sommers, Richmond Redeemed: The Siege at Petersburg (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981), 183.

9. OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 2, 1105, 1106.

10. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 881–84; OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 2, 1106.

11. Sommers, Richmond Redeemed, 354, 355; OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 3, 24.

12. Sommers, Richmond Redeemed, 372, 373.

13. Sommers, Richmond Redeemed, 387; OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 3, 46, 47.

14. McPherson, Atlas of the Civil War, 184; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 216.

15. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 437, 889; OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, 547, and ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 3, 84; Joseph G. Stevens, Pension File.

16. OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, 547.

17. Longacre, A Regiment of Slaves, 113–14; Delaware Gazette, Sept. 9 and 16, 1864; Negro in the Military, roll 3, 2773.

18. Ohio Adjutant General, Civil War Muster Rolls, GR 2058; CMSR; Ohio State Journal, Oct. 27, 1864; Stevens, As If It Were Glory, 166. To determine the number of men transferred to the 23rd USCT, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT. The War Department actually transferred seventy-six men, but twenty-year-old Samuel Harris from Co. E died before the transfers took place (Samuel Harris, CMSR).

19. Negro in the Military, roll 3, 2804–7. To determine the number of men who were no longer available for service as of the end of October, from illness, injury, or discharge, or missing or deceased, I corroborated the evidence in the CMSR and the ROT.

20. Rogall Diary, Oct. 11–28, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 3, 340–42; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 893, 894; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 221–27.

21. Rogall Diary, Oct. 26–28, 1864; Delavan to Father, Oct. 28, 1864, Bates Letters; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 174; Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 395.

22. Delavan to Father, Oct. 28, 1864, Bates Letters; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 50; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 301; Delavan Bates, Albert M. Blackman, and John W. Donnellan, CMSR. Bates’s promotion to breveted brigadier general did not come until February 6, 1865, but was dated retroactive to July 30, 1864.

23. Davis, Death in the Trenches, 154; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 225.

24. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 894.

25. Delavan to Father, Oct. 28, 1864, Bates Letters.

26. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 175; Albert M. Blackman, John W. Donnellan, and Marion Robertson, CMSR; William F. Blanchard, Pension File; George L. Smith, CMSR and Pension File; Orin D. Henry, CMSR and Pension File; James Whitfield, CMSR and Pension File; Rogall Diary, Oct. 27, 1864; Delavan to Father, Oct. 28, 1864, Bates Letters.

27. Delavan to Father, Oct. 28, 1864, Bates Letters; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 175; Kohn, “The Social History of the American Soldier,” 561; Henry Clay, CMSR.

28. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 175; OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, 549; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 241; Scott, Forgotten Valor, 583; Rogall Diary, Oct. 28, 1864; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 437.

29. OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, 159, 549; George L. Gilbert, Charles W. Butler, and Alexander Chavous, CMSR; Lt. G. L. Gilbert to Mrs. Martha Butler, Oct. 29, 1864, Charles W. Butler, Pension File. To determine the number of causalities for the black soldiers in the 27th, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT. Although OR lists four officers injured from the 27th, there is no evidence in the CMSR for wounded officers other than Blackman, Donnellan, and Blanchard. Years later during his Works Progress Administration interview, Simpson Younger recounted “one of the tragic things that happened during the war.” He explained that while on picket duty some of the Union troops at Southside Railroad thought the enemy was approaching and opened fire on their own men by mistake, and that “many were killed.” Younger gave the date September 27, 1865, so it is unclear if he meant the event in which Charles W. Butler died or the events in September 1864 (Interview with Sim Younger).

30. Ohio State Journal, Nov. 9, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 1, 592; Albert M. Blackman and John W. Donnellan, CMSR. Blackman’s promotion is recorded as approved on three different dates, December 2 and 14, 1864, and February 6, 1865, but each document states that his status as breveted brigadier general was retroactive to October 27, 1864.

31. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 898; Rogall Diary, Oct. 29, 1864.

32. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 898, 899; Rogall Diary, Nov. 7–10, 1864; Ohio Adjutant General, Civil War Muster Rolls, GR 2058; James E. Scott, Pension File; Alexander S. Hempstead and James G. Gant, CMSR. There were no officers who held the rank of major in the 27th at this time.

33. Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 19–20; Negro in the Military, roll 3, 2816; Regimental Papers, Miscellaneous; J. J. Wakefield to Sir, Aug. 9, 1864, Joseph J. Wakefield, CMSR; Ohio State Journal, Nov. 9, 1864; Army and Navy Journal, Dec. 10, 1864.

34. Longacre, A Regiment of Slaves, 133; Smith, Black Judas, 31; Cheek and Cheek, John Mercer Langston, 322, 344; R. J. M. Blackett, ed., Thomas Morris Chester, Black Civil War Correspondent: His Dispatches from the Virginia Front (1989; repr., New York: Da Capo Press, 1991), 189–90; Levi Beer and Thomas Cook, CMSR; Rogall Diary, Nov. 11, 1864. The only surviving records of the 1864 soldier’s votes held by the Ohio History Connection do not include ballots from the black soldiers of the 5th or the 27th. There were a significant number of mixed-race men in both regiments, but it is unclear why the only surviving evidence for voting in camp excludes the 27th and includes only soldiers who returned home to cast their vote (Tally Sheets, Poll Book and Lists of Electors Relating to Union Soldiers, for the 1864 Presidential Election, 1864, Secretary of State, State Archives of Ohio, Ohio History Connection, Columbus, Ohio).

35. Albert M. Blackman, CMSR; Charles W. Taylor, CMSR and Pension File; Davis, Death in the Trenches, 158.

36. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 231, 232; OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 3, 670; Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 243, 244; Negro in the Military, roll 3, 2753; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 609, 899, 900.

37. Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 615; Blackett, Thomas Morris Chester, 193–95; Rogall Diary, Nov. 24, 25, 1864.

38. Rogall Diary, Nov. 26–Dec. 4, 1864; To Dear Mother, Nov. 30, 1864, and Deare mother and father, Dec. 3, 1864, James E. Scott, Pension File.

39. Rogall Diary, Dec. 5–8, 1864; Wilson Gillard, George Anderson, Gould Berry, Henry Price, and Wallace S. Smith, CMSR.

40. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 233; To Deare Mother, Dec. 14, 1864, James E. Scott, Pension File; Charles A. Beery, CMSR and Pension File; Rogall Diary, Dec. 9, 1864; Albert Rogall, CMSR. Dobak discusses the banter between Southern soldiers and the USCT at Petersburg (Freedom by the Sword, 372).

41. A. M. Blackman to C. W. Foster, Dec. 10, 1864, Regimental Papers, Letters; Albert M. Blackman and William F. Blanchard, CMSR.

42. Wm F. Blanchard to Sir, Dec. 24, 1864, William F. Blanchard, CMSR; Daniel J. Miner and George L. Gilbert, CMSR; Regimental Papers, Letters; Regimental Papers, Miscellaneous.

43. OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 2, 70–71. In March 1865, after he was already relieved from duty, the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of War concluded that Butler made the correct decision to abandon the assault, and that the failure was due to the lack of communication and cooperation between Butler, Weitzel, and Porter.

44. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 234; OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 2, 336, 337.

45. Chris E. Fonvielle Jr., The Wilmington Campaign: Last Rays of Departing Hope (Campbell, CA: Savas Publishing Co., 1997), 13, 18, 22.

46. Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 54; Longacre, A Regiment of Slaves, 135, 136.

47. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 234; Longacre, A Regiment of Slaves, 144; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 831; Charles M. Robinson, Hurricane of Fire: The Union Assault on Fort Fisher (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press 1998), 145.

48. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 234, 235; OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, 394, 395, and ser. 3, vol. 5, 506; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 197–99. Paine’s troops included the 4th, 6th, 30th, and 39th USCT of the 1st Brigade and the 2nd Brigade’s 1st, 5th, 10th, 27th, and 37th USCT.

49. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 180; Book Records, Morning Reports, Companies D and H; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 199, 201; Richard Hedgepath, CMSR and Pension File.

50. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 180, 181; Fonvielle, The Wilmington Campaign, 203; Rod Gragg, Confederate Goliath: The Battle of Fort Fisher (1991; repr., Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2006), 109.

51. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 235; Gragg, Confederate Goliath, 110; Richard Hedgepath, Pension File; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 204; Robinson, Hurricane of Fire, 154; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 181.

52. Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 210.

53. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 235; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 181; Gragg, Confederate Goliath, 115; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 359, 360.

54. Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 34, 219–21; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 181; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 235.

55. OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, 397; Yancey Good, Pension File; Isaiah Ross, Pension File; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 221, 224; National Tribune, July 17, 1890.

56. Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 40–45, 231, 233, 245; Robinson, Hurricane of Fire, 160.

57. Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 247, 252–56, 275; Robinson, Hurricane of Fire, 165.

58. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 235, 236; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 208, 277, 278; Gregory J. W. Urwin, ed. Black Flag Over Dixie: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in the Civil War (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2004), 14; Robinson, Hurricane of Fire, 175, 176.

59. Gragg, Confederate Goliath, 121.

60. OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, 399; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 287, 289, 290.

61. OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, 399; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 181; Christian Recorder, Apr. 29, 1865; Allen Cruse, Lucious Johnson, William F. Johnson, and Granison Payne, CMSR.

62. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 236; OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, 399; Robinson, Hurricane of Fire, 179; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 293.

63. Cleveland Morning Leader, Feb. 2, 1865; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 182, 185; Robinson, Hurricane of Fire, 180, 181; Gragg, Confederate Goliath, 226–27; A. G. Jones, “Delicate War Relic from Fort Fisher,” Confederate Veteran 22, no.1 (Jan. 1914), 21; A. G. Jones, “About the Surrender of Fort Fisher,” Confederate Veteran 22, no.1 (Jan. 1914), 41; General Delevan Bates, “The Wilmington Campaign,” Hamilton County Advocate (Aurora, NE), undated newspaper clipping, Jones Papers. Several federal officers claimed to have received the surrender of Fort Fisher, including Capt. Henry C. Lockwood, Capt. Charles H. Graves, and Capt. E. Lewis Moore of the 7th CT, and Alfred Terry. Gragg lists six different Federal officers (227). Other reports indicate that Whiting’s chief of staff, Maj. James H. Hill, offered the surrender. In March 1889, William Lamb, who referred to himself as “an active Republican,” wrote to Jones that it was Hill who surrendered to Jones (William Lamb to Capt. A. G. Jones, Mar. 13, 1889, Jones Papers). In his July 17, 1890, article in the National Tribune, Jones states that Assistant Adj. Gen. Hill (Hull) surrendered about six hundred Confederate troops.

