the continuing challenge for us today is to interpret those principles of equality and natural rights for our own time. thank you. i was quite a radical as a young person. i was the one that thought we should -- saying we should overcome is not an effective way of overcoming civil rights. i thought more confrontation was needed. >> economics professor, columnist and substitute host for rush limbaugh, walter williams on being a radical. >> i believe that a radical is any person who believes in personal liberty and individual freedom and limited government. that makes you a radical. i've always been a person who

believed that people should not interfere with me. i should be able to do my own thing without -- so long as i don't violate the rights of other people. >> more with walter williams tonight at 8 p.m. pacific on c-span's "q&a". this week on "the civil war" author william dobak discusses his book freedom by the sword, u.s. color 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, everyone. my name is lopez matthews and i'm secretary of the natural archives afro-american history society and i'm here to welcome you today to hear william a.dobak discuss colored

troops -- u.s. colored troops during the civil war era. and i'm here today just to let you know that the afro-american history society produces programs similar to this, not this program, but programs similar to this, promoting the study of african-american history through records at the national archives. and we are 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 success quen tenial of the civil war. if you have time, please try to come back and attend our programs. we actually have one i'll be presenting on february 16th on black soldiers from maryland and the civil war. if you have time, come back and join us. now, i would like to also introduce mr. michael knight,

who is archive specialist here and he is going to actually introduce mr. dobak. >> i'd like to echo what lopez said and welcome you into the national archives, records administration. we have a very special speaker today, dr. william a.dobak, who will discuss his newest work. dr. dobak received his ph.d. from university of kansas in american studies in 1985. his published dissertation, ft. riley and neighbors, military money and economic growth 1853 to 1895 won the edward teahen award in 1995. he worked at national archives beginning in mid-'90s and while here he began working on his next study with co-author thomas

t. phillips "black regulars: 1866 to 1899." this was published in 2001. in 2003 the work received the western history association's robert mnc. utley award as the finest book on revolutionary war. in 2002 he joined the staff of the u.s. army center of military history and in 2003 he began research on freedom by the sword. so, like to to introduce dr. dobak by noting that all of his military studies have drawn extensively on the records housed here at national archives. >> 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 u.s. army center of military history called me into his office, invited me to sit down and told me my next project would be to write an operational history of the u.s. color 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 "the forged in battle." true, cornish's book appeared in 1956 and the other in 1990, but i pointed out that the history of the color troops was a growth industry.

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 boss, in effect, told me, never mind, just do it. 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. dudley cornish taught at 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. trips to the kansas state historical society. he visited the national archives enough to consult some colored troops bureau material in the 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 th presentation of reg mental colors to the 20th u.s. colored infantry in new york city and that regiment taking ship for new york city. 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 draft riots, "the times" wrote, a regiment of black soldiers fully armed was headed for the theater of war. it is only by such occasions that we can at all realize the revolution was the public mind everywhere is experiencing. such developments are infallible tokens of a new epic. 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. the 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. writing a generation later had more opportunity to travel and amass the fine biblographer of manuscript collections. i used his bibbliography and several others to discover which libraries and archives i should visit for my own book. but he seemed concerned with the recruitment of black soldiers, their white officers' opinion 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. having read these two epical works, i then began on the official records, which was available in the library of 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, a-ha, viet cong infrastructure.

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 east sutherland had the subject well in hand with afternoon article in "the journal of civil war history" and an entire volume, savage conflict, the decisive role of guerrillas in the american civil war. but the guerrilla warfare that raged through most of the south during the larger war gave new meaning to the service of men regiments of u.s. color troops, whom congress had originally relegated to constructing entrenchments, performing camp service or ending 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 color troops were performing, most of them were doing it in the midst of an overwhelming hostile white population and in places that were subject to confederate raids led by generals forest wheeler and others like them. confederate readers could penetrate as far north as paducah, kentucky, or even ride into a union stronghold like memphis to kidnap or kill union generals. this attempt 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 or the war of the rebellion, the official records of the union and confederate armies to give the series its fl title, consists of 128 volumes published between 1880 and 1900. it rarnged by year first, then by region. and regional organization seemed to suit my book first. the first union offensive that capturedonfederate territory and held it until the end of the war was in south carolina.

