1863
January 1 • President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.
• Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists celebrate.
Winter • Lincoln authorizes raising two black regiments in Massachusetts.
• Frederick Douglass publishes his famous “Men of Color, to Arms!” and fellow abolitionists join him to recruit black troops.
Charles Douglass, son of Frederick Douglass. Courtesy of Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University
• Lewis and Charles Douglass, sons of Frederick Douglass, join the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers.
March • South Carolina Volunteers take Jacksonville, Florida.
April • Lewis Douglass is appointed Sergeant Major of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers.
May • War Department authorizes the United States Colored Troops (USCT), segregated black troops led by white officers.
• Native Guard storms Port Hudson, allowing Union forces to overtake the fort.
July • Massachusetts 54th leads charge on Fort Wagner. Sergeant William Carney is the first of over 20 African Americans to earn the Medal of Honor.
• Frederick Douglass visits President Lincoln to pressure government for equal rights for black troops.
Picket station at Dutch Gap, Virginia. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpb-01930
Summer • Frederick Douglass Jr. recruits black troops in Mississippi.
August • After 15 years as editor of his newspapers, Frederick Douglass ends publication of the Douglass’ Monthly to devote more efforts to recruitment.
Fall • Alexander T. Augusta is commissioned as surgeon for the 7th USCT.
September • USCT troops protest unequal wages, refusing to accept any pay until it is equal pay. Many of their white officers join the protest.
African American soldiers. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, C-USZ62-10SSS6
1864
February • In heavy fighting at Olustee, Florida, the 54th Massachusetts and other black troops distinguish themselves for bravery.
April • Fort Pillow massacre of black troops in Tennessee.
July • Black troops suffer tragic losses in a battle at Petersburg, Virginia, known as “The Crater.”
August • Lincoln invites Douglass to visit and give advice.
Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-118565
• Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood, 4th Regiment USCT, earns a Medal of Honor in the battle of New Market Heights.
• General Sherman’s March to the Sea begins. Contrabands pour into Union lines and help make the campaign successful.
Fall • USCT help win major battles everywhere they fight.
1865
February • Charleston, Virginia, falls. The Massachusetts 54th and 55th are among the first Union troops to enter the city. • Martin R. Delany is commissioned as a major in the US Army.
Spring • Congress approves equal pay for USCT, including back pay from the date of enlistment.
Sergeant Major Thomas R. Hawkins, Medal of Honor recipient. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-118559
April • Petersburg falls. Black troops are the first to march into the city, singing “John Brown Song.” Remaining black troops join Ulysses S. Grant to chase Confederate troops.
April • Richmond, Virginia, falls and the USCT Cavalry leads Union troops as they ride in to take over the city.
• Black war correspondent Thomas Morris Chester covers the fall of Richmond and other news from the front for the major daily newspaper the Philadelphia Press.
• Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox on April 9.
• Robert Smalls pilots the Planter with African American passengers to join the celebration after Union troops take over Fort Sumter.
• Union cavalry advances through North Carolina and well-known poet George Moses Horton is finally set free.
June 19 • Union troops ride into Galveston, Texas, and officially free the last group of slaves (still held in captivity even after war’s end). Juneteenth is celebrated each year to commemorate this historic event.
Sergeant John Lawson stayed at his station through the heat of the battle on the deck of the warship Hartford. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-118553
A Letter Home
Frederick Douglass’s son Lewis Douglass wrote home to tell his sweetheart of the terrible battle he fought when his troop led the assault on Fort Wagner.
MORRIS ISLAND. S. C. July 20
MY DEAR AMELIA:
I have been in two fights, and am unhurt. I am about to go in another I believe to-night. Our men fought well on both occasions. The last was desperate we charged that terrible battery on Morris Island known as Fort Wagoner, and were repulsed with a loss of 3 killed and wounded. I escaped unhurt from amidst that perfect hail of shot and shell. It was terrible. I need not particularize the papers will give a better than I have time to give. My thoughts are with you often, you are as dear as ever, be good enough to remember it as I no doubt you will. As I said before we are on the eve of another fight and I am very busy and have just snatched a moment to write you. I must necessarily be brief. Should I fall in the next fight killed or wounded I hope to fall with my face to the foe.
If I survive I shall write you a long letter. DeForrest of your city is wounded George Washington is missing, Jacob Carter is missing, Chas Reason wounded Chas Whiting, Chas Creamer all wounded. The above are in hospital.