64. National Tribune, July 17, 1890; William Steptoe, Pension File; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 182, 184, 185; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 236, 237; Christian Recorder, Apr. 29, 1865; Gragg, Confederate Goliath, 226–27.

65. Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 303; William H. Steptoe, CMSR and Pension File; Richmond Daily Dispatch, Jan. 21, 1865; William H. Steptoe, CMSR and Pension File; Henry Price, CMSR; Robinson, Hurricane of Fire, 154.

66. OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, 405; Robinson, Hurricane of Fire, 185; McPherson, Atlas of the Civil War, 207; Gragg, Confederate Goliath, 235. To determine the number of casualties for the black soldiers in the 27th, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT. I also included the information provided in William H. Steptoe, Pension File.

67. OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, 399–402; Cleveland Morning Leader, Feb. 2, 1865; Scioto Gazette, Jan. 24, 1865; Elliott F. Grabill to My own loved Ann, Jan. 17, 1865, Elliott F. Grabill Papers, Box 2, Oberlin College Archives, Oberlin, Ohio; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 307, 308. Stanton officially recommended Terry for promotion on January 18 for his distinguished service and gallantry as a general during the capture of Fort Fisher. The promotion was approved by the Senate on January 19, to date from January 15, and Terry accepted on February 10, 1865.

68. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 236, 237; OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, 401, 423, 424.

69. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 186–88; Andrew Ely, Pension File; Leigh, J. J. Scroggs’ Diary and Letters, 418.

70. Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 331–34; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 205, 206, 726, 727; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 57, 65.

71. Letters Received by the Commission Branch, B51, 1865; A. M. Blackman to Major General A. H. Terry, Jan. 27, 1865, Albert M. Blackman, CMSR.

72. Albert M. Blackman, CMSR; OR, series 1, vol. 46, pt. 1, 394–400, 410–11, 423–25, 439–41. Unfortunately, there are no surviving records from Terry’s command in North Carolina between January and April, 1865, to further explain the incident.

73. George L. Gilbert, William F. Blanchard, Daniel J. Miner, James W. Shuffelton, and Albert M. Blackman, CMSR; J. W. Taggard to Commanding Officer, 27th US Cold. Troops, Feb. 24, 1865, Regimental Papers, Letters; John H. Eicher and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 2001), 133; U.S. Census 1870.

74. Welcher, Eastern Theater, 66; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 345–49; James E. Scott, Qualls Tibbs, and Thomas J. Brewer, Pension Files; New York Times, Feb. 17, 1865; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 189; Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 407. To determine the number of casualties for the black soldiers in the 27th at Sugar Loaf, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT.

75. Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 352, 353.

76. Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 362; OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 2, 471; James E. Scott, Pension File.

77. OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 1, 925; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 363; Book Records, Morning Reports, Co. B; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 190; National Tribune, Oct. 18, 1888; Walker D. Evans, CMSR and Pension File; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 380, 382; Leigh, J. J. Scroggs’ Diary and Letters, 421–26.

78. Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 394–98, 403, 423; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 57; Smith, Black Judas, 33.

79. OR, ser. 1, vol. 51, pt. 1, 1201, 1202; Delavan to Father, Feb. 19, 1865, Bates Letters.

80. National Tribune, Oct. 18, 1888; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 427, 428; John McMurray, Recollections of a Colored Troop (1916; repr., Brookville, Pa: McMurray, 1994), 72; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 190.

81. Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 430–43.

82. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 191; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 237; OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 1, 925.

83. James H. Payne, Pension File; Christian Recorder, Jan. 7 and 14, 1865; Book Records, Morning Reports, Co. D; John M. Taylor, Samuel Porter, Joshua King, Wilson Bowser, William Harrison, and William J. Anderson, CMSR; Henry Carter, CMSR and Pension File; New York Times, May 24, 1862; Delavan Bates to Father, Feb. 21, 1865, D. Bates to Father, Feb. 24, 1865, Bates Letters.

84. James H. Payne, Pension File.

85. James H. Payne, Pension File; OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 2, 595; James E. Scott, Pension File; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 447, 448.

86. Regimental Papers, Letters; John W. Donnellan and Albert M. Blackman, CMSR.

87. Book Records, Morning Reports, Co. D; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 191; Albert M. Blackman, James W. Shuffelton, Edwin C. Latimer, and Wilson Morton, CMSR; James H. Payne and William J. Anderson, Pension Files; Jones to Wife, Mar. 10, 1865, Jones Papers; Scioto Gazette, Mar. 7 and Apr. 14, 1865; Leigh, J. J. Scroggs’ Diary and Letters, 426, 429. The 6th USCT took in sixty-three new local recruits between March 2 and 14, 1865 (Paradis, Strike the Blow for Freedom, 92). Few of the new soldiers from Ohio joined the regiment; most were drafted men or substitutes who never mustered in despite being credited to the 27th USCT as “unassigned recruits” (ROT, 627–58). Shuffelton did not have to face a general court-martial. On March 15 Gen. Charles J. Paine ordered that all officers and enlisted men be released and returned to duty, with only “aggravated cases” to be tried if approved by his headquarters. A copy of Circular no. 21 from the 3rd Division of the XXV Corps is included in John Bracken, CMSR.

88. George L. Gilbert and William F. Blanchard, CMSR; J. W. Donnellan to Bvt. Col. C. W. Foster, Mar. 3, 1865; Regimental Papers, Letters; Regimental Papers, Miscellaneous.

89. OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 2, 838–840; OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 1, 149; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 433.

90. OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 1, 149, 150; Delavan from Northeast Station, NC, Mar. 15, 1865, Bates Letters.

91. McMurray, Recollections of a Colored Troop, 77; Delavan to Dear Parents, Mar. 26, 1865, Bates Letters; Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 409–10.

92. OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 2, 966; Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 409–10; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 435; OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 1, 149; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 70.

93. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 195; OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 1, 150, 926.

94. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 195, 197; Moses Jones to Dear wife, Apr. 9, 1865, Moses M. A. Jones, Pension File; OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 1, 926; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 237, 456.

95. Alfred M. Blackman, CMSR; “Jacob D. Cox,” Ohio History Central, modified Aug. 3, 2015, http://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Jacob_D.Cox; J. D. Cox to Colonel, Apr. 9, 1865, and C. J. Paine to Major A. Terry, Apr. 13, 1865, Regimental Papers, Letters; OR, series 1, vol. 48, pt. 3, 146. It is not clear if Blackman moved to the XXIII Army Corps. On April 26 while in Raleigh he sent his resignation to Alfred H. Terry, stating that he believed that the “war was at an end,” and since he was “no longer needed” by his country, he wanted to return to his “afflicted” family. Blackman received an honorable discharge dated May 16, 1865. The Union Party selected Cox as their candidate for governor in 1865, and he left the army when he won the election.

96. J E Scott to Dare Mother, Apr. 19, 1865, James E. Scott, Pension File; Moses M. A. Jones, Pension File; Henry Moore, CMSR; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 456, 655; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 197, 198.

97. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 199; Moses M. A. Jones, Pension File; Delavan Bates to Dear Parents, Apr. 16, 1865, Bates Letters; McMurray, Recollections of a Colored Troop, 83; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 655; Leigh, J. J. Scroggs’ Diary and Letters, 439.

98. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 199, 200; Grant, Personal Memoirs, vol. 2, 516–17; Delavan Bates to Dear Parents, Apr. 23, 1865, Bates Letters; John Mansel, CMSR; Anglo-African, May 20, 1865; OR, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 1, 926.

99. Delavan to Dear Parents, Apr. 30, 1865, Bates Letters; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 200, 201; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 456, 457; McMurray, Recollections of a Colored Troop, 87; James Waring and Moses M. A. Jones, Pension Files.

100. Morning Reports, Co. D; Fonvielle, Wilmington Campaign, 440; William H. Campton, CMSR; James E. Scott, Pension File; Regimental Papers, Letters; Delavan to Dear Parents, June 18, 1865, Bates Letters; Christian Recorder, July 1, 1865. The soldiers guarded Hopkin’s Farm, the Nixon Plantation, Lamb’s Plantation, and Maxwell’s Plantation (CMSR).

101. Reid, Freedom for Themselves, 289, 297; Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 738–39; Christian Recorder, Aug. 19, 1865; Wilson T. Morton, Dock Leech, and Henry Bird, CMSR; GCM, Dock Leech and Henry Bird, 27th USCT, MM-3226. Other USCT faced similar problems while on occupational duty in North Carolina, including mutinies (Reid, Freedom for Themselves, 287–89).

102. Reid, Freedom for Themselves, 284–85; Judkin Browning, “‘I am Not So Patriotic as I was Once’: The Effects of Military Occupation on the Occupying Soldiers during the Civil War,” Civil War History 55, no. 2 (June 2009): 218–19; John W. Donnellan and Matthew R. Mitchell, CMSR; J. W. Donnellan to C. W. Foster, Aug. 15, 1865, Regimental Papers, Letters.

103. N. A. Gray to Jones, June 20, 1865, Jones Papers; National Tribune, July 17, 1890; Matthew R. Mitchell to Father, July 15, 1865, Mitchell, Civil War Document Collection; Maj. M. R. Mitchell, Special Order no. 95, Regimental Papers, Issuances.

104. James W. Shuffelton, CMSR; Welcher, Eastern Theater, 457; Book Records, Morning Reports, Companies A–I.

105. Book Records, Morning Reports, Co. C; Dobak, Freedom by the Sword, 473; Berry, Military Necessity, 91; Simpson, “Quandaries of Command,” 140–42; William Steptoe, Pension File; Charles Moeves and William F. Blanchard, CMSR; Regimental Papers, Letters. Blanchard did not leave for Ohio with the regiment, either. The provost marshal in Smithville sent the white officer to Wilmington under arrest for manslaughter. With no court in session, and little evidence available that would lead to his conviction, by mid-October Blanchard had been released and sent to Columbus. Without further information on the incident, it is unclear whether Moeves had caused a “camp disturbance” that warranted gunfire, but Blanchard’s military records provide evidence that he had acted inappropriately before. Yet two years later he was brevetted to captain.

