>> they wouldware garments made of homespun cloth. this homespun cloth would be much more rough text toured. be must less fine than the kinds of goods they could import from great britain. but by wearing this homespun cloth, women were advise inly and vividly and physically displaying their political sentiments. >> sunday night at 9:00, george mason university professor rose marie zegari on the role of american women in the revolutionary war. >> there's a new web site for american history tv where you can find our schedules and preview our upcoming programs. watch featured video from our weekly series as well as access htv's u.s. history tweets. history in the news. follow american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span

3. and online at c-span.org/history. this week on the civil war, author william doback discusses his book freedom by the sword, the u.s. colored troops 1862 to 1867. it examines how african-american troops were used to improve union intelligence and the varying attitudes of union leaders toward black soldiers. this is 40 minutes. >> good afternoon. my name is lopez matthews and i'm secretary of the national archives after row american i'm stre to welcome you today to hear william a.doback discuss colored troops -- u.s. colored troops during the civil war era. and i'm here today just to let you know that the after row

american history society, atnar, produces programs similar to this. not this program but programs similar to this pro moegt the study of african-american history through records at the national archives. and we have a number of programs coming up which you may have seen our flier on the table outside. discussing african americans in the civil war since that is the theme for african-american history month this year, celebrating the sus ca centennial of the civil war, if you have time and you're around please come back and attend our other programs. we actually have one that i will be presenting on february 16th on black soldiers from maryland in the civil war. so if you have time, come back and join us. now i would like to also introduce mr. michael knight who is archive specialist in holdings protection here at nara and he is actually going to introduce mr. doback.

[ applause ] >> i'd like to echo what lopez said and welcome you to the national archives records administration. we have a very special speaker today, dr. william a.doback, going to discuss his newest work freedom by the sword, the u.s. colored troops 1862 to 1867. he received his ph.d. -- his published disertation, fort riley and its neighbors, 1853 to 1985, won the edward a.tehan in. he worked at the national archives beginning mid 90s. while here he began working on his next study with his co-author thomas d. phillips called the black regular, 1866 to 1898. this book was published in 2001. in 2003, the superb work received the western history

association's robert m. utley award as the finest book on the military history of the north american western frontier. in 2002, willy joined the staff at the u.s. army center of military history. and in 2003 he began research on "freedom by the sword." so i'd like to introduce dr. doback by noting that all of his military studies have drawn extensively on the records housed here at the national archives. [ applause ] 6 >> thank you. let's see. i guess the microphones are on. so i trust that everyone can hear me. good. in march 2003, my branch chief

at the u.s. army center of military history called me into his office, invited me to sit down and told me that my next project would be to write an operational history of the u.s. colored troops, that is a purely military history. i responded, why? it seemed to me at the time that there were already two perfectly good histories available. dudley cornish's "the sable arm" and joseph grothar's "forged in battle." true, cornish's book appeared in 1956 and grothar's in 1990. but i pointed out that the history of the colored troops was a growth industry. new books were appearing every year. in fact, during the years that i worked on "freedom by the sword" i reviewed six of them.

the bottom in effect told me, never mind. just do it [ laughter ] >> he explained the procedure to me. i would have to write a proposal as if the whole thing had been my idea. a committee would approve it or ask for revisions. the entire process would take a year, that is before i ever got properly started on producing a manuscript. so i set to work to write the proposal. the first step obviously was to reread cornish's book and grothar's. dudley cornish taught a state teacher's college in kansas. and because of the lack of travel funds when he wrote the book, "the sable arm" was researched and written before sputnik even. his main reliance, cornish's main reliance, was on the

official records, the "new york times" on microfilm, and trips to the kansas state historical society. he visited the national archives enough to consult some colored troops bureau material in the adjutant general's records but that was about it. i discovered a couple of years later when i was in the middle of the manuscript the answer to my question why. at that point i was writing about the raising of black regiments in the north and had come to the presentation of regimental colors to the 20th u.s. colored infantry in new york city. and that regiment taking ship for louisiana. now, cornish uses this incident and a long quote from the "new york times" that appeared the next day in the times.

only eight months after the "new york times" draft he wrote "soldiers fully armed was headed for the theater of war. it is only by such occasions that we can at all realize the prodigious revolution which the public mind everywhere is experiencing. such developments are infallible tokens of a new epoch. but cornish ignored the fact that black recruiting in new york had to be undertaken by a private organization because the democratic governor of the state was reluctant to have anything to do with it. city's white militia regiments would not turn out for the occasion. and the leading democratic newspaper "the herald" began its news story. there was an enthusiastic time yesterday among the colored people of the city.

