Climbing Up to Glory

by Wilbert L. Jenkins

  12 Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 214-15.

  13 Edwin S. Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 243.

  14 Noah Andre Trudeau, ed., Voices of the 55th: Letters from the 55th Massachusetts Volunteers, 1861-1865 (Dayton, OH: Morningside House, 1996), 62.

  15 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 211.

  16 Ibid., 243.

  17 Trudeau, ed., Voices of the 55th, 62.

  18 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 249.

  19 Ibid., 260-61.

  20 Trudeau, ed., Voices of the 55th, 73-74.

  21 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 262.

  22 Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (New York: Meridian Books, 1990), 114.

  23 Karenga, Introduction to Black Studies, 104; Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 216.

  24 Virginia M. Adams, ed., On the Altar of Freedom: A Black Soldier’s Civil War Letters from the Front (By Corporal James Henry Gooding) (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991), 66-67.

  25 Jack D. Foner, Blacks and the Military in American History (New York: Praeger, 1974), 47-48; Lt. Col. (Ret.) Michael Lee Lanning, The African-American Soldier: From Crispus Attucks to Colin Powell (Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1997), 55-59; Gary A. Donaldson, The History of AfricanAmericans in the Military (Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1991), 42-43; Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 269-71; Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Making of America, 3d rev. ed. (New York: MacMillan, 1987), 121; Mary F. Berry and John W. Blassingame, Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 301.

  26 Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 215.

  27 Boyer, The Enduring Vision, 1:497.

  28 Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 215.

  29 Adams, ed., On the Altar of Freedom, 48-49.

  30 Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 215.

  31 Redkey ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 237.

  32 Ibid.

  33 Trudeau, ed., Voices of the 55th, 83.

  34 Ibid., 86.

  35 Adams, ed., On the Altar of Freedom, 83.

  36 Trudeau, ed., Voices of the 55th, 93.

  37 Ibid., 83-84.

  38 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 241; Foner, Blacks and the Military, 43.

  39 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 241-42.

  40 Trudeau, ed., Voices of the 55th, 156.

  41 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 247.

  42 Trudeau, ed., Voices of the 55th, 156.

  43 Ibid., 154-55.

  44 Adams, ed., On the Altar of Freedom, 24.

  45 Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 217.

  46 Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 160.

  47 Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 217.

  48 Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1992), 447.

  49 Ibid., 447-49.

  50 Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 216.

  51 Dudley T. Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1956), 267-69; Trudeau, ed., Voices of the 55th, 91.

  52 Trudeau, ed., Voices of the 55th, 91.

  53 Ibid., 59-60.

  54 Foner, Blacks and the Military, 44; Lanning, The African-American Soldier, 53; Donaldson, The History of African-Americans, 45.

  55 Noah Andre Trudeau, Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998), 168.

  56 Cornish, The Sable Arm, 175.

  57 Jack Hurst, Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 176,177; Brian S. Wills, A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 180, 185, 187-96.

  58 Hurst, Nathan Bedford Forrest, 175; Cornish, The Sable Arm, 175.

  59 Trudeau, ed., Like Men of War, 169.

  60 Cornish, The Sable Arm, 176; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 172.

  61 Cornish, The Sable Arm, 176.

  62 Donaldson, The History of African-Americans, 45.

  63 Colin A. Palmer, Passageways: An Interpretive History of Black America, 2 vols. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998), 1:304-5.

  64 Cornish, The Sable Arm, 176.

  65 Gregory J. W. Urwin, “ ‘We Cannot Treat Negroes ... As Prisoners of War’: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in Civil War Arkansas,” Civil War History 42, no. 3 (1996): 196-97.

  66 Ibid., 197.

  67 Ibid.

  68 Ibid.

  69 Cornish, The Sable Arm, 177.

  70 Urwin, “ ‘We Cannot Treat Negroes,’ ” 207-8.

  71 Ibid., 208.

  72 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 276.

  73 Ibid., 274.

  74 Foner, Blacks and the Military, 44; Lanning, The African-American Soldier, 53.

  75 Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 216.

  76 Cornish, The Sable Arm, 178.

  77 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 165.

  78 Berlin et al., eds., Free at Last, 449-51.

  79 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 60.

  80 Genevieve S. Gray, ed., Army Life in a Black Regiment (By Colonel Thomas W. Higginson) (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1970), 29.

  81 Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War, 211.

