Feature Diaspora
This month (April), the United States will begin a four-year-long celebration of the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, the war that ended slavery in the country. From Washington DC, Leslie Goffe reports that the next four years will be testing for both White and Black Confederates – African-Americans proud of their ancestors who fought for the South in the war.
The war that ended slavery in America
Union and end slavery, and the South, which chose secession and war rather than give up slavery, which the South called its “peculiar institution”. Te North, with the help of freed slaves
… and blacks’ part in it T
he American Civil War, which started on 12 April 1861 and ended on 9 April 1865, was fought between the North, which wanted to preserve the
who joined its Union Army, defeated the South’s Confederate Army and liberated millions of enslaved Africans held in cap- tivity on sugar plantations in Louisiana, cotton plantations in Alabama, rice plan- tations in South Carolina, and tobacco plantations in Virginia. To mark the Civil War’s 150th anniver-
sary, the US is planning a host of historical events, among them reenactments of key Civil War battles, some of which featured black Union Army units and regiments with names such as the Corps d’Afrique and the First Mississippi Regiment (African Descent). African-Americans enlisted in the fight
because they were told they would be well paid, receive good food and clothing and get a chance to strike a blow against whites who had kept black people in bondage. “TO COLORED MEN! Freedom, Protec- tion, Pay and a Call to Military Duty!” read one Union Army recruitment post- er. “MEN OF COLOR –To Arms! To
74 | April 2011 New African
Arms! – FAIL NOW, & OUR RACE IS DOOMED,” read another. Hundreds of thousands of African-Americans – both freedmen and runaway slaves – enlisted in the Union Army. Te best known of the army’s black units was the 54th Mas- sachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Described by one observer as the most “ro- bust, strong and healthy set of men” ever to serve in the US Army, the 54th saw action in many of the fiercest battles of the war. Poems and songs were written about the unit’s bravery. Te 54th was inspiration, too, for Hollywood film Glory. Tanks to the film, released in 1989, which stars Denzel Washington as a runaway slave turned soldier in the Union Army, the
Above and right: HK Edgerton, the outspoken African-
American from North Carolina who claims kinship with the Confederate South
world discovered that African-Americans actually fought in the American Civil War. In fact, had it not been for black sol-
diers, the Union forces might have lost the war. President Abraham Lincoln admitted this in a letter to a newspaper publisher in 1863. He wrote that the Union army might have been defeated had it not been for the “aid of black soldiers” who constituted “the heaviest blow yet dealt to the Rebellion”. This was quite a turnaround for
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