Been in the Storm So Long (19 page)

The promises seemed sufficiently clear, and Douglass and other recruiters no doubt believed in them, but the equal treatment they insisted upon never came to pass. And since such promises had comprised a considerable element of the recruitment appeals, initial disappointments had a way of turning into a sense of betrayal. Substantial numbers of black soldiers, mostly those recruited in the North, charged that they had been deceived. “We were promised three hundred dollars bounty and thirteen dollars a month, or whatever the white soldiers got,” a Pennsylvania soldier declared; “but, God help their poor lying souls! Now that they have us where they want us, they have forgotten all their promises.” His complaint was well grounded. Whatever the assurances upon enlisting, the experience of the black soldier revealed a double standard in enlistment bounties, benefits for dependents, promotions, pay, and time spent in fatigue duty. And since blacks were called upon to perform the same duties as white soldiers, these distinctions made no sense at all. “Do we not fill the same ranks?” asked one soldier. “Do we not cover the same space of ground? Do we not take up the same length of ground in the grave-yard that others do? The ball does not miss the black man and strike the white, nor the white and strike the black.… [A]t that time there is no distinction made.”
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Who had betrayed them? Although the Federal government obviously reneged on its promises, dissatisfied soldiers tended to place much of the responsibility on the recruitment agents who had beguiled them with visions of patriotic service, handsome bounties, and equal rights. “They made us a great many sweet and charming promises just to get us into the service,” one soldier charged, “which they were very anxious to do, as it saved them from going themselves.” The active role played by black leaders in their recruitment only compounded the bitterness. Before the 14th Rhode Island Regiment had even left for the South, Martin R. Delany, the principal recruitment officer, stood accused of having betrayed young men “taught to hold his name sacred.” Of those who had participated in organizing the regiment, one soldier observed, Delany was “the most heartily despised.” The complaints of the soldiers were legitimate, but the charges leveled at the black recruitment agents were, most likely, closer to half-truths. “Some unprincipled agents” acting “under me” or “even in
my name
,” Delany conceded, may have been guilty of deceiving black recruits, but he vigorously defended his own record as “the constant and consistent defender of colored soldiers’ rights and claims.” Rather than accept a
economic opportunities, and black people shared to some extent in the wartime prosperity. While a black resident of Washington, D.C., described a substantial increase in black employment, a white Bostonian was complaining that “the blacks here are too comfortable to do anything more than talk about freedom.” Nor did northern blacks feel as intensely that inducement of freedom which moved their southern brethren to enlist in far greater numbers; some insisted that they could serve their race more effectively if they remained at home, where important campaigns also needed to be waged. “I am pleased to learn that you were fortunate enough to escape the draft,” William H. Parham, a black school principal in Cincinnati, wrote to a prominent Philadelphia black leader, “as I believe you will be able to do more for the race where you are than you could by going to the battlefield. When this war is over, the next struggle will be against prejudice, which is to be conquered by intellect and we shall need all the talent that we have among us or can possibly command. Then will be your time to be found in the thickest of the fight; where the battle rages fiercest and the danger is most imminent.” When Parham himself was enrolled under the Conscription Act and thereby made subject to the draft, he searched desperately for some way to avoid military service. “Many have escaped the enrollment,” he wrote, “but I am not one of the fortunate ones.… If I am drafted, I do not think I shall go.” Aside from his obvious reluctance to serve in the Army, Parham had heard “discouraging” reports that black soldiers were not being accorded the same pay, bounties, and treatment as white recruits.
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W
ITH THE ENLISTMENT
of black men, the question of how they would be treated in the United States Army quickly surfaced. It was understood from the outset that blacks would serve in separate regiments and be commanded largely by white officers. But still other questions required clarification, and some blacks demanded answers before committing their services. “What are to be the immunities of the colored soldiers?” one black newspaper asked. “Will they receive bounties, as well as the white? If they are maimed for life, will they receive pensions from the Government? If they are captured by the enemy, will they be treated as prisoners of war?—or will they be hung up by the rebels, shot or quartered, as the case may be, without redress?”
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These were not easy questions to answer, and many of the problems they raised were never satisfactorily resolved.