5. A Soldier’s Life

1. Regosin and Shaffer, Voices of Emancipation, 76; M M A Jones, to My Dear Wife, Mar. 8, 1865, Moses M. A. Jones, Pension File.

2. Humphreys, Intensely Human, 6–8; Andrew K. Black, “In the Service of the United States: Comparative Mortality Among African-American and White Troops in the Union Army,” Journal of Negro History 79 (Fall 1994): 320, 321; David Anderson, “Dying of Nostalgia: Homesickness in the Union Army during the Civil War,” Civil War History 56, no. 3 (Sept. 2010): 260; Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 633–36; Wiley, Life of Billy Yank, 125–27, 134–37; Dennis Brown, Pension File. Available statistics for “nostalgia,” the term used to describe symptoms similar to homesickness, indicate a higher rate of casualties among black soldiers (Anderson, “Dying of Nostalgia,” 259–61). None of the recorded deaths or disabilities that led to discharge for men in the 27th were attributed to that malady, although the cause for thirty deaths were listed as unknown. To determine the number of noncombat disease- and illness-related deaths in the 27th, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT.

3. Erna Risch, Quartermaster Support of the Army: A History of the Corps, 1775–1939 (Washington, D.C.: Quartermaster Historian’s Office, Office of the Quartermaster General, 1962), 447–49; To Deare Mother, June 3, 1865 James E. Scott, Pension File; Henry Carter, CMSR and Pension File.

4. Black, “In the Service of the United States,” 319; Henry Carter and Nicholas A. Gray, Pension Files; James H. Payne, CMSR and Pension File; Henry Alexander to Dear wife, July 20, 1864, Henry Alexander, Pension File; Isaac Paul, Henry Alexander, and Francis M. Weld, CMSR; U.S. Department of the Army, Office of the Surgeon General, The Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion (1865; reprint, Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot, 1990), vol. 3, 204, 205 (hereafter cited as Medical and Surgical History); Blake, Diaries and Letters, 203.

5. Peter Howard, Charles W. Taylor, Daybury O. Butler, George W. Ward, and Walker D. Evans, Pension Files; Wm. F. Blanchard to Dear Sir, Dec. 24, 1864, Regimental Papers, Letters; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 160; Humphreys, Intensely Human, 11. Dysentery and diarrhea caused more disease-related deaths overall for the USCT and was the second deadliest for the 27th USCT. To determine the number of disease-related deaths, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT.

6. Ignatius Newman, Peter Hogan, Charles Qualls, and James Bray, Pension Files; Ignatius Newman, Randolph Burr, Charles Moeves, Jordan Arnich, Allen Bobson, James W. Johns, John Phillips, and Anderson Smith, CMSR. To determine the number of deaths, combat related and others not caused by disease or illness, and amputations, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT. In addition to the amputations for battle injuries, one man had both his feet amputated because of gangrene.

7. Adams, Doctors in Blue, 47, 48, 104; Humphreys, Intensely Human, 57; Robert G. Slawson, Prologue to Change: African Americans in Medicine in the Civil War Era (Frederick, Md.: National Museum of Civil War Medicine Press, 2006), 29–31, 35.

8. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 149–53, 160, 168, 173; Herman Niedermeyer, CMSR.

9. Humphreys, Intensely Human, 60; William Ross, CMSR and Pension File; Matthew R. Mitchell, CMSR; ROT, 647; Edwin C. Latimer, Aug. 1, 1865, Special Order no. 110, Regimental Records, Issuances. Mitchell received a promotion to major on June 22, 1865.

10. Adams, Doctors in Blue, 180; Christian Recorder, Jan. 7, 1865; Edward A. Miller Jr., “Angel of Light: Helen L. Gilson, Army Nurse,” Civil War History 43, no. 1 (Mar. 1997): 33, 34; Therrygood Manley, CMSR; Henry Carter and James Ferguson, Pension File 5; John Dolby, CMSR.

11. James I. Robertson Jr., Soldiers Blue and Gray (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1988), 163, 164; Humphreys, Intensely Human, 18; Humphreys, Marrow of Tragedy, 26; Rogall Diary, July 6, 26, 1864; Nicholas A. Gray, Pension File.

12. Humphreys, Marrow of Tragedy, 22, 26, 43–44, 154; Charles L. Williams, CMSR; Orin D. Henry, Pension File; Regimental Papers, Miscellaneous; Medical and Surgical History, vol. 6, 922, 923, 960. The locations of the hospitals were taken from the CMSR of the 27th.

13. Robertson, Soldiers Blue and Gray, 164; Lawrence K. Wormley, CMSR and Pension File; Robert Hackley CMSR and Pension File.

14. Nicholas A. Gray, Pension File.

15. Smith, Black Judas, 35; Blake, Diaries and Letters, 201, 206; J. W. Shuffelton to Mrs. Martha J. Ralston, Aug. 4, 1865, Gaston Ralston, CMSR; Champion Bowman and James H. Payne, Pension Files. The locations of the hospitals were taken from the CMSR of the 27th.

16. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 202; Humphreys, Intensely Human, 11, 55; Thorton Harris, Pension File; Wm. Howell Reed to Mrs. Rebecca Hill, Nov. 24, 1864, John Hill, Pension File. To determine the number of discharges due to illness or wounds and the total number of deaths in the 27th, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT. In addition, there were a number of men in the hospital or home on furlough who later supplied discharges that dated back to the summer of 1865. Most popular writings during the Civil War represented “the boys” as “young, white Christian men” who were in part superior to Southern and Union black troops because they suffered for “an abstract political good.” But there were some white Northerners, like William Howell Reed, who did include black soldiers in at least their personal words and deeds. See Frances M. Clarke, War Stories: Suffering and Sacrifice in the Civil War North (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2011), 60, 64–65, 121–22. Howell later wrote, Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac (Boston: Special Edition, 1891).

17. Trudeau, Last Citadel, 123; James I. Robertson Jr., “Houses of Horror: Danville’s Civil War Prisons,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 69, no. 3 (1961): 329, 330; James W. Johns, CMSR; Anderson Smith, John W. Phillips, Jordan Arnich, and Napoleon Lucas, CMSR and Pension Files. It is unclear what happened to Smith at Danville, but he was not exchanged.

18. Urwin, “We Cannot Treat Negroes,” 140.

19. OR, ser. 2, vol. 5, 808, 844, 845, and ser. 2, vol. 7, 33, 34, 703, 704; “Report on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, by the Rebel Authorities, during the War of Rebellion: to which are Appended the Testimony taken by the Committee, and Official Documents and Statistics, Etc.,” 40th Cong., 3rd sess., House Report 45 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1869), 284, 285.

20. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 794; Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 568, 590, 591; Speer, Portals to Hell, 112, 113. For a complete discussion of the Confederate treatment of black soldiers, see Dyer, “Treatment of Colored Union Troops.” For a more thorough discussion of Lincoln’s actions and thoughts concerning prisoners of war, see Smith, Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops, 62–66, and for Grant’s role, see Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 375, 381–84, and 403–4.

21. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 802; Gladstone, Men of Color, 118, 119; “Report on the Treatment of Prisoners of War,” 250; Speer, Portals to Hell, 108. Speer and Gladstone state there were 284 deaths, whereas the congressional report counts only 79. As Speer explains, it is unclear how many USCT were captured or died in prison (114). It is also unknown how many black soldiers captured died before reaching Confederate prisons. Southern casualty rates in Northern prisons were only about 12 percent. A recent search of the Fold3 online collection under “Civil War Service Records” has located over 2,000 African American prisoners of war. See “Black Prisoners in Confederate Prisons during the Civil War,” BlogTalkRadio, accessed June 17, 2013, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bernicebennett/2013/06/14/black-prisoners-in-confederate-prisons-during-the-civil-war; see also “Researchers Find over 2,000 U.S. Colored Troops who were Prisoners of War,” Examiner.com, accessed Mar. 20, 2013, http://www.examiner.com/list/researchers-find-over-2-000-u-s-colored-troops-who-were-prisoners-of-war. It is unknown at this point if and how the information on these soldiers will alter the number and therefore percentage of those who died or were exchanged.

22. Robertson, “Houses of Horror,” 330, 331; “Report on the Treatment of Prisoners of War,” 171; Blackett, Thomas Morris Chester, 266.

23. Robertson, “Houses of Horror,” 332, 336; “Report on the Treatment of Prisoners of War,” 171.

24. Homer B. Sprague, Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons: A Personal Experience, 1864–5 (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1915), 78, 129; Medical and Surgical History, vol. 3, 35, and vol. 5, 44; Speer, Portals to Hell, 114; Robertson, “Houses of Horror,” 340.

25. James W. Johns, CMSR; John W. Phillips, CMSR and Pension File; Therese T. Sammartino, A Promise Made—A Commitment Kept: The Story of America’s Civil War Era Cemeteries (Washington, D.C.: Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration, 1999), 91, 92; “Colored Soldiers who Died in Defense of the American Union, Interred in New York, Virginia, and West Virginia,” General Orders #52, Aug. 27, 1867, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Record Group 92, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; Jordan Arnich, CMSR and Pension File.

26. Richmond Daily Dispatch, Feb. 13, 1865; Napoleon Lucas, CMSR and Pension File; Sprague, Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons, 129. Thomas Morris Chester recorded that only five of the eighty-three USCT taken from the Crater still survived (Blackett, Thomas Morris Chester, 266).

27. Wesley Stokes, CMSR. To determine the number of prisoners of war in the 27th, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT. There are several more men who may have been captured, but records to confirm this are incomplete. Thomas Morris Chester claimed that on August 29, 1864, a member of the 5th UCST “had deserted to the rebels” and two more, who were contraband before joining the Ohio regiment, “deserted to the enemy” four days later. Chester believed that these had been the first black soldiers to willingly return to Southerners and enslavement that had occurred along the Petersburg front (Blackett, Thomas Morris Chester, 115, 118–19). Richard M. Reid notes that one soldier from the 36th USCT attempted to desert to Southerners, and when caught, the Virginia private said that he might rather be with the rebels as he would be closer to his wife (Freedom for Themselves, 139). On June 4, 1865, officers recorded that Andrew Ely voluntarily returned to Company F from desertion on March 20. On July 28 the charge was removed after it was determined that the soldier from Gallia County had been absent “by reason of capture by the insurgent forces of the so-called Confederate States” (Andrew Ely, CMSR).

