Freedom's Soldiers tells the story of the 200,000 black men who fought in the Civil War, in their own words and those of eyewitnesses.

A photographic record of a black regiment's contribution to safeguarding Alaska from Japanese invasion

Includes a selection of Higginson's wartime letters, this volume offers a picture of the radical interracial solidarity brought about by the transformative experience of the army camp and of American Civil War life.

Eagles on Their Buttons is a fascinating examination of the Fifth Regiment of Infantry, United States Colored Troops -- the Union Army's first black regiment from Ohio. Although the Fifth USCT was one of more than 150 regiments of black troops making up more than 10 percent of the Union Army at the end of the war, it was unique. The majority of USCT regiments were made up of freed men who viewed the army as an escape from slavery and a chance to take up arms against their former masters. The men serving in the 5th USCT, however, were freemen who were raised in a northern state and saw serving in the army both as a way to gain equal rights under the law and as an opportunity to prove their worth as men. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Black soldiers first entered the regular army of the United States in the summer of 1866. While their segregated regiments served in the American West for the next three decades, the promise of the Reconstruction era gave way to the repressiveness of Jim Crow. But black men found a degree of equality in the service: the army treated them no worse than it did their white counterparts. The Black Regulars uses army correspondence, court martial transcripts, and pension applications to tell who these men were often in their own words: how they were recruited and how their officers were selected; how the black regiments survived hostile Congressional hearings and stringent budget cuts; how enlisted men spent their time, both on and off duty; and how regimental chaplains tried to promote literacy through the army’s schools. The authors shed new light on the military justice system, relations between black troops and their mostly white civilian neighbors, their professional reputations, and what veterans faced when they left the army for civilian life.

In 1998, the author learned about a new monument in Washington, D.C., created to honor the black soldiers and sailors who had served in the Civil War. What she was about to learn; however, was that her great grandfather's name would not be among those remembered there. Why not? Because he had not served in one of the segregated units whose members' names are engraved on the memorial wall. Instead, Crowder Pacien/Patience had served in a white regiment. An identifiably "Col'd" man, he had been a private in the 103rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. After having been told that there had been no black soldiers serving in white regiments, the author made a hypothesis that if there had been one such black soldier in a white regiment, as she knew, then there might have been others. This series traces the author's journey to such proof. The hundreds of names listed here should be proof enough for the "nay-sayers" to conclude that black men indeed did serve in white regiments. Chapters in Volume II include: Difficulties with Finding Facts, C-Span Book TV Presentation, Mixed Race Regiments, Honoring Civil War Ancestors, Recruitment of Black Soldiers, General Orders No. 323 and the Undercooks, Three Undercooks Garrisoned at Plymouth, N.C., A Trip to the Carlisle Barracks, Finding the Gravesites of Black Soldiers, A Gravesite Lost in North Carolina, One Descendant's Determination, and Conclusion. Chapters are followed by lists: Additional Black Soldiers Alphabetized, Additional Black Soldiers by States, and Final Resting Places. Numerous photographs and illustrations, End Notes, Sources, and an index to full-names, subjects and places add to the value of this work. Historians and Civil War "buffs" alike will find new information revealed in this series, even though so many years have passed since the last shot of the war was fired.