  82 Ibid.

  83 R. J. M. Blackett, ed., Thomas Morris Chester: Black Civil War Correspondent, His Dispatches from the Virginia Front (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), 96-97.

  84 Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War, 211-12.

  85 Blackett, ed., Thomas Morris Chester, 118-19; Berlin et al., eds., Free at Last, 484-86.

  86 Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 115.

  87 Foner, Blacks and the Military, 45.

  88 Harding, There Is a River, 241.

  89 Trudeau, ed., Voices of the 55th, 113-14.

  90 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 135-36.

  91 Blackett, ed., Thomas Morris Chester, 118-19.

  92 Trudeau, ed., Voices of the 55th, 116.

  93 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 214.

  94 Ibid.

  95 Adams, ed., On the Altar of Freedom, 13.

  96 Ibid.

  97 Trudeau, ed., Voices of the 55th, 125.

  98 Ibid., 40.

  99 Ibid., 51.

  100 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 205.

  101 Berlin et al., eds., Free at Last, 359-60.

  102 Ibid., 389-92.

  103 Ibid., 464; Ira Berlin and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era (New York: New Press, 1992), 97.

  104 Berlin and Rowland, eds., Families and Freedom, 100.

  105 Ibid., 99.

  106 Ibid.

  107 McFeely, Sapelo’s People, 78-79.

  108 Redkey ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 159.

  109 Wilbert L. Jenkins, Seizing the New Day: African Americans in Post-Civil War Charleston (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998), 40.

  110 Reginald Hildebrand, “Methodism, the Military and Freedom” (Paper presented at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, Chicago, 1990), 5.

  111 Rawick, ed., The American Slave, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon, and Washington Narratives, 106.

  112 Ibid., Vol. 9, Mississippi Narratives, Part 4, 1877.

  113 Ibid., Vol. 12, Oklahoma Narratives, 242.

  114 Ibid., Vol. 6, Mississippi Narratives, Part 1, 136.

  115 Ibid., Vol. 12, Oklahoma Narratives, 177.

  116 Ibid., Vol. 1, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Ka
nsas, Maryland, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Washington Narratives, 20.

  117 Ibid., Vol. 6, Mississippi Narratives, Part 1, 193.

  118 Berlin and Rowland, eds., Families and Freedom, 69.

  119 Ibid., 69-70.

  120 Ibid., 71-72.

  121 Ibid., 199-201; Berlin et al., eds., Free at Last, 493-95.

  122 Berlin et al., eds., Free at Last, 394-95.

  123 Berlin and Rowland, eds., Families and Freedom, 201.

  124 Berlin et al., eds., Free at Last, 530.

  125 Berlin and Rowland, eds., Families and Freedom, 137-38.

  126 Marion B. Lucas, A History of Blacks in Kentucky, 2 vols. (Lexington: Kentucky Historical Society, 1992), 1:168.

  127 Trudeau, ed., Voices of the 55th, 52, 82.

  128 Ibid., 42.

  129 Lucas, A History of Blacks in Kentucky, 1:167.

  130 Ibid.

  131 Gray ed., Army Life in a Black Regiment, 20; Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 159.

  132 James M. McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted during the Warfor the Union (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 211.

  133 Ibid., 212-13; Lucas, A History of Blacks in Kentucky, 1:169; Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 226.

  134 McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War, 211.

  135 Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 226-27.

  136 Lucas, A History of Blacks in Kentucky, 1:169.

  137 Adams, ed., On the Altar of Freedom, 85-86.

  138 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 119-21.

  139 Ervin L. Jordan Jr., Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), 283.

  140 Ibid., 285; Hampton Institute, The Negro in Virginia: Compiled by Workers of the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Virginia (New York: Hastings House, 1940), 199.

  141 Ella Forbes, African American Women during the Civil War (New York: Garland, 1998), 41-42.

  142 Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters, 259.

  143 Donald Yacovone, ed., A Voice of Thunder: The Civil War Letters of George E. Stephens (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 201.

  144 Patricia W. Romero and Willie Lee Rose, eds., Reminiscences of My Life: A Black Woman’s Civil War Memoirs (By Susie King Taylor) (New York: Markus Wiener, 1988), 11-12.

  145 Rawick, ed., The American Slave, Vol. 9, Mississippi Narratives, Part 4, 1903-1904.

  146 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 123-25.