28. Preston Mosby, James Griffee, and Benjamin McCoglin, CMSR; Regimental Papers, Issuances; “Report on the Treatment of Prisoners of War,” 169.

29. Henry Alexander to Dear Wife, July 20, 1864, Henry Alexander, Pension File; Regimental Papers, Issuances; Book Records, Order Book.

30. Moses M. A. Jones and James Waring, Pension Files; Book Records, Morning Reports, Cos. H and I.

31. Blake, Diaries and Letters, 150, 156; Matthew R. Mitchell to Dear Folks, Sept. 11, 1864, Mitchell, Civil War Document Collection (emphasis in the original); Archibald Sampson, CMSR; Ohio State Journal, June 22 and Oct. 27, 1864; M. R. Mitchell to Affectionate Mother, Oct. 24, 1864, Mitchell, Civil War Document Collection. See Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, for overall opinions held by white officers concerning their black soldiers. For examples of some of the worst treatment meted out by white officers to the USCT, see Humphreys, Intensely Human.

32. Mitchell, Vacant Chair, 5, 68. Reid Mitchell claims that the concept of officer as fatherly figure did not extend to black soldiers.

33. Albert to Darling Mary, Apr. 29 and July 21, 1864, Jones Papers; Rogall Diary, June 30, July 30, 1864, and Mar. 1, 1865.

34. Robertson Jr., Soldiers Blue and Gray, 135; Gooding, On the Altar of Freedom, 7.

35. Ella Lonn, Desertion during the Civil War (New York: Century, 1928), 149, 152; Roseboom, Civil War Era, 440, 441; Jesse Payne, Charles H. Lewis, and Joseph H. Lewis, CMSR. Richard M. Reid found “only a handful deserters” in the 36th USCT (Freedom for Themselves, 139). Donald R. Shaffer states that 14 percent of white Northern soldiers deserted compared to less than 5 percent of the USCT (After the Glory, 16). The larger number of desertions that occurred before the regiment left Ohio may have been in part related to the unequal pay issue that Congress corrected in June 1864. To determine the number of men accused of desertion, and the number of soldiers who returned to the 27th USCT, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT. Based on the experiences for some men in the 27th, it is probable that a number of the accused deserters were actually prisoners of war.

36. James Wilson, George P. Reynolds, and Levi Beer, CMSR. The men who were reported deserted but were later located in a hospital, as prisoners of war, or deceased, or those who were considered absent without leave and later returned to the regiment, are not counted in the estimated less than fifty desertions.

37. John Willis, CMSR. On March 11, 1865, Lincoln released Proclamation 124, “Offering Pardon to Deserters” in which he notified all deserters that if they returned within sixty days and served their original enlistment period, he would pardon them.

38. James E. Scott to Dear Mother, Oct. 17, 1864, James E. Scott, Pension File; Robertson, Soldiers Blue and Gray, 131, 132, 134.

39. Book Records, Order Book.

40. Wiley, Life of Billy Yank, 205, 206; Robertson, Soldiers Blue and Gray, 131; Book Records of Vol. Union Org., 27th USCT Infantry, Regimental Descriptive and Guard Report Book, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; James Johnson, Co. H., and Houston Walker, CMSR.

41. Robertson, Soldiers Blue and Gray, 135; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 295; James E. Scott, Pension File; Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 118, 119; Robert I. Alotta, Civil War Justice: Union Army Executions under Lincoln (Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane, 1989), 203–9. See Carole Emberton, “‘Only Murder Makes Men’: Reconsidering the Black Military Experience,” Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 3 (Sept. 2012) for a discussion on the concerns of Northern whites and the enlistment of black men, whom they needed to be brave enough to participate in battle but also capable of “restraint, obedience, and control”; the perceived need for white officers to control black males, and to prove to the larger public that the USCT could be trained and controlled, may have led to the higher execution rates for murder (376–77).

42. Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1998), 3; Henry Brown, CMSR; GCM, Henry Brown, 27th USCT, MM-3226. In their quantitative study, Costa and Kahn found lower rates of desertion and AWOL for black soldiers than whites (Heroes and Cowards, 112). In addition to Brown’s case for drunkenness, striking an officer, theft, and desertion, and the murder and manslaughter charges, courts-martial trials for soldiers from the 27th USCT included five for desertion, two for theft, two for mutiny, one for disobedience of orders, one for violation of the 22nd Article of War, one for theft and drunkenness, one for theft and conduct prejudice of good order and military discipline, and one for disobedience of orders and drawing a weapon on his superior; the only soldier to be found not guilty, William White, had been accused by a Wilmington store owner and charged with theft and assault with the intent to kill. Those men who were still incarcerated when the regiment mustered out in September 1865 were released from confinement before completing their sentences (Regimental Records, Issuances). There was a court-martial trial held for a James Brown who claimed to be from the 27th, but there are no soldier files for the regiment that correspond with his enlistment dates nor any that show a withholding of pay as required as the punishment for his desertion (GCM, James Brown, 27th USCT, OO-377).

43. GCM, Alfred Chapman, 27th USCT, NN3641.

44. Alfred Chapman, CMSR; U.S. Census 1860. The reason for Chapman’s demotion in August 1864 is not listed.

45. Alfred Chapman, CMSR; GCM, Alfred Chapman, 27th USCT, NN3641.

46. GCM, Alfred Chapman, 27th USCT, NN3641.

47. Alfred Chapman, CMSR; U.S. Census 1860; GCM, Alfred Chapman, 27th USCT, NN3641.

48. GCM, Alfred Chapman, 27th USCT, NN3641.

49. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 402, 403; Alfred Chapman, CMSR; U.S. Census 1860.

50. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood, 25; Robert Stewart CMSR; GCM, Robert Stewart and Robert Stuart, 27th USCT, MM3226. The reactions from Chillicothe seem to demonstrate that white citizens applied some of their own notions of manhood and patriotism to the black soldiers that served from their community. J. Matthew Gallman describes the differences presented between white and African American concepts of gendered wartime duty that was demonstrated in printed materials during the Civil War (Defining Duty, 5, 17, 129, 223–50).

51. GCM, Robert Stewart and Robert Stuart, 27th USCT, MM3226.

52. Robert Stewart, CMSR; GCM, Robert Stewart and Robert Stuart, 27th USCT, MM3226.

53. Gallman, Defining Duty, 17, 225, 226, 235, 242–43.

54. Casey, New Men, 135.

55. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 363; Reid, Freedom for Themselves, 17. The Militia Act of 1862 authorized the president “to receive into the service of the United States, for the purpose of constructing intrenchments, or performing camp service or any other labor, or any military or naval service for which they may be found competent” black men who would be paid “ten dollars per month and one ration, three dollars of which monthly pay may be in clothing.”

56. Negro in the Military, roll 3, 2522, 2523, 2642.

57. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 364; Risch, Quartermaster Support of the Army, 445; Alexander Adams, CMSR.

58. Christian Recorder, Aug. 20, 1864; Rogall Diary, Aug. 21, 1864; “A Guide to the Muster and Payroll of Company G, 27th United States Colored Troops 1864,” Alderman Memorial Library, Special Collections Department, Univ. of Virginia, accessed July 27, 2005, http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=uva-sc/viu01242.xml; Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 340, 341; James E. Scott, Pension File; Benjamin Owsley, CMSR; Joseph P. Reidy, “The African American Struggle for Citizenship Rights in the Northern United States during the Civil War,” in Civil War Citizens: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in America’s Bloodiest Conflict, ed. Susannah J. Ural (New York: New York Univ. Press, 2010), 222. Owsley lost his noncommissioned status because he entered the Freedmen’s U.S.A. General Hospital in April 1864 just after arriving in Virginia. He remained hospitalized for typhoid fever until August 1865.

59. N. A. Gray to Geo. H. Stewart Esq., June 20, 1865, Alfred W. Pinney, CMSR; Ohio Executive Documents, Message and Annual Reports for 1865, Made to the Fifty-seventh General Assembly of Ohio, at the Regular Session, Begun and Held in the City of Columbus, January 1, 1866, Part I (Columbus: Richard Nevins, State Printer, 1866), 730.

60. Walker D. Evans and Jessie Lewis, Pension Files; Samuel Mayo, CMSR; U.S. Census 1880; Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 402, 403.

61. David W. Rolfs, “‘No Nearer Heaven Now But Rather Farther Off’: The Religious Compromises and Conflicts of Northern Soldiers,” in The View from the Ground: Experiences of Civil War Soldiers, ed. Aaron Sheehan-Dean (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2007), 121, 122, 140.

62. Redkey, “Black Chaplains,” 331–50.

63. James H. Payne, Pension File; Talbert, Sons of Allen, 241, 242.

64. Christian Recorder, Sept. 17, 1864, and January 14, 1865.

65. Christian Recorder, May 6, July 15, and Aug. 19, 1865; James H. Payne, Pension File; Henry M. Turner, CMSR. In 1880, Turner became the twelfth, and first Southern, bishop of the AME.

66. Message and Annual Reports for 1865, 576; Christian Recorder, July 1 and Aug. 1, 1865. William F. Jones, CMSR.

67. Zephaniah Stewart, CMSR and Pension File; Federal Writers’ Project of Ohio, WPA, Chillicothe and Ross County (Chillicothe, Ohio: The Ross County Northwest Territory Committee, 1938), 22, 70–74.

68. Lyle S. Evans, ed., A Standard History of Ross County, Ohio, vol. 1 (Chicago: Lewis, 1917), 324; History of Ross and Highland Counties, Ohio …, 181; Williams’ Chillicothe Directory, City Guide, and Business Mirror, for 1860–61 (Chillicothe, Ohio: C. S. Williams, 1860), 14; U.S. Census 1850. While Chillicothe had adopted a graded public school system by the early 1840s, a black school was not built until 1858. The First Colored Baptist Church, which offered classes by paid subscription, may have been the only option for black children in 1850. The Chillicothe First Anti-Slavery Baptist Church was also called the First Colored Baptist Church.

