![]() Dumas and Paris-educated Captain Andre Cailloux, who proudly described himself as the blackest man in New Orleans, exemplified the affluent freeman who commanded these units. Benjamin Butler's 1st, 2nd and 3rd Louisiana Native Guards, the Corps D'Afrique, were formed from existing free black militia units and supervised by Gen. In Union-held New Orleans, military governor Gen. Their performance in a Missouri raid further helped dispel the notion that blacks were unable or unwilling to fight. ![]() Kansas raised the next early regiment, the 1st Kansas Volunteers, under the direction of Senator James Lane. Like Higginson, a number of Northern white officers, many from leading anti-slavery families and circles, were genuinely sympathetic to the cause of black troops, among them Robert Gould Shaw, Edward N. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, wrote encouraging reports about this regiment: " Nobody knows anything about these men who has not seen them in battle.No officer in this regiment now doubts that the successful prosecution of the war lies in the unlimited employment of black troops." The regiment's commander, Massachusetts abolitionist and man of letters Col. The combat actions of the 1st South Carolina, a regiment of ex-slaves raised by Generals David Hunter and Rufus Saxton, received notice in the Northern press. In 1862, several black regiments were recruited by white officers in the South and West without Presidential or Congressional authorization. As Douglass stated: " Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters 'U.S.,' let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States." Frederick Douglass and other leaders saw black military service as an opportunity to win a Union victory and to gain equality and rights as citizens. Major Christian Fleetwood of the 4th U.S.C.T. " A double purpose induced me and most others to enlist, to assist in abolishing slavery and to save the country from ruin," wrote Medal of Honor winner Sgt. Lincoln's decision gave a higher meaning to a war initially focused on preservation of the Union - abolition. The Proclamation also declared that freed slaves would be officially received into the armed forces. The formal Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January, 1863, freed all slaves in rebellious states with the exception of those in areas already under Union control. Continued pressure by abolitionists and awareness of the potential of black labor as the Confederacy had already discovered, also contributed to lifting the Army's prohibition of "Negroes or Mulattoes," in existence since 1820. Declining Union enlistments, heavy battle losses and the realization that the war would take more time and resources than expected, confronted President Abraham Lincoln and the Union Army. However, by the fall of 1862, events had changed in favor of accepting black soldiers. The government's call for 75,000 volunteers in April 1861 compelled many Northern blacks to offer their services to a War Department opposed to arming blacks for fear it would induce the loyal slave-holding border states to join the Confederacy. By the mid-nineteenth century, their earlier efforts were all but forgotten. American blacks had taken part in the country's defense since the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. The Federal program to admit black soldiers during the Civil War was not without precedent or resistance.
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