How did the war for union become a fight for black freedom?

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Figure false: Company E, Fourth U.S. Colored Infantry, Fort Lincoln, Virginia
Figure false: The Lincoln administration was slow to accept black soldiers into the Union army, in part because of lingering doubts about their ability to fight. But Colonel Thomas W. Higginson, the white commander of the Union’s First South Carolina Infantry, which was made up of former slaves, celebrated his men’s courage: “No officer in this regiment now doubts that the key to the successful prosecution of this war lies in the unlimited employment of black troops. … Instead of leaving their homes and families to fight they are fighting for their homes and families.” Before the war was over, ex-slaves and free blacks filled 145 Union regiments. Library of Congress.

CHRONOLOGY

1861

  • – First Confiscation Act.

1862

  • – Second Confiscation Act.
  • – Militia Act.

1863

  • – Emancipation Proclamation is issued.

FOR A YEAR AND A HALF, Lincoln insisted that the North fought strictly to save the Union and not to abolish slavery. Nevertheless, the war for union became a war for African American freedom. Each month the conflict dragged on, it became clearer that the Confederate war machine depended heavily on slavery. Rebel armies used slaves to build fortifications, haul materiel, tend horses, and perform camp chores. On the southern home front, slaves labored in ironworks and shipyards, and they grew the food that fed both soldiers and civilians. Slavery undergirded the Confederacy as certainly as it had the Old South. Union military commanders and politicians alike gradually realized that to defeat the Confederacy, the North would have to destroy slavery. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation began the work, and soon African Americans flooded into the Union army, where they fought against the Confederacy and for black freedom.