and the first black regiments were raised there. south carolina, i moved to the gulf coast, then mississippi valley, and finally north carolina and virginia. the book ends with a chapter on the color troops postwar service on the rio grande which had to do with the french occupation of mexico and was an entirely different matter from reconstrtion. and a final chapter on their service in the rest of the south and forcing reconstruction policies.

it's just as well last operations were considered in the book because it was the least typical. remember when winfield scott conceived his so-called an cakoa plan in the spring of 1861, the capital of the rebellion was in montgomery alabama. when the confederate congress voted to 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.

for the purposes of our color, colored troops in virginia were overwhelmingly recruited in 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, when an escaped slave known to us only as brutus advised captain quincy adams gilmore, an officer of engineers, gilmore called brutus the most intelligent slave i have met here. quite familiar with the rivers and creeks between savannah city and tybee island. he made his escape last week in a canoe.

two years later when the commander of a union raid up the yazo river in mississippi wanted to send a message to commanders in vicksburg, two commanders of the colored cavalry, dressed as slaves, which they had been until recently, and delivered the message. in march 1865, seven civilians, parenthisi, end quote, guided a party of the third colored infantry up the st. john's river in northern florida to burn a sugar mill and free 91 slaves. gilmore, 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 noncommissioned officer reflects great credit on the brave arp ants and their leader. major general commander thanks these courageous soldiers and scouts and holds up their conduct to their comrades in arms as an example worthy of em you lags. 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 and academic circles a few years ago. did the slaves become free as a

result of white action? abraham lincoln or the union army or were they self-emancipated? james mcpherson writing in 1995 noted a tendency in the previous 15 years to sleight 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 insistence on prosecuting the war successfully. excuse me.

berlin of the university of maryland wrote a rejoiner in which he wrote in effect the slaves did, too, free themselves. i find this exchange very reassuring because it shows that you can become an imminent historian even though you slept through the high school biology lecture where their teacher explain explained symbiosis, two being that lived in a beneficial relationship. 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 the learning curve. regiments of color troops recruited in the south may have had specialized local knowledge that proved invaluable but no one is born soldier. that takes experience. the most notorious instance is that of the 54th massachusetts, which suffered more than 250

casualties in the assault on ft. 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 meant that the troops were attacking on a five-company front over a sense that would only accommodate three companies abreast. and the resulting confusion, the attack failed. the northern press, of course, put as favorable spin on it as possible. contrast this with the same regiment's performance at the battle of lessy seven years later. the same general led an expedition to florida in

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 little army. the 54th learned a lot in the previous seven months. the u.s. eighth colored infran trihad a similar learning curve. it went into battle 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 they behaved handsomely. thy failed to reach confederate trevenlgs in their charge at port hudson in may 1863.

but in april april 1865 the regiment was part of the black division that helped take the last confederate fort outside mobile. it was all a question of training and experience. i might add a few words of heb eith sherman before closing. he did not want anything to do with black troops in hi atlanta campaign and only taking one half of one regiment with him on his march through georgia and 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 black people might have some ideas of their own about the future. he wrote, sherman f, if negros e to be compelled in the 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 abolitionist who came to the south carolina sea islands in 1862 to teach the former slaves to read and write. 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. he was right to an extinct. it 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. oneiment of arkansas who worked as a teamster signed up for the army after army quart quartermasters confiscated his two mules and deprived him of his livelihood. then as now the army was the employer of last resort. what was it in for 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 drury 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 150,000 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 re-enslaved. 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. and after lincoln's assassination, the next president bent every effort to make it so. his efforts were stymied briefly by congress, but that same congress refused to provide an army of sufficient size to enforce its own laws in the south. but the few years of congressional reconstruction and nearly a century of jim crow that followed it are outside the purview of this book. still, it must have been a bitter pill for a group of veterans whose ranks included nearly three times as many men named george washington as were named john smith. a group that included men named after every u.s. president, including one named