Although the War Department stipulated on several occasions that black soldiers were entitled to the same pay and benefits accorded whites, there was no legal basis for such promises. But most of the recruits had no way of knowing this, and they generally assumed they would be treated like other troops. After all, one black soldier wrote, “we were mustered in
reduction in the bounties paid to black enlistees, Delany refused to do any more recruiting for the Rhode Island regiment. Frederick Douglass, after protesting the failure of Federal authorities to ensure equal protection and treatment to black troops, also vowed to discontinue his recruitment activities. “I owe it to my long abused people, and especially those of them already in the army,” he explained, “to expose their wrongs and plead their cause. I cannot do that in connection with recruiting.… The impression settles upon me that colored men have much overrated the enlightenment, justice and generosity of our rulers at Washington. In my humble way I have contributed somewhat to that false estimate.” Hoping to regain his faith in the government’s assurances, Douglass requested a meeting with President Lincoln.
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Readily conceding that inequalities existed between white and black soldiers, Federal officials argued that expediency justified and perhaps even demanded the maintenance of racial distinctions, for the self-respect of the common Yankee soldier was being sorely tested. The fact that he was now asked to live and fight alongside blacks not only challenged his deeply held racial prejudices but also raised the humiliating implication that he had not been able to win the war without black support. To place the two races on the same level, some argued, was to degrade and demoralize the white soldier. The inequalities, President Lincoln told Frederick Douglass, were a regrettable but necessary concession to popular prejudices; nevertheless, he suggested, blacks had more compelling motives to enlist and should be willing to serve under almost any conditions. Ultimately, he promised Douglass, black soldiers would be accorded equal treatment. That vague assurance was good enough for Douglass, who resumed his recruitment activities.
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But many of the black troops in the field, especially those from the North, found themselves unable to share Douglass’ renewed confidence. “I have always been ready for any duty that I have been called upon to perform,” a soldier wrote from Jacksonville, Florida, “but things work so different with us from what they do with white soldiers, that I have got discouraged; and not only myself, but all of our company.” Comparing their condition and treatment with that of whites, black soldiers could not understand why they should receive less pay (“We do the same work they do, and do what they cannot”), spend more time in fatigue duty (“I fancy, at times, that we have exchanged places with the slave”), eat inferior food (“All the rations that are condemned by the white troops are sent to our regiment”), and be subjected to inferior officers (“They try to perpetuate our inferiority, and keep us where we are”).
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Of the many grievances, the most deeply felt and resented was the inequality in pay—the fact that white privates were paid $13 a month plus a $3.50 clothing allowance, while blacks received $10 a month, out of which $3.00 might be deducted for clothing. This was not only “an unequivocal breach of contract,” blacks charged, but a hardship on their families at home. “I could not afford to get a substitute, or I would not be here now,”
a draftee wrote from Yorktown, Virginia. Although “it made me feel somewhat proud to think that I had a right to fight for Uncle Sam, … my wife’s letters have brought my patriotism down to the freezing point,” and he indicated that most of his regiment shared this feeling of despair. If they were at home, a number of soldiers insisted, they would at least make enough to provide adequately for their families. “I am not willing to fight for anything less than the white man fights for,” a Massachusetts soldier declared. “If the white man cannot support his family on seven dollars per month, I cannot support mine on the same amount.”
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The inequality in pay assumed a significance for many soldiers that went beyond the question of dollars and cents and family support. The distinction branded them as second-class soldiers and citizens, and this seemed particularly galling at a time when the nation called upon them for patriotic service, perhaps even the sacrifice of their lives. “When the 54th left Boston for the South,” a soldier wrote, “they left many white men at home. Therefore, if we are good enough to fill up white men’s places and fight, we should be treated then, in all respects, the same as the white man.” Nor did blacks find altogether persuasive the oft-repeated argument (which the President himself had made to Douglass) that they had greater motives for fighting this war and should thus be willing to serve under any conditions. Why should they necessarily feel a greater obligation than the white man to preserve the Union or even to liberate the slaves? “I want to know if it was not the white man that put them in bondage?” a Massachusetts soldier asked. “How can they hold us responsible for their evils? and how can they expect that we should do more to blot it out than they are willing to do themselves?” Besides, he argued, “if every slave in the United States were emancipated at once they would not be free yet. If the white man is not willing to respect my rights, I am not willing to respect his wrongs.”
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How to combat the government’s discriminatory policy while fighting an antislavery war posed a real dilemma for the black soldier. Not only would a refusal to fight subject him to a court-martial and probable execution, but any serious interruption of the war effort would delay the liberation of his enslaved brethren. “Shall it be said that when adversity overshadowed our land, when four million bondmen prayed for deliverance, that the free colored man looked