This regiment has established its reputation as a fighting regiment not a man flinched, though it was a trying time. Men fell all around me. A shell would explode and clear a space of twenty feet, our men would close up again, but it was no use we had to retreat, which was a very hazardous undertaking. How I got out of that fight alive I cannot tell, but I am here. My Dear girl I hope again to see you. I must bid you farewell should I be killed. Remember if I die I die in a good cause. I wish we had a hundred thousand colored troops we would put an end to this war.
Good Bye to all Write soon
Your own loving LEWIS
Two Great Men
Frederick Douglass met with President Abraham Lincoln twice at the White House during the Civil War. For his first visit, Douglass felt compelled to go. “My efforts to secure just and fair treatment for the colored soldiers did not stop at letters and speeches,” Douglass explained. “I was induced to go to Washington and lay the complaints of my people before President Lincoln.”
Although he was a famous abolitionist and brilliant orator, Douglass felt unsure about meeting with the president but nonetheless felt it extremely urgent. “I need not say that at the time I undertook this mission it required much more nerve than a similar one would require now,” Douglass remembered. “The distance between the black man and the white American citizen was immeasurable. I was an ex-slave, identified with a despised race, and yet I was to meet the most exalted person in this great republic. It was altogether an unwelcome duty, and one from which I would gladly have been excused. I could not know what kind of a reception would be accorded me.”
Lewis Douglass, son of Frederick Douglass. Courtesy of Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University
Frederick Douglass visited President Lincoln at the White House in Washington, DC. Photo by author
The meeting of these two great men, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, stands as a landmark in the shifting sands of time. “I shall never forget my first interview with this great man,” Frederick Douglass said. He was shown into the room where the president received visitors.
The room bore the marks of business, and the persons in it, the president included, appeared to be much overworked and tired. Long lines of care were already deeply written on Mr. Lincoln’s brow, and his strong face, full of earnestness, lighted up as soon as my name was mentioned. As I approached and was introduced to him he arose and extended his hand, and bade me welcome. I at once felt myself in the presence of
an honest man—one whom I could love, honor, and trust without reserve or doubt. Proceeding to tell him who I was and what I was doing, he promptly, but kindly, stopped me, saying: “I know who you are, Mr. Douglass.”
The president invited Douglass to sit down. Frederick Douglass explained the reason for his visit, “that the government did not, in several respects, deal fairly” with the black soldiers fighting on behalf of the Union. President Lincoln asked Douglass to give him details.
Douglass outlined three major points. First, he stated that black troops should receive the same pay as white soldiers. Second, black soldiers should receive the same protection when captured as white soldiers did. And finally, black soldiers should receive the same awards for heroism on the battlefield.
President Lincoln discussed all three issues openly with Douglass. When Frederick Douglass left the White House, he concluded, “Though I was not entirely satisfied with his views, I was so well satisfied with the man and with the educating tendency of the conflict that I determined to go on with the recruiting.”
Sojourner Truth (1797-1883)
As a famous abolitionist and outspoken advocate of women’s rights, Sojourner Truth traveled extensively to promote civil rights. A former slave, she shared the speaker’s platform at various times with Frederick Douglass. During the Civil War, Sojourner Truth visited with President Lincoln.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-16225
At the time, Douglass didn’t know whether his visit had made any difference. But it had. By the end of the war, black troops were receiving equal pay, retroactive to the time of their enlistment. Laws were made to give them better protection. And over 20 African Americans were awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism during battle.
An Invitation
The second time Frederick Douglass met with Abraham Lincoln was in response to an invitation the president sent to him to ask for advice. President Lincoln openly discussed his fears that the Civil War might end and slavery not end with it. “What he said on this day showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had ever seen before in anything spoken or written by him,” Douglass said.
The president expressed his dismay that not as many slaves were joining Union forces as he had hoped after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Douglass explained to him that “slaveholders knew how to keep such things from their slaves, and probably very few knew of his proclamation.” They discussed plans for Douglass to raise a band of spies and scouts who could sneak deep into the South and declare emancipation to slaves, urging them to escape and join Union troops.
First Sergeant Powhatan Beaty received the Medal of Honor for taking command of his unit in a fierce battle after all the white officers had been killed. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-118556
While Douglass talked with the president, another visitor was announced who wished to speak with Lincoln. “Tell Governor Buckingham to wait, for I want to have a long talk with my friend Frederick Douglass,” was President Lincoln’s reply. Douglass insisted he could wait while the other visitor was attended to, but Lincoln would not hear of it.
This demonstration of respect touched Douglass deeply. Even though Douglass often disagreed strongly with Lincoln’s politics—for example, Lincoln’s viewpoints on issues such as colonization (Lincoln supported having free blacks move away from America, which Douglass strongly opposed) or immediate equal rights for black troops—he also held a great measure of respect for the president. “I have often said elsewhere,” Douglass stated, “what I wish to repeat here, that Mr. Lincoln was not only a great president, but a great man—too great to be small in anything.”