you know, if more sources had been available to cornish he might have drawn a somewhat different conclusion. gohtar writing a generation later had more opportunity to travel and amass the fine bibliography of master collections. i used his to decide which libraries and archives i should visit for my own book. but gothar seemed concerned with the recruitment of black soldiers, their white officers' opinions of them and what happened to them in the army and afterwards. in other words, what was done to them. cornish writing mostly from the published record was interested in the political process behind the formation of the union's black regiments. this left me considerable room

to concentrate on the black soldier as active participants, to tell the story of what they did rather than what was done to them. these two epochral works, i then began on the official records which was available in the library at the center of military history. now, i'd spent the previous year drafting two chapters for one of the center's vietnam combat volumes. and when i came across a union officer in arkansas complaining that confederate agents were running around the state collecting taxes and recruiting soldiers, i said, aha. viet cong infrastructure. right. the term that was used in the 1960s for the parallel system of authority exercised by the

insurgents in vietnam. at the time, i didn't know that the historian daniel e. sutherland had the subject well in hand with an article in the journal of civil war history and an entire volume of savage conflict, the decisive role of guerillas in the american civil war. but the guerilla warfare that raged through most of the south during the larger war gave new meaning to the service of many regiments of u.s. colored troops whom congress had originally relegated to constructing entrenchments, performing camp service, or any military or naval service for which they were found competent in the words of an act of congress passed in july 1862. the fact is that whatever sort of duty the colored troops were an orming, most of them were

overwhelmingly hostile white population. and in places that were subject to confederate raids led by generals like forrest wheeler and others like them, confederate raiders could penetrate as far north as peduka, kentucky or even ride into a union stronghold like memphis to kidnap or kill union in august 1864 failed. the west point atlas of american wars shows for the region west of the appalachians tight little circles around major southern cities with legends like helena 5,000 or chattanooga 20,000 indicating the strength of the union garrison. whatever today's historians may

imagine, there was no secure rear area in the occupied south. the official records of the war of the rebellion, the official records of the union and confederate armies to give the series its full title, consists of 128 volumes published between 1880 and 1900. it is arranged by year first and then by region. and regional organization seemed to suit my book first. the first union offensive that captured confederate territory and held it until the end of the war was in south carolina. and the first black regiments were raised there. south carolina, then i moved to

the gulf coast, then the mississippi valley. and finally north carolina and virginia. it ends -- the book wednesday a chapter on the colored troop's port war service on the rio grande which had to do with the was an entirely different matter from reconstructions. and a final chapter on their service in the rest of the south and forcing reconstructions policies. it's just as well that virginia was the last theater of operations considered in the book because it was the least typical. remember that when winfield scott conceived his so-called n

anaconda plan to defeat the confederacy, the capital of the rebellion was in montgomery, alabama. when the confederate congress vote today move to richmond in may 1861, it changed the whole pattern of the war. union and confederate armies struggled back and forth over roughly 200 miles of country if you allow for confederate raids into maryland and the union campaign on virginia's peninsula in 1862. elsewhere union armies were capturing nashville, new orleans, memphis, vicksburg, port hudson, chattanooga, and for the purposes of our story, the colored troops in virginia were overwhelming ly recruited n

the northern states and were no more use than at first than an equal number of new white regiments. this is an important point. because as i found out while researching the book, escaped slaves were a source of expert local knowledge to union armies going at least back to the landing in south carolina in the fall of 1861. an escaped slave known only for us as brutus viewsed captain gilmore, an officer of engineers. he called brutus "the most intelligent slave i have met here, quite familiar with the riffers and creeks between savannah city and tibe,island. he made his escape last week in a canoe." two years later when the commander of a union raid up the

yazoo river in mississippi wanted to send a message to his headquarters in vicksburg, two sashlg ents of the third mississippi colored cavalry dressed as slaves, which they had been until recently, and delivered the message. in march 1865, seven civilians parentheses colored guided a u.s. infantry up the st. john's river in northern florida to burn a sugar mill and free 91 slaves. gillmore who by this time was a general, mentioned the raid in one of his orders. this expedition planned and executed by colored men under the command of a colored non-commissioned officer reflects great credit on the brave participants and their

leader. the major general commanding thanks these courageous soldiers and scouts and holds up their conduct to their comrades in arms as an example worthy of emulation. local knowledge was important to the union army through the end of the war. besides as one federal officer stationed in northern alabama wrote, "the negros are our only friends." the question of former slaves aiding the union advance brings up an amusing argument in academic circles a few years ago. do the slaves become free as a result of white action? abraham lincoln or the union army. or were they self-emancipated.

