You have never mentioned it, so I was shocked to learn what the Lincoln administration was doing to black soldiers as late as 1864. This was long after the Gettysburg address in which Lincoln is reported to have embraced the concept that “all men are created equal.”
“In November 1863, Sergeant William Walker of the 3rd South Carolina Infantry took dramatic action to express a grievance shared by thousands of African American troops in the Union Army.
“The 23-year-old former slave “did unlawfully take command” of Company A and march the troops to his commanding officer’s tent. There, as court-martial specifications later documented, he “ordered them to stack arms,” and when asked what this meant, replied, “We will not do duty any longer for seven dollars per month.” Walker refused an order to return to duty and told his company “to let their arms alone and go to their quarters.” They did, and “thereby excited and joined in a general mutiny.”
“The young sergeant would pay for his defiance with his life. Despite a plea that he and his comrades had “only contemplated a peaceful demand for the rights and benefits that had been guaranteed them,” a military tribunal found Walker guilty of mutiny. He would be executed by firing squad on February 29, 1864.”
Military discipline has always been... tough.
General Washington himself had some mutineers hanged, or shot.
Had the soldier in the incident been white, the results may well have been the same.
But we might also notice that by war's end "colored" troops received the same pay as their white fellow soldiers.
We don't know how much that particular incident had to do with it.
So tell us how many colored troops in the Confederate army received the same pay as their white fellow soldiers?
Yes, it's a trick question, so be careful.