[TwelveOfTwenty #585 to FLT-bird #566] The North didn't open up recruitment to blacks until 1863.[woodpusher #596 to TwelveOfTwenty #585] Actually, the North opened up recruitment and enlistment to blacks during the Revolutionary War.
[TwelveOfTwenty #597 to woodpusher #596] You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble and stopped there. That is true, but that was "forgotten" long before the Civil War.
You may have forgotten, but it still happened. Blacks were enlisted in the North and South prior to 1863, and some were cited and rewarded for their acts of bravery. The fact cannot be erased from history by forgetting about it.
[TwelveOfTwenty #597] Fighting for Freedom, Black Union Soldiers of the Civil War
Your source quotation of an 1869 source:
EnlistmentsThe Federal program to admit black soldiers during the Civil War was not without precedent or resistance. American blacks had taken part in the country's defense since the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. By the mid-nineteenth century, their earlier efforts were all but forgotten.
As it was remembered in 1869, there is no particularly good reason to erase factual Black history in the 21st century. Rather than rely upon snippet quotes from an internet site, I shall present some Black history from an actual book, FREEDOM, A Documentary History of Emancipation 1861-1867, Series II, The Black Military Experience; Ira Berlin, Editor; Joseph P. Reidy, Associate Editor; Leslie S. Rowland, Associate Editor; Cambridge University Press (1982), 852 pp.
At pg. 11:
However firm, official commitment to black enlistment did not of itself put black men into uniform. In the Northern free states, where recruiters had full access to the black population, the number of potential recruits was small. According to an estimate by the Superintendent of the Census, only 46,000 black men of military age resided in those states (see Table 1), so that Northern free blacks alone could not hope to meet federal manpower requirements. The largest number of black men within reach of army recruiters resided in the border slave states that had remained in the Union (Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky) and in those portions of the Confederate states occupied by federal forces before the end of 1862 (especially Tennessee and Louisiana). But in these areas, exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation, white unionists, many of them slaveholders, raised powerful objections to black recruitment. Fearful for their property, they alternately threatened to desert the Union and claimed unflinching devotion to the federal government in order to prevent the enlistment of slaves or even free blacks. At first federal policy makers respected such claims, especially while Confederate forces still contended for military control of these states. But, while the Lincoln administration sought to avoid alienating loyal masters, many of whom carried considerable political weight, it still desperately desired to tap these vast reserves of potential soldiers.
At pg. 14: [footnote omitted]
By the spring of 1865, black enlistment and conscription had placed 179,000 black men in the Union army, forming, together with those blacks who served in the navy, nearly 10 percent of those who served in Northern armed forces.22 Of this number, approximately 33,000 enlisted in the Northern free states. The border slaveholding states of Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky offered a total of nearly 42,000, with Kentucky alone providing over half. Tennessee contributed 20,000; Louisiana, 24,000; Mississippi, nearly 18,000; and the remaining states of the Confederacy accounted for approximately 37,000 (Table 1).
At pp. 39-40 [footnotes converted to endnotes]
Hard on the heels of Hunter’s disbandment of the regiment, Saxton asked Stanton for permission to recruit and arm 5,000 black quartermaster employees, whom he euphemistically termed “laborers” but whose intended use as an armed force to protect lowcountry contrabands he did not disguise.8 Surprisingly, Stanton not only authorized the 5,000 quartermaster laborers but also an additional 5,000 black soldiers, who would “receive the same pay and rations as are allowed by law to volunteers in the service.”9 Stanton’s pay guarantee removed one of the chief obstacles standing in the way of Hunter’s black regiment and paved the way for the formal organization of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers in mid-October 1862. In the interim, Saxton laid plans for his regiment with both Stanton and Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew and Andrew’s abolitionist associates. Within a month of organization, Saxton named as commander of the regiment Thomas W. Higginson, radical abolitionist and former ally of John Brown. Despite smoldering black resentment of Hunter’s earlier impressment, the regiment filled to capacity almost immediately. Higginson, like others, believed that habits of obedience developed during slavery made blacks ideal soldiers, and he commented repeatedly that only the noblest of motives prompted his men to enlist. Early in 1863 recruitment for the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers began, followed shortly by the organization of the 3rd Volunteers.By March 1863, voluntary enlistment in the 2nd and 3rd South Carolina Volunteers began to lag, so Hunter (who, as department commander, had superior authority to Saxton’s regarding black troops) began another mandatory draft of able-bodied men and then authorized formation of the 4th South Carolina Volunteers. Hunter broadened the age distribution of eligible draftees by raising the upper limit from forty-five to fifty. More significantly, in light of opposition to his earlier draft, he tagged for conscription only unemployed contrabands.10 However, Hunter allowed his recruiters to determine who was unemployed, and as a result they took whomever they pleased. Only a fine line separated conscription and kidnapping as Hunter’s recruiters ransacked the islands.