james mcpherson, the author of "battle cry of freedom" writing in 1995, noted a tendency in the previous 15 years to slight the role played by abraham lincoln in the end of slavery and to say in effect, the slaves freed themselves. mcpherson disagreed, emphasizing the importance of lincoln's prosecuting the war successfully. edward better len of the university of maryland wrote a rejoinder in which he said in effect the slaves did too free themselves. i find this exchange very

reassuring because it shows that you can become an eminent historian even though you slept through the high school biology lecture where the teacher explained symbiosis. two beings that live in a mutually beneficial relationship. edward berlin came close when he wrote" steadily as opportunities arose slaves risked all for freedom by abandoning their owners, coming uninvited into union lines, and offering their lives and labor in the federal cause, slaves forced federal soldiers at the lowest level to recognize their importance to the union's success. that understanding traveled quickly up the chain of

command." that's it in a nutshell. the union army afforded the slaves a place of refuge without the labor of the escaped slaves the union advance in the mississippi valley would have stalled somewhere just south of louisville and st. louis. another subject that hasn't been discussed much is what we can call anachronistically the learning curve. regiments of troops recruited in the south may have had specialized local knowledge that proved invaluable, but no one is born a soldier. that takes experience. the most notorious instance is that of the 54th massachusetts, which suffered more than 250 casualties in the assault on fort wagner in july 1863.

soon after the regiment arrived in the south. in fact, a few days after that. there had been no preliminary reconnaissance which mens that the troops were attacking on a five company front over a stand that would only accommodate three companies abreast. and the resulting confusion the attack failed. the northern press, of course, put as favorable a spin on it as possible. contrast this with the same regiment's performance at the battle of old lusty seven months later. the same general who had ordered the disastrous attack on fort wagner led an expedition to florida in 18 -- february 1864. his advancing column met a force of confederate defenders and was badly beaten but the 54th

massachusetts, along with several white regiments, covered the retreat and in effect saved the whole army. the 54th had learned a lot in the previous seven months. the 8th u.s. colored infantry had a similar learning curve. it went into battle at old lusty in florida with many of the men having never fired their rifles. it lost 343 officers and men killed, wounded and missing. but that august in an attack near richmond, virginia, the general who commanded their brigade thought that he behaved handsomely. on the gulf coast, the 73rd u.s. colored infantry failed to reach the confederate trenches in their charge at port hudson in may 1863. but in april 1865 the regiment was part of the black division that helped take the last

confederate for the outside mobile. it was all a question of training and experience. i might add a few words in favor of william tekumse sherman before closing. he is notorious for not wanting anything to do with black troops in his atlanta campaign, and only taking one half of one regiment with him on his march through georgia and the carolinas. these five companies of the 110th u.s. colored infantry were the only black regiment represented at the grand review in washington at the end of the war. but sherman was the only -- sherman was a bigot. and he did not mince words about it. but he was the only union official i came across, military

or civilian, who recognized that black people might have some ideas of their own about the future. he wrote, sherman, "if negros are to be taken as soldiers by undue influence or force and compelled to leave their women and the urn uncertainty of their new condition, freedom, that is, they cannot be relied on. but if they can put their families in some safe place and then earn money as soldiers or laborers, the transition will be more easy and the effect more permanent. the first step in the liberation of the negro from bondage will be to get him and his family to a place of safety then to afford him the means of providing for his family."

in a way, sherman showed greater insight than the new england abolitionists who came to the south carolina sea islands in 1862 to teach the former slaves to read and write and incidentally to organize them as a labor force. of the former slaves, wanted to be left alone to tend their vegetable gardens, the northerners wanted them to pick cotton, to help pay for the war. the sherman was right to an extent about former slaves disinclination to military service was shown in the widespread use of press gangs to round up recruits. it occurred not only in south carolina but in new orleans and along the mississippi further upstream. unfortunately, we don't know how many of the reluctant soldiers were family men or whether their

numbers were greater than those of the volunteers, or for that matter how many of the volunteers truly understood what they were getting into. one black regimentwho worked as up for the army after army quarter masters confiscated his two mules and deprived him of his livelihood. then as now, the army was the employer of last resort. what was in it for these black soldiers? freedom, certainly. as sergeant henry maxwell told a gathering in nashville in 1865, "we want two more boxes besides the cartridge box. we want the ballot box and the jury box". military service was an obligation of citizenship, and

for the not yet citizen it conferred citizenship. abraham lincoln recognized it in september 1864 when he said we cannot spare the 140 or 50,000 now serving. this is not a question of sentiment or taste but one of physical force. nor is it possible for any administration to retain the service of these people with the understanding that upon the first convenient occasion they are to be reinslaved. it cannot be and it ought not to be. yet according to union officers in the south, hundreds of former slave holders believed that emancipation was a temporary war time measure only.

>> two millard fill mores.