69. U.S. Census 1860; To My Dear Wife, July 11, 1864, Zephaniah Stewart, Pension File; Zephaniah Stewart, CMSR.

70. Zephaniah Stewart, Pension File.

71. Zephaniah Stewart, Pension File. In Deuteronomy 12:8–11, the Hebrews are told that the “promised land was going to be the land of rest.” The words come directly from the Bible, (Hebrews, 4:9): “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God.” The fourth chapter of Hebrews warns that nothing is hidden from God, and that one must not fall short of what is required to enter his rest. Simply hearing the Gospel was not enough, as those who did not believe or were disobedient to God would not enter. More than the Sabbath rest on earth, God, through his grace, shares his eternal rest, the “promised land,” free from oppressors. The final verse of Hebrews, 16, concludes by “so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

72. Anne Bagnell Yardley, “Choirs in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1800–1860,” American Music 17, no.1 (Spring 1999): 47; Zephaniah Stewart, Pension File.

73. Zephaniah Stewart, CMSR. Pleuritis, more commonly referred to as “pleurisy,” is a lung inflammation due to infection brought on by pneumonia or tuberculosis.

74. Wilson, Campfires of Freedom, 148.

75. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Negro Spirituals,” Atlantic Monthly 19, no. 116 (June 1867): 685–94.

76. Eileen Southern, “The Antebellum Church,” Black American Literature Forum 25, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 24; Howard L. Sacks and Judith R. Sacks, “Way up North in Dixie: Black-White Musical Interaction in Knox County, Ohio,” American Music 6, no. 4 (Winter 1988): 419.

77. Wilson, Campfires of Freedom, 148–54.

78. Williams’ Chillicothe Directory, 73; George West, CMSR.

79. Wilson, Campfires of Freedom, 172, 173, 282; OR, ser. 3, vol. 4, 449.

80. Nicholas J. Santoro, Atlas of Slavery and Civil Rights (New York: iUniverse, 2006), 81; Leigh, J. J. Scroggs’ Diary and Letters, 406.

81. John Black, CMSR; Philip White, CMSR and Pension File; U.S. Census 1860; U.S. Census 1890. To determine the number of musicians in the 27th, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT.

82. Nicholas A. Gray and Robert Leech, Pension Files; Ohio State Journal, Oct. 27, 1864.

83. Scioto Gazette, Apr. 14, 1865; Regosin and Shaffer, Voices of Emancipation, 60; Regimental Papers, Letters.

84. Ohio State Journal, Oct. 27, 1864; Lancaster Gazette, July 14 and Sept. 15, 1864; Scioto Gazette, July 19, 1864; Christian Recorder, Apr. 29 and July 1, 1865.

85. Wiley, Life of Billy Yank, 292; Simon Pleasant and Henry Williams, CMSR.

86. James E. Scott to Dear Mother, June 8, 1865, James E. Scott to Dear Mother, June 20, 1865, James E. Scott, Pension File.

87. Daybury Butler, Elbridge Butler, Joseph Anderson, and William Anderson, CMSR; Alvin C. Adams, Ancestors of the Tablers of Tablertown (Kilvert, Ohio: M. Tabler, 1993), 30.

88. James H. Payne and James E. Scott, Pension Files; James E. Scott to my Dear mother, Aug. 3, 1864, James E. Scott, Pension File; Sgt. James Betts to Mrs. Rebecca Louis, Apr. 26, 1865, James Lewis, Pension File.

89. Trenchard, “Home Front Spheres in the North,” 53, 54; Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 6–11; To Dear wife, May 10, 1865, Moses M. A. Jones, Pension File.

90. Robertson, Soldiers Blue and Gray, 105; Henry Alexander to Dear wife, July 20, 1864, Henry Alexander, Pension File; My Dear Wife, Aug. 8, 1864, Henry Stiff to Henry Stith, Pension File. Wiley says less than a score of letters exist for black troops (Life of Billy Yank, 16); Redkey edited 129 published letters of a total of 400 that he found, and he says that there are also many examples of “official” correspondence in the National Archives and Records Administration (A Grand Army, i–ix). Most studies that discuss soldier correspondence fail to recognize the private letters between the USCT and their family and friends found in U.S. Pension Files. Even the collection culled from previously ignored archival sources included in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, leaves researchers lacking examples of personal expressions from the soldiers. Of the ninety-two documents included in the volume written by individual black soldiers or their family members, only fifteen were privately exchanged letters. Private letters from twenty-four different soldiers in the 27th USCT have been located (seven men wrote during the war, sixteen as veterans, and one man left letters from both times).

6. A Veteran’s Life

1. Christian Recorder, Feb. 17, 1866; Jacob H. Studer, Columbus, Ohio: Its History and Resources (Columbus: Jacob H. Studer, 1873), 91; Daily Ohio Statesmen, Oct. 6, 1865.

2. Scioto Gazette, Sept. 12, 1865; Daily Ohio Statesmen, Oct. 6, 1865.

3. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 767, 768; Thomas Garret and John Baker, Civil War Discharge Records, Ross County Genealogical Society, Chillicothe, Ohio; William D. Mann and Therrygood Manley, Civil War Discharge Records, Xenia Public Library, Xenia, OH; Ohio Adjutant General, Civil War Muster Rolls, GR 2058; Richard Severo and Lewis Milford, The Wages of War: When American Soldiers Came Home: From Valley Forge to Vietnam (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 128, 129. Mary Frances Berry notes that most USCT received a federal bounty of only $100 at muster-out, no matter when they enlisted (Military Necessity, 84). This was not the case for most in the 27th. Likewise, there were men who purchased their guns despite Ohioan Philip Sheridan’s cries to not allow it. See Simpson, “Quandaries of Command,” 142, 211–12 n.38.

4. Negro in the Military, roll 4, 3655; Alexander Adams, CMSR and Pension File; Thomas Alexander, CMSR and Pension File; John Bowles, CMSR; Larry M. Logue and Peter Blanck, “‘Benefit of Doubt’: African-American Civil War Veterans and Pensions,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 38, no. 3 (Winter 2008): 383.

5. Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 765; Scioto Gazette, Feb. 21, 1865; Mary Clark Brayton and Ellen F. Terry, Our Acre and Its Harvest: Historical Sketch of the Soldiers Aid Society of Northern Ohio (Cleveland: Fairbanks, Benedict, 1869), 444; Dock Leech, CMSR and Pension File.

6. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons, 76; Smith, Black Judas, 26; Paradis, Strike the Blow for Freedom, 93; Humphreys, Intensely Human, 10, 11. To determine the number of wartime casualties within the 27th USCT, I corroborated the evidence available in the CMSR and the ROT. As stated in chapter 5, three men died from noncombat causes including one drowning and two murders.

7. Samuel Christian, CMSR and Pension File; Andrew Manley, Pension File; David Moody and Reuben Gants CMSR; Anderson Gants, CMSR and Pension File; George Gants, CMSR and Pension File.

8. Patrick J. Kelly, Creating a National Home: Building the Veterans’ Welfare State, 1860–1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1997), 2; Reidy, “African American Struggle,” 214.

9. Nina Silber, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993), 125, 168, 169; Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood, 9, 10, 22; Shaffer, After the Glory, 49; Larry M. Logue, “Union Veterans and Their Government: The Effects of Public Policies on Private Lives,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 22, no. 3 (Winter 1992): 411; Smedley, “‘Race’ and the Construction of Human Identity,” 695.

10. Portsmouth Times, Oct. 7, 1865.

11. Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland, 85; Portsmouth Times, Oct. 14, 1865; Thomas H. Smith, ed., An Ohio Reader: Reconstruction to the Present (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1975), 32, 33; Forrest G. Wood, Black Scare: The Racist Response to Emancipation and Reconstruction (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1968), 83. The postwar black population did grow in Northern states, and by 1890 almost 27 percent of USCT veterans lived in the North compared to only 7 percent of the overall black percentage of U.S. population residing there, many coming from the border states along the Ohio River (Shaffer, After the Glory, 46, 47).

12. Kern and Wilson, Ohio, 242; Christian Recorder, Nov. 15, 1883; Reidy, “African American Struggle,” 229–30. Ohio did not ratify the Fourteenth Amendment again until March 13, 2003.

13. Paul D. Escott, “What Shall We Do With the Negro?”: Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America (Charlottesville: Univ. of Virginia Press, 2009) xvii; Smith, Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops, 5; Xenia Sentinel, Jan. 20, 1865; McPherson, Negro’s Civil War, 292, 293.

14. Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 165; Reidy, “African American Struggle,” 217–18; Foner and Walker, Proceedings, vol. 1, 44; Christian Recorder, Aug. 19, 1865, May 18, 1867, and Aug. 24, 1867.

15. Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland, 85; Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 171, Emberton, “Only Murder Makes Men,” 387. For an overview of Reconstruction, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Fifteenth Amendment in Ohio, see Robert D. Sawrey, Dubious Victory: The Reconstruction Debate in Ohio (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992). His work on the “contemporary northern political opinion” concerning Reconstruction is based on white Ohioans and only discusses the freedmen portion of the black population (1–3).

16. Deborah Wright, They Left Their Mark: The Story of the Enforcement Act of 1870 (Circleville, Ohio: Briartown, 2001), 5–16; Circleville Union, Mar. 8, 1870, quoted in Wright, They Left Their Mark, 7.

17. Wright, They Left Their Mark, 9; Reidy, “African American Struggle,” 224.

18. New York Times, Apr. 12, 1865.

19. Wright, They Left Their Mark, 28–33, 40–45; Circleville Union, Apr. 22, 1870, quoted in Wright, They Left Their Mark, 28.

20. New York Times, Apr. 10, 1870; Wright, They Left Their Mark, 29, 38; Xi Wang, The Trial of Democracy: Black Suffrage and Northern Republicans, 1860–1910 (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1997), 58, 65. The following year John Dickerson was elected to the Pickaway County Republican Central Committee (Highland Weekly News, Aug. 3, 1871).

21. William Gillette, The Right to Vote: Politics and Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965), 10, 80, 139; Hugh Davis, “We Will be Satisfied with Nothing Less”: The African American Struggle for Equal Rights in the North during Reconstruction (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 2011), 126.

