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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans' gains in civil rights and other realms. Levin also investigates the roles that African Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers, an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history.

Moore, librarian of the New York Historical Society, discusses the role of African Americans in the Revolutionary War -- the wrangling over whether to allow Black troops to be armed and to fight, especially in the southern states -- and the formation of Black units from both northern and southern colonies.

A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1865 (originally published in 1888) by pioneer African American historian George Washington Williams remains a classic text in African American literature and Civil War history. In this powerful narrative, Williams, who served in the U.S. Colored Troops, tells the battle experiences of the almost 200,000 black men who fought for the Union cause. Determined to document the contributions of his fellow black soldiers and to underscore the valor and manhood of his race, Williams gathered his material from the official records of U.S. and foreign governments and from the orderly books and personal recollections of officers commanding Negro troops during the American Civil War. The new edition of this important text includes an introductory essay by the award-winning historian John David Smith. In his essay, Smith narrates and evaluates the book’s contents, analyzes its reception by contemporary critics, and evaluates Williams’s work within the context of its day and its place in current historiography.

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.

The heart of this book is the remarkable Civil War diary of the author’s great-grandfather, William Benjamin Gould, an escaped slave who served in the United States Navy from 1862 until the end of the war. The diary vividly records Gould’s activity as part of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron off the coast of North Carolina and Virginia; his visits to New York and Boston; the pursuit to Nova Scotia of a hijacked Confederate cruiser; and service in European waters pursuing Confederate ships constructed in Great Britain and France. Gould’s diary is one of only three known diaries of African American sailors in the Civil War. It is distinguished not only by its details and eloquent tone (often deliberately understated and sardonic), but also by its reflections on war, on race, on race relations in the Navy, and on what African Americans might expect after the war. The book includes introductory chapters that establish the context of the diary narrative, an annotated version of the diary, a brief account of Gould’s life in Massachusetts after the war, and William B. Gould IV’s thoughts about the legacy of his great-grandfather and his own journey of discovery in learning about this remarkable man.

Stephens was a black reporter for the black newspaper Weekly Anglo-African when the Civil War broke out. He joined the 54th Massachusetts, the first black Union regiment. Promoted to sergeant, he stormed Battery Wagner with his regiment. Surviving the Union defeat, Stephens served with the 54th through the end of the war.