8 Mansfield French, a missionary to the freedpeople at Port Royal, detailed his own role in securing Stanton’s approval of the plan to enlist black soldiers in [Mansfield French] to Brevet Major Genl. R. Saxton, 4 Sept. 1865, enclosed in M. French to Hon. E. M. Stanton, 24 Oct. 1865, W-2260 1865, Letters Received, ser. 12, RG 94 [K-570].
9 Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 14, pp. 377—78.
10 Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 14, pp. 1020—21, 429—30.
At pg. 253:
98: Adjutant General of the Army to the Secretary of WarLouisville, Kentucky February 1, 1864. Sir: Being informed at this place that the slaves of Kentucky on the borders of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Tennessee, were constantly crossing the lines and quite a number of them enlisting in organizations were for the distant states of Massachusetts and Michigan, I determined to see the Governor of this state, and suggest the organization of Regiments within its limits, and thus obtain a credit for the Negroes in the States quota. The plan to be similiar to that adopted for Missouri. I, accordingly, repaired to Frankfort and had a full conversation with Governor Bramlette, detailing my plan that the state might receive credit for the Colored Troops, and that the owners of the slaves might receive from the Recruiting officers, certificates for all slaves who might enlist. …
I don't see the need to flood our host's resources with endless text. In understood your post to mean that leftists always invoke the Hitler card. I answered that below. If there was more to it than that, then just say it without pages of copied text.
My #590 was a response to FLT-bird #594, additional addressee wardaddy. You were not included. "I hope the negroes' fidelity will be duly rewarded and regret that we are not in a position to aid and protect them. There is, I observe, a controversy which I regret as to allowing negroes to testify in court. From brother Joe [Joseph Davis], many years ago, I derived the opinion that they should be made competent witnesses, the jury judging of their credibility. (Jefferson Davis: Private Letters 1823-1889, selected and edited by Hudson Strode, New York: De Capo Press, 1995, reprint, p. 188)
Compare that to this statement. "My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuses...We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude...You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be."
How do you reconcile this with the quote you posted? The same way you would reconcile Hitler's quote in 1945 with his actions. In defeat, they were both trying to distance themselves from what they had done.
Lincoln teamed up with Democrat Andrew Johnson as his running mate and they won the nomination at the convention of the National Union Party, and the pair won election as members of the National Union Party.
Very true, Lincoln had the dual challenge of abolishing slavery while reuniting the country. Both were accomplished, at least legally, although he didn't live to see the states ratify the 13th Amendment.
You may have forgotten, but it still happened. Blacks were enlisted in the North and South prior to 1863, and some were cited and rewarded for their acts of bravery. The fact cannot be erased from history by forgetting about it.
I put forgotten in quotes, because that's how the link I posted put it. I never said blacks didn't serve before the CW, but only that recruitment of blacks had stopped long before the Civil War.
I acknowledged you were correct about recruiting blacks earlier in the decade, but that had stopped before the Civil War, to be revived in the North in 1863. Before then, the North was hesitant about recruiting blacks because they didn't want to alienate the border states, fears that turned out to be unfounded. Here's that link again, which says all of this.