22. Jefferson Hurst to Mr. Amos Sluffman, Apr. 12, 1890, Jethro Hurst, Pension File; H. Clay Evans to John Baker, May 5, 1897, John Baker, Pension File; Dock Leech, Pension File.

23. Tenth Annual Report of the Commission of Statistics (Columbus: L. D. Myers, 1867), 35, in Logue, To Appomattox and Beyond, 88, 89; Scott and Shade, Upon These Shores, 154; Shaffer, After the Glory, 46, 52, 53, 56. As William Dobak notes, “Most lived quietly as private citizens” (Freedom by the Sword, 502).

24. George Young and James Young, CMSR; Chulhee Lee, “Wealth Accumulation and the Health of Union Army Veterans, 1860–1870,” Journal of Economic History 65, no. 2 (June 2005): 371, 372; Benjamin Lay, CMSR and Pension File; U.S. Census 1870; U.S. Census 1900.

25. Nikki M. Taylor, Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati’s Black Community, 1802–1868 (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 2005), 174; Portsmouth Times, Oct. 7, 1865; Hickok, Negro in Ohio, appendix.

26. Contosta, Lancaster, Ohio, 97; Portsmouth, Ohio, Board of Education, Annual Report of the Portsmouth Public Schools for the School Year Ending Aug. 31, 1876, including the History of the Schools and the Rules and Regulations Adopted for Their Government (Portsmouth, Ohio: Jas. W. Newman, Printer, Times Office, 1877), 35–37; Portsmouth Times, Oct. 31, 1885; U.S. Census 1870; U.S. Census 1880. In 1871, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in State ex rel. Garnes v. McCann that “the equality of rights did not require educating blacks and whites in the same school” (Davis, “We Will be Satisfied with Nothing Less,” 120–21). Yet Ohio blacks continued to push for more access to education. See, for example, the Springfield Gazette, Jan. 12, 1884, for the story of Reverend J. W. Gazaway, who went to the local courts to force the Springfield school board to allow his daughter to attend school, claiming that the 1875 Civil Rights Act protected her right to equal education.

27. Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland, 87.

28. Severo and Milford, Wages of War, 130–33, 423; Scioto Gazette, May 30, 1865.

29. Paul J. Lammermeier, “Family and Occupational Structures in the Upper Ohio Valley: 1850–1880, A Comparative Study of Six Large and Small Urban Black Communities,” Paper presented at the Brockport Conference on Social and Political History, Brockport, N.Y., Sept. 1972, 5, 6; Portsmouth Times, Oct. 7, 1865.

30. Lammermeier, “Family and Occupational Structures,” 4, 12, 15.

31. Portsmouth Daily Times, July 1, 1905, and Aug. 20, 23, 1910; Afro-Americans in Scioto County, Local History Subject Files, Local History, Portsmouth Public Library, Portsmouth, OH; Chulhee Lee, “Military Positions and Post-Service Occupational Mobility of Union Army Veterans, 1861–1880,” Explorations in Economic History 44 (2007): 681, 686; William E. Ross, CMSR; U.S. Census 1870.

32. Lucious Johnson and Orin D. Henry, Pension Files; Contosta, Lancaster, Ohio, 119; U.S. Census 1870.

33. Lee, “Military Positions and Post-Service,” 681; Lammermeier, “Family and Occupational Structures,” 22; Richard N. Jones, CMSR; Richard Hedgepath, Pension File; U.S. Census 1870.

34. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades, 43, 44, 163–67; Eric T. Dean Jr., Shook Over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1997), 106, 115, 116, 211, 212.

35. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood, 24, 25; Cecilia Elizabeth O’Leary, To Die For: The Paradox of American Patriotism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1999), 7. Theda Skocpol discusses the connection between nineteenth-century patronage politics and the rise of pensions as a social welfare system in Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1992); Kelly, Creating a National Home, 3–5, 82.

36. Brayton and Terry, Our Acre and Its Harvest, 59–261; Clinton Republic, Oct. 27, 1865; Ohio Executive Documents, Annual Reports for 1865, Fifty-seventh General Assembly of Ohio, at the Regular Session, Begun and Held in the City of Columbus, Jan. 1, 1866, pt. 2 (Columbus: Richard Nevins, State Printer, 1866), 338.

37. Messages and Annual Reports for 1865, pt. 2, 330–39; Elliot Howard Gilkey, The Ohio One Hundred Year Book (Columbus: Fred J. Heer, 1901), 735–39; Thomas H. Patten, “Health and Behavior in Homes for Veterans: Some Old and New Patterns,” Journal of Health and Human Behavior 2, no. 1 (Spring 1961): 49.

38. Kelly, Creating a National Home, 7, 54; Patten, “Health and Behavior,” 51.

39. Logue, “Union Veterans and Their Government,” 416; Dean, Shook Over Hell, 149.

40. Clinton Republic, Oct. 27, 1865; U.S. Census 1890; U.S. Census 1900; U.S. Census Bureau, Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910, T624 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1910); Grave Registration Cards.

41. Lucious Johnson, CMSR and Pension File; Columbus, Ohio, Proceedings of City Council, Columbus City Bulletin, 87, no. 30 (July 27, 2002), 1543, 1544; U.S. Census 1860; Yancey Good, Pension File.

42. Kelly, Creating a National Home, 7, 16; David A. Gerber, ed., Disabled Veterans in History (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 2000), 276, 277; “A Nation Repays Its Debt: The National Soldiers’ Home and Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio.” Teaching with Historic Places, National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service, accessed Oct. 25, 2007, http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/TwHP/wwwlps/lessons/115dayton/115dayton.htm; Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio in Two Volumes: An Encyclopedia of the State, vol. 2 (Norwalk, Ohio: Laning Printing, 1888), 286. The system eventually included a total of nine national homes.

43. Kelly, Creating a National Home, 115–20; Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio, vol. 2, 286; “A Nation Repays Its Debt.”

44. Kelly, Creating a National Home, 98.

45. Kelly, Creating a National Home, 99; Shaffer, After the Glory, 138; Gerber, Disabled Veterans in History, 277; U.S. Census 1880; U.S. Census 1890; “Nationwide Gravesite Locater,” United States Department of Veteran Affairs, accessed Jan. 18, 2007, http://gravelocator.cem.va.gov/j2ee/servlet/NGL_v1. Shaffer argues that many African Americans made a conscious decision to avoid the National Home system and that between 1876 and 1905 only 1 percent lived in national homes (After the Glory, 137–38). Between 1870 and 1900, the average white male lived to age fifty, whereas the average age for black males was just over forty years (Regosin and Shaffer, Voices of Emancipation, 106).

46. Kelly states that between the Civil War and the Spanish American War, the National Home provided care to every one in twenty veterans (Creating a National Home, 198). Logue states that of 2 million Union soldiers, only 100,000 went to homes (“Union Veterans and Their Government,” 423). Skocpol states that by 1910 5 percent of living veterans resided in state and federal soldiers’ homes (Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, 141).

47. Logue, “Union Veterans and Their Government,” 423.

48. Shaffer, After the Glory, 128–30; Logue and Blanck, “Benefit of Doubt,” 377, 378, 381, 394, 397; Regosin and Shaffer, Voices of Emancipation, 5; Barbara A. Gannon, The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2011), 21, 242 n.13.

49. Shaffer, After the Glory, 128; Logue and Blanck,”Benefit of Doubt,” 391, 394, 396–98.

50. William Mifflin, Pension File; Quote from Donald R. Shaffer, “‘I Do Not Suppose That Uncle Sam Looks at the Skin’: African Americans and the Civil War Pension System, 1865–1934,” Civil War History 46, no. 2 (June 2000): 132; U.S. Census 1880. In After the Glory, Shaffer’s statistical sample shows that 92 percent of white veterans compared to 75 percent of blacks had a successful application (122). To determine the number of pension applications and those approved, I corroborated the evidence available on Fold3, “Civil War Pension Index” with “Civil War ‘Widows’ Pensions.’” For family members, I included widows’, minors’, mothers’, and fathers’ applications.

51. Logue and Blank, “Benefit of Doubt,” 394; John W. Hicks, Thomas Harris, and John Black, Pension Files; Dr. H. Niedermeyer to Mrs. Martha J. Horton, Apr. 2, 1899, John Horton, Pension File; National Tribune 3, no. 1 (Jan. 1880), 7 (misprinted as vol. 4).

52. James Morrison, Pension File.

53. Richard Fox, Pension File; Thos W. Murphy to Dear Sir, Oct. 11, 1901, Lewis Green, Pension File.

54. Wallace Mourning, Pension File; U.S. Census 1880; Cairo Daily Bulletin, Jan. 18, 1884; Evening Observer (Dunkirk, N.Y.), Jan. 18, 1884.

55. Henry Bird and James Wilson, Company K, Pension Files; GCM, Henry Bird, 27th USCT, MM3226. Bird received a life sentence, but the commanding officer of the District of Wilmington reduced the soldier’s sentence to ten years.

56. Moses M. A. Jones, James Hammond, and Joshua King, Pension Files.

57. Theda Skocpol discusses the connection between nineteenth-century patronage politics and the rise of pensions as a social welfare system in Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. Megan J. McClintock argues that pensions are evidence that the federal government altered how it prepared for military conflicts after the Civil War. Also see McClintock for a discussion on how issues of gender and family ideals affected pensions in “Civil War Pensions and the Reconstruction of Union Families,” Journal of American History 83, no 2 (Sept. 1996): 456–80; O’Leary, To Die For, 7; Eileen Boris, “The Racialized Gendered State: Constructions of Citizenship in the United States,” Social Politics (Summer 1995): 165, 166. Boris argues that race and gender, both constructed social categories, cannot be studied independently.

58. For a concise discussion of changing pension laws, see Skocpol, “America’s First Social Security System: The Expansion of Benefits for Civil War Veterans,” Political Science Quarterly 108, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 85–116; McClintock, “Civil War Pensions,” 458; Skocpol’s estimate is explained in “America’s First Social Security System” (94); Shaffer, After the Glory, 122, 209. The lower rate overall for black women is in part related to the large number of former slaves who served in the USCT. Most slaves before the Civil War were unable to obtain legal civil marriages and had limited literacy, both of which hindered the pension application process and approval.