Frederick Douglass left the White House with intentions to fulfill the president’s plans. But the winds of war rapidly changed. Shortly after this meeting, President Lincoln received news that Union troops had taken over Atlanta, Georgia. William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea would begin. This great victory would bring the support the president needed for reelection and help bring a final end to slavery.
CREATE A MEMORY
Honoring African American heroes who served during the Civil War, the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum opened its doors in 2011, 150 years after the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter. The museum is collecting information, artifacts, photographs, letters, and stories from families whose relatives were enlisted in the USCT.
You can help our nation create a lasting memory. Search through photo albums, old letters, and souvenirs in your family’s treasured collections. Visit your grandparents, aunts, or uncles, and ask the oldest ones to tell you stories about the Civil War that their ancestors told them. If you have a relative who enlisted in the USCT, the segregated black troops led by white officers, search for his name at the National Park Service Civil War Soldiers and Sailors index at www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/soldiers.cfm.
Write down the information you find. Take videos of your relatives talking about the stories they remember. Write some of their stories down. Then get in touch with the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum by looking up the contact information on their website at www.afroamcivilwar.org. Share your discoveries with the museum.
The Question of Civil Rights
By the middle of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass rallied a new cry. Douglass urged his audiences to consider the freedom and civil rights of newly freed slaves. Having grown up within the slave system Douglass understood, as few other leaders in the North could, that simply winning a war could not change attitudes of hatred, violence, and oppression that had ruled in the rebel states for generations.
The great visionary that he was, Frederick Douglass predicted that the rights of former slaves would quickly be overthrown unless drastic actions were taken. He urged antislavery societies to continue their work, changing their focus from bringing an end to slavery to bringing freedoms and civil rights to the former slave. This became his new passion, his new life work, and his new focus. It would continue after the war came to an end and all his predictions came true.
An End and a New Beginning
The Civil War, great and terrible, finally came to an end. Frederick Douglass rejoiced along with the nation, sad and tired as it was from four years of devastation and loss. Plans began to take shape for restoring the war-torn nation.
Frederick Douglass spoke at Faneuil Hall in Boston to celebrate the news of the fall of Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. Photo by author
When famous orator Frederick Douglass spoke to a packed audience here inside Faneuil Hall to celebrate the fall of Richmond, he shared the speaker’s platform with Robert Winthrop. This was the same aristocrat Douglass had once served 25 years earlier as a waiter in the mansion of the upcoming governor of Massachusetts. Photo by author
“After the fall of Richmond the collapse of the rebellion was not long delayed,” Douglass said, “though it did not perish without adding to its long list of atrocities one which sent a thrill of horror throughout the civilized world, in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.”
Douglass remembers that he was at his home in Rochester, New York, when news of the president’s murder came speeding along the wires. “Our citizens,” Douglass said, “not knowing what else to do in the agony of the hour, betook themselves to the city hall. Though all hearts ached for utterance, few felt like speaking. We were stunned and overwhelmed by a crime and calamity hitherto unknown to our country and to our government.”
Near the end of the gathering, Douglass was called upon to speak. He rose and spoke from a heart filled with grief.
After that night, Douglass returned home and reflected on his life, the end of the Civil War, the end of slavery, and now Lincoln’s assassination. Douglass had dedicated his life to bringing an end to slavery in America. He shared, “My great and exceeding joy over these stupendous achievements, especially over the abolition of slavery (which had been the deepest desire and the great labor of my life), was slightly tinged with a feeling of sadness
.”
His life’s great work was behind him.
What future could lie ahead?
Black Troops in the Civil War
More than 169,600 African Americans engaged in active service. Nearly 37,000 African American soldiers sacrificed their lives.
Black troops fought in almost 450 battles, including:
Port Hudson Olustee
New Market Heights
Nashville Fort Pillow
Hatcher’s Run
Milliken’s Bend
Honey Hill
Petersburg
Deep Bottom
Fort Blakely
Fort Wagner
Fair Oaks
Poison Spring
Fort Fisher
Chaffin’s Farm
The Colored Soldiers
BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR (selected stanzas)
“The 54th Massachusetts regiment, under the leadership of Colonel Shaw in the attack on Fort Wagner, Morris Island, South Carolina, in 1863.” Mural at the former Recorder of Deeds building built in Washington, DC, in 1943. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-DIG-highsm-09903
Frederick Douglass for Kids Page 11