  147 Jordan, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees, 283.

  148 Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men, 170.

  149 Whittington B. Johnson, Black Savannah, 1788-1864 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1996), 166.

  150 Harding, There Is a River, 253.

  151 Hampton Institute, The Negro in Virginia, 188.

  152 Johnson, Black Savannah, 166.

  153 Quarles, The Negro in the Making, 121-22.

  154 Jordan, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees, 128.

  155 Russell Duncan, ed., Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), 372.

  156 Jordan, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees, 128.

  157 Ibid., 130.

  158 Martha Hodes, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the 19th-Century South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 139-40.

  159 Jordan, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees, 131.

  160 Ibid., 132.

  161 Hodes, White Women, Black Men, 141-42.

  162 Jordan, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees, 132.

  163 Hodes, White Women, Black Men, 141, 143.

  164 Jordan, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees, 133.

  165 Ibid.

  166 Ibid.

  167 Ibid.

  168 Rawick, ed., The American Slave, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon, and Washington Narratives, 125.

  169 Peter Bardaglio, “The Children of Jubilee: African American Childhood in Wartime,” in Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, eds., Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 218-19.

  170 Ibid., 219.

  171 Ibid.

  172 Ibid.

  173 Ibid.

  174 Ibid., 220.

  175 Ibid., 220-21.

  176 Ibid., 221.

  177 Ibid.

  178 Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 212.

  179 Hampton Institute, The Negro in Virginia, 193.

  180 Rawick, ed., The American Slave, Vol. 9, Mississippi Narratives, Part 4, 1475.

  181 Ibid., Vol. 7, Mississippi Narratives, Part 2, 618.

  182 Ibid., Vol. 7, Mississippi Narratives, Part 2, 553.

  183 Ibid., Vol. 5, Texas Narratives, Part 4, 1852.

  184 Ibid., Vol. 6, Mississippi Narratives, Part 1, 185.

  185 Ibid., Vol. 8, Mississippi Narratives, Part 3, 1107.

  186 Ibid., Vol. 7, Mississippi Narratives, Part 2, 398.

  187 Ibid., Vol. 8, Mississippi Narratives, Part 3, 890.

  188 Jordan, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees, 191.

  189 Richard Rollins, “Black Southerners in Gray,” in Richard Rollins, ed., Black Southerners in Gray: Essays on Afro-Americans in Confederate Armies (Redondo Beach, CA: Rank and File Publications, 1994), 12.

  190 Ibid., 15.

  191 Rawick, ed., The American Slave, Vol. 1, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Washington Narratives, 139-41.

  192 Ibid., Vol. 7, Mississippi Narratives, Part 2, 451.

  193 Jordan, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees, 225.

  194 Rawick, ed., The American Slave, Vol. 10, Texas Narratives, Part 9, 4260.

  195 Rollins, “Black Southerners in Gray,” 2.

  196 Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 213.

  197 See, for example, James G. Hollandsworth Jr., The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience during the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995).

  198 Rollins, “Black Southerners in Gray,” 2.

  199 Ibid., 20.

  200 Jordan, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees, 228.

  201 Johnson, Black Savannah, 157-58.

  202 Jenkins, Seizing the New Day, 23.

  203 Rollins, “Black Southerners in Gray,” 4.

  204 Jordan, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees, 226.

  205 Rollins, “Black Southerners in Gray,” 4.

  206 Hampton Institute, The Negro in Virginia, 250.

  207 Rawick, ed., The American Slave, Vol. 7, Texas Narratives, Part 6, 2857.

  208 Marli F. Weiner, Mistresses and Slaves: Plantation Women in South Carolina, 1830-80 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 165.

  209 Johnson, Black Savannah, 161.

  210 Rollins, “Black Southerners in Gray,” 7; Hollandsworth, The Louisiana Native Guards, 4-6; Jenkins, Seizing the New Day, 23.

  211 Rollins, “Black Southerners in Gray,” 8-9.

  212 Robert F. Durden, “Georgia’s Blacks and Their Masters in the Civil War,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 69, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 358.

  213 Jeffrey J. Crow, Paul D. Escott, and Flora J. Hatley, A History of African Americans in North Carolina (Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History 1992), 74.

  214 Yacovone, ed., A Voice of Thunder, 138.

  215 Berlin et al., eds., Free at Last, 5.