59. Amy E. Holmes, “‘Such is the Price We Pay’: American Widows and the Civil War Pension System,” in Vinovskis, Toward a Social History, 172. To determine the number of widow pension applications and those approved, I corroborated the evidence available on Fold3, Civil War and Later Veterans Pension Index with Civil War “Widows’ Pensions.”

60. McClintock, “Civil War Pensions,” 471, 472; James Walker, CMSR and Pension File. The majority of men who served in the 27th USCT married according to Northern, middle-class custom and state requirements. Few participated in switching between the informal and formal marriage systems that, in After the Glory, Donald R. Shaffer identifies, but pension officials often made inquiries as if the veterans and their widows would understand both concepts. And while Shaffer notes that there are a small number of “contest widow” applications, which indicates that some of the veterans chose to remarry without legal divorce, there is too little evidence to determine if this was due to the adaptation of the two systems for one’s personal use or the act of abandonment (After the Glory, 103–6, 112–17).

61. David T. Woods, Pension File. If applicants were unhappy with the bureau process or decisions, they could seek redress from their Congressmen, who might be more than happy to use this form of patronage politics. This appeared to be most popular in the 1880s and then again in the early twentieth century (Skocpol, “America’s First Social Security System,” 108).

62. Sidney Vicks, Pension File.

63. S. A. Cuddy to Mrs. Mary B. Shoecraft, Jan. 29, 1931, and Mary S. Shoecraft to the National Tribune, Jan. 31, 1931, Allison Shoecraft, Pension File.

64. Shaffer, After the Glory, 122; Warren Wright and James Ferguson, Pension Files. To determine the number of minor pension applications and those approved, I corroborated the evidence available on Fold3, Civil War and Later Veterans Pension Index with Civil War “Widows’ Pensions.”

65. Nelson Smith and Matthew Hill, Pension Files; “Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Orphans Home,” Greene County Public Library, accessed Mar. 4, 2006, http://www.greenelibrary.info/Collections-and-Resources/Ohio-Soldiers-Sailors-Orphans-Home.html; Ohio, First Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Ohio Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphans’ Homes to the Governor of the State of Ohio, November 15th, 1870 (Columbus: Nevins and Myers, State Printers, 1871), 27, 31.

66. James E. Scott, Pension File (emphasis in the original); McClintock, “Civil War Pensions,” 476, 477.

67. William H. Glasson, Federal Military Pensions in the United States (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1918), 125, 126. Of the sixteen fathers who sought pensions from the service of men in the 27th USCT, six were rejected. Therefore, forty-one of seventy-one parents, or just fewer than 58 percent, received pensions. Shaffer’s sample shows that only 35.5 percent of black parents received pensions compared to 69 percent of white veterans’ parents (After the Glory, 122, and “I Do Not Suppose,” 134). To determine the number of mother and father pension applications and those approved, I corroborated the evidence available on Fold3, Civil War and Later Veterans Pension Index with Civil War “Widows’ Pensions.”

68. John W. Phillips, Pension File.

69. Houston Bayless, Pension File.

70. James H. Ross, Pension File.

71. Glasson, Federal Military Pensions in the United States, 125, 126; George Reece, Pension File. To determine the number and dates of mothers’ pension applications and those approved, I corroborated the evidence available on Fold3, Civil War and Later Veterans Pension Index with Civil War “Widows’ Pensions.”

72. Skocpol concludes that the formal policies of the U.S. Pension Bureau were not racist and that Northern blacks received comparable awards to whites within the same economic and service categories (Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, 138). Shaffer explains that in part the prejudice of federal officials contributed to lower approval rates for blacks and that this discrimination was fueled by fear of and actual unethical practices by African American applicants (“I Do Not Suppose,” 146–47). Northern free blacks who served in the Civil War for Ohio found themselves in, and actively participated within, a position that was much closer to Skocpol’s interpretation.

73. Lancaster Gazette, Sept. 1, 29, and Oct. 6, 1881.

74. Caroline E. Janney, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2013), 75, 91, 211; Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland, 124; Lewis Green, CMSR; Christian Recorder, Aug. 26, 1865; Contosta, Lancaster, Ohio, 123.

75. O’Leary, To Die For, 49, 51.

76. Stuart McConnell, “Who Joined the Grand Army? Three Case Studies in the Construction of Union Veteranhood, 1866–1900,” in Vinovskis, Toward a Social History, 142; O’Leary, To Die For, 6, 28.

77. Silber, Romance of Reunion, 157, 158; O’Leary, To Die For, 6, 25, 114; David W. Blight, “Traced by Blood: African Americans and the Legacies of the Civil War,” in Cooper and McCardell, In the Cause of Liberty, 138. For a discussion on the conflicted understanding of black manhood, military service, and citizenship rights that focuses heavily on former slaves, see Emberton, “Only Murder Makes Men,” 369–93.

78. O’Leary, To Die For, 26; Rebecca Kook, “The Shifting Status of African Americans in the American Cultural Identity,” Journal of Black Studies 29, no. 2 (Nov. 1998): 168, 175; Andre Fleche, ‘“Shoulder to Shoulder as Comrades Tried’: Black and White Union Veterans and Civil War Memory,” Civil War History 51, no. 2 (May 2005): 179, 180; Shaffer, After the Glory, 45. Drew Gilpin Faust found that in the federal soldiers reburial program that removed bodies to newly created national cemeteries, African Americans were “segregated in death” (This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War [New York: Vintage Books, 2009], 236). This was not the case for the black soldiers who died after the war and were buried with veteran headstones in most Ohio cemeteries.

79. As Barbara A. Gannon convincingly articulates in The Won Cause, most white veterans accepted the USCT veterans and participated together at the state and local level (5). McConnell, “Who Joined the Grand Army?” 140, 141; Janney, Remembering the Civil War, 104.

80. Elmer Edward Noyes, “A History of the Grand Army of the Republic in Ohio from 1866–1900” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State Univ., 1945), 3, 4, 13, 15, 18; McConnell, “Who Joined the Grand Army?” 141.

81. Fleche, “Shoulder to Shoulder as Comrades Tried,” 176; Noyes, “A History of the Grand Army of the Republic,” 30, 39; McConnell, “Who Joined the Grand Army?” 141; Stuart McConnell, Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1992), 217, 218.

82. Grand Army of the Republic Department of Ohio, Personal War Sketches of the Members of the W.A. Brand Post No. 98 of Urbana (Urbana, Ohio: 1892); Grand Army of the Republic, Department of Ohio, Proceedings of the 27th Annual Encampment, 1893, 262 (hereafter cited as Proceedings of the [number] Annual Encampment [year]); Samuel P. Orth, A History of Cleveland, Ohio, vol. 1 (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1910), 340; Gannon, Won Cause, 6, 90, 92, 218–19; Proceedings of the 24th Annual Encampment, 1890, 52, 59; Proceedings of the 26th Annual Encampment, 1892, 53, 59; Proceedings of the 47th Annual Encampment, 1913, 153. McConnell claims that segregated chapters were the rule (“Who Joined the Grand Army?” 144).

83. Gannon, Won Cause, 36–37, 206; Charter, P. C. Daniel’s Post 500, Xenia, and Charter, Wyatt Post 716, Circleville, Grand Army of the Republic, Department of Ohio Records, 1876–1936, Charters, Ohio History Connections, Columbus, Ohio; William Anderson Post 244, Grand Army of the Republic, Post Minute Book, Fayette County Historical Society, Washington Court House, Ohio; John Baker, Andrew Boon, Thomas J. Brewer, Isaac Hewston, Lewis Jackson, George Mitchell, and Hezekiah Stewart, Pension Files.

84. William Anderson Post 244, Grand Army of the Republic, Post Minute Book, Fayette County Historical Society, Washington Court House, Ohio.

85. Noyes, “A History of the Grand Army of the Republic,” 28; Isaiah Ross and Yancey Good, Pension Files; Gannon, Won Cause, 37, 40–41, 49–54.

86. Cleveland Gazette, Jan. 30, 1884, and Dec. 4, 1886; Roster of Posts of the Department of Ohio, G. A. R. Alphabetically Arranged by Counties and Post Offices (Chillicothe: Office of the Ohio Soldier, 1889), 23.

87. Roster of Posts of the Department of Ohio, G. A. R. Alphabetically Arranged by Counties and Post Offices (Chillicothe: Office of the Ohio Soldier, 1889), 23; Gannon, Won Cause, 18, 23, 25; Portsmouth Times, Mar. 18, 1893; John Burrell, CMSR; U.S. Census 1880; U.S. Census 1900; J. W. Carnahan, History of the Easel-Shaped Monument and Key to the Principle Objects of the GAR and its Co-Workers (Chicago: Dux, 1893), 73, 83–84. The Easel Monument Association advertised the portrait and the book in the National Tribune, and in several Ohio newspapers, National Tribune, July 28, 1894, and Oct. 3, 1895, Wellington Enterprise, Aug. 21, 1895, and the News Herald (Hillsboro), July 15, 1897. The monument was never built, but in the case of John Burrell, the portrait was a “picture which will always be preserved and handed down from generation to generation.” Burrell’s great step-granddaughter displays his Easel-Shaped Monument portrait in her home and plans to give it to her grandson.

88. Gannon, Won Cause, 7, 8, 79–81; Taylor, “A Politics of Service,” 477–78; Janney, Remembering the Civil War, 211.

89. J. A. Caldwell, History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio, and Incidentally Historical Collections Pertaining to Border Warfare and the Early Settlement of the Adjacent Portion of the Ohio Valley (Wheeling, W.Va.: Historical, 1880), 459; Herbert T. Blue, History of Stark County, Ohio, From the Age of Prehistoric Man to the Present Day (Chicago: Clarke, 1928), 387–400; William Anderson Post 244, Grand Army of the Republic, Post Minute Book, Fayette County Historical Society, Washington Court House, OH; Beacon Journal, Oct. 11, 1948.

90. “Fight for the Colors: The Ohio Battle Flag Collection,” Ohio History Connection, accessed Feb. 10, 2007, http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/exhibits/fftc/about2/about_specs.aspx?section=history&page=1; Ohio Adjutant General, Applications to Borrow Regimental Colors, 1865–1906, files 2 and 3, Ohio History Connection, Columbus, Ohio; J. Matthew Gallman, “Snapshots: Images of Men in the United States Colored Troops,” American Nineteenth Century History 13, no. 2 (June 2012): 146.

