Black men were not legally allowed to serve as combat soldiers in the Confederate Army-they were cooks, teamsters, and manual laborers. Most of these were forced to accompany their masters or were forced to toil behind the lines. Some black Southerners aided the Confederacy. By the time the war was over, black soldiers made up 10% of the Union Army and had suffered more than 10,000 combat casualties. After some time in legal limbo, many Southern black men took up arms against their former masters and distinguished themselves on campaign and on the battlefield. Library of CongressĪfter the Proclamation, the refugees in the contraband camps, along with free black people throughout the North, began to enlist in the Union Army in even greater proportion than Northern white men. Although many now claim that the Proclamation was effectively useless because it established policy for a foreign nation, the practical reality is that the Union, by force of arms, had every necessary power to establish policy in its occupied territories, just as Confederate armies exercised their power to capture and enslave free black people during their brief occupations of Northern territories.įreed slaves smile for the camera amidst the ruins of Richmond in 1865.įreed slaves amidst the ruins of Richmond in 1865. When the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, Union forces had regained control of large swaths of the South. These people, sometimes called “contrabands,” as in “confiscated enemy property,” frequently served as scouts and spies for the Union soldiers. Vast columns of escaped slaves followed almost every major Union army at one point or another. Before the Emancipation Proclamation was officially adopted, these escapes usually meant congregating around the Union armies that were operating in Southern territory. Many Southern slaves took advantage of the fog of war to escape towards freedom. In the midst of a see-saw struggle that promised freedom as well as desolation, these men, women, and children made difficult and highly personal decisions in extraordinary circumstances. The lives of Southern black people changed immeasurably during the war years.
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