91. Charles D. Miller, Report of the Great Re-Union of the Veteran Soldiers and Sailors of Ohio held in Newark, July 22, 1878, under the Auspices of the Society of the Soldiers and Sailors of Licking County, Ohio (Newark, Ohio: Clark and Underwood, 1879), 63–69, 72–74, 104, 105, 269–98; Blue, History of Stark County, Ohio, 387. While Caroline E. Janney asserts that white veterans did not forget slavery and emancipation even as they sought reconciliation, she also makes it clear that although this did not mean that white veterans believed in racial equality, their memorialization of the Civil War celebrated their virtuous role and embraced “both reconciliation and emancipation,” while blacks attempted to remember based on their own terms (Remembering the Civil War, 7–8).

92. Lancaster Gazette, Sept. 1, 29, and Oct. 6, 1881; Circleville Union Herald, Sept. 9, 1897; Urbana Informer, Aug. 1903.

93. Shaffer, After the Glory, 160; Cleveland Gazette, Jan. 30, 1886.

94. Evans, A Standard History of Ross County, vol. 1, 210–11; Blue, History of Stark County, Ohio, 375.

95. U.S. Census 1860; U.S. Census 1890; Kelly D. Selby, “Beyond the Margins: Ohio’s Black Veterans and Civil War Commemoration,” paper presented at the Ohio Academy of History Spring Meeting, Kent State Univ., Stark Campus, Canton, Ohio, Apr. 26, 2003. The ten counties with the highest black populations in 1860 were Hamilton, Ross, Gallia, Franklin, Greene, Brown, Muskingum, Belmont, Pickaway, and Highland, and the ten counties with the highest black population in 1890 were Hamilton, Franklin, Clark, Greene, Cuyahoga, Ross, Montgomery, Gallia, Brown, and Belmont.

96. John R. Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation (Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 2005), 1.

97. G. Kurt Piehler, Remembering War the American Way (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1995), 9, 56, 50, 51; O’Leary, To Die For, 101; Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead, 13, 133; “Nationwide Gravesite Locater”; Medical and Surgical History, vol. 7, 88.

98. Piehler, Remembering War the American Way, 50, 51, 53.

99. Judith A. Ross, The History of Greenlawn Cemetery in Portsmouth, Ohio, Booklet 1 (Portsmouth, OH: Judith A. Ross, 2003), 8, 10, 26.

100. Piehler, Remembering War the American Way, 8, 49, 57, 58, 65; Ross, History of Greenlawn Cemetery, 8, 10, 29. For the most influential argument concerning the national move toward a reconciliationist view that marginalizes the issues of slavery, emancipation, and role of black soldiers, see David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2001).

101. Ross, History of Greenlawn Cemetery, 15, 19; William Darlington, Pension File; Grave Registration Cards; Portsmouth Daily Times, Oct. 13, 1899.

102. Champion City Times, July 7, 1887; Robert Scott, Pension File; Ferdinand Gaskins, Pension File; Grave Registration Cards.

103. Qualls Tibbs, Pension File; Lancaster Ohio Eagle, Nov. 2, 1922; U.S. Census Bureau, Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, T625 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1920). Phillip Sheridan Tibbs’s son Howard served with the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. Kathleen Tibbs, interview by author, Mar. 26, 2006. General “Little Phil” Sheridan grew up in Somerset, Perry County, bordering Fair-field County, where Qualls Tibbs lived.

104. Finley, or as sometimes recorded, Findley, served in Company A. James Finley, CMSR; Ironton Evening Tribune, May 7 and 9, 1930; Beacon Journal, Oct. 11, 1948.

105. Noyes, “A History of the Grand Army of the Republic,” 239.

106. Isaiah Ross, John W. Speaker, Jethro Hurst, and James Atkins, Pension Files.

Epilogue

1. George Washington Williams, A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion 1861–1865 (1887; repr., New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 2012), xl; John David Smith, Introduction to the Fordham University Press Edition, A History of the Negro Troops by George Washington Williams, xi, xiii, xv. Williams also served in the U.S. 10th Cavalry after the Civil War.

2. Smith, “Introduction to the Fordham University Press Edition,” xiv–xviii, xx, xxvii, and xxx; Logan and Winston, Dictionary of American Negro Biography, 657–58. Two other African Americans in the nineteenth century wrote histories that included the Civil War black military service: William Wells Brown, The Negro in the American Rebellion: His Heroism and His Fidelity (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1867) and Joseph T. Wilson, The Black Phalanx: African American Soldiers in the War of Independence, the War of 1812, & the Civil War (American Publishing Company, 1887).

3. Smith, “Introduction to the Fordham University Press Edition,” xxi; Gallman, Defining Duty, 2–3. David W. Blight, in Race and Reunion, makes a strong argument that by 1915 contested memories about the reasons for the Civil War held in the postbellum period had evolved into a more uniform national focus on reconciliation. The War of the Rebellion would be remembered and commemorated as a contest that both the North and the South had fought with honor and valor. Citizens celebrated the reunion of the United States and swept the causes and consequences of the cataclysmic event to the sidelines of their public recollections. Slavery and the three constitutional amendments created as a result of the abolition of slavery and Northern victory did not have a place in this sanitized version of the Civil War. Although Blight acknowledges that black soldiers had not been totally forgotten by white veterans during this period, he places them solely in the margins of national memory and commemoration. The USCT, along with slavery and the failure of promised civil rights, had fallen outside the “dominate mode of memory.” Instead, public culture understood reconciliation to be the center and focus of the Civil War reminiscences (passim).

4. During the war, the editor of the Weekly Anglo-African argued that black men should join the army because “the eyes of the whole world are upon you, civilized man everywhere waits to see if you will prove yourself…. Will you vindicate your manhood?” as quoted in Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 59; Darlene Clark Hine and Earnestine Jenkins, eds., “Manhood Rights”: The Construction of Black Male History and Manhood, 1750–1870, vol. 1 of A Question of Manhood: A Reader in U.S. Black Men’s History and Masculinity (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1999), xiii, 46; Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood, 3, 10; Mitchell, Vacant Chair, 4; Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over, 193,199; Foner and Walker, Proceedings, vol. 1, 327 (emphasis in the original); Gladstone, Men of Color, 110.

5. Davis, “We Will be Satisfied with Nothing Less,” 14. Dana Elizabeth Weiner argues that the Old Northwest as a region was a “central battleground” over race and rights between 1830 and 1870, and despite the failure of truly equal rights in the postwar era, because the black population remained relatively small African American activists were able to work with white reformers to make some gains (Race and Rights: Fighting Slavery and Prejudice in the Old Northwest, 1830–1870 [DeKalb: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 2013], 2, 7, 235).

6. Hine and Jenkins, “Manhood Rights,” 56.

7. Casey, New Men, 163–64. John A. Casey Jr. argues that the Civil War caused both civilians and soldiers to reinterpret how they understood the role of the men who provided military service during wartime. The concept of the veteran became a new identity for men, not just a reference to their previous use of a particular “set of skills,” and changed the self-perception of soldiers and veterans, making them “new men.”

8. Frederick Douglass, “Address by Hon. Frederick Douglass, Delivered in the Metropolitan A. M. E. Church, Washington, D.C., Tuesday, Jan. 9th, 1894, on The Lessons of the Hour: in Which he Discusses the Various Aspects of the So-called, but Mis-called, Negro Problem” (Baltimore: Press of Thomas and Evans, 1894), 21.

9. Paula C. Baker, The Moral Frameworks of Public Life: Gender, Politics and the State in Rural New York, 1870–1930 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991), xiii, xvi; Gannon, Won Cause, 18; Paul A. Shackel, Memory in Black and White: Race, Commemoration, and the Post-Bellum Landscape (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 2003), 190.

10. William F. Fox, Regimental Losses in the American Civil War 1861–1865 (Albany, N.Y.: Albany Publishing Company, 1889), preface; Gannon, Won Cause, 1; National Tribune, Mar. 10, 1910; Jay S. Hoar, “Black Glory: Our Afro-American Civil War Soldiery,” Gettysburg Magazine, no. 2 (Jan. 1990): 125, 126; Beacon Journal, Oct. 11, 1948. The 27th provided a slightly lower number of postwar soldiers than did the overall USCT, as between 1 and 2 percent of black Civil War veterans enlisted in the six segregated units that remained as part of the U.S. Army in the early postwar years (Shaffer, After the Glory, 39). In 1869 the number was reduced to four, the 24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry. To determine the number of men who continued to serve in the U.S. Army after the Civil War, I used the data on pension cards available on Fold3, Civil War and Later Veterans Pension Index.

11. Younger v. Judah, 1892, Missouri Digital Archives, Record Group 600: Supreme Court of the State of Missouri (1804–Present), Missouri State Archives, accessed July 15, 2015, http://s1.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/africanamerican/guide/image600b.asp.

12. Patrick Kelly, “The Election of 1896 and the Restructuring of Civil War Memory,” in The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, ed. Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004), 180–81; Casey, New Men, 162; Stuart McConnell, “Epilogue: The Geography of Memory,” in Fahs and Waugh, Memory of the Civil War, 260, 261; Blight, Race and Reunion, 9, 10; Jordan, Marching Home, 7–8. Catton quote in Jordan, 8.

13. Jay Winter, Remembering War: The Great War between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 2006), 116; Susie King Taylor, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp (1902; repr., New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1968), 51, 52; Casey, New Men, 16, 131. The rise in the number of lynchings in Southern states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is well known, but Ohioans participated in at least twenty-five, twelve of which were stopped (Marilyn K. Howard, “Black Lynching in the Promised Land: Mob Violence in Ohio 1876–1916” [PhD diss., Ohio State Univ., 1999], 225).

14. My use of national collective memory is based on Barbara A. Gannon’s description of “Memory (with a capital M).” Gannon explains that this type of memory is “a group’s, a generation’s, or a nation’s collective understanding of, or agreement on, a shared interpretation of its past,” making it clear that it is “neither universal nor immutable” and is “contested and, as a result of this struggle evolves, particularly from one generation to the next” (Won Cause, 3).

15. David W. Blight, “The Civil War Isn’t Over,” The Atlantic (Apr. 8, 2015), accessed July 3, 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-civil-war-isnt-over/389847; Gannon, Won Cause, 9.

16. Williams, A History of the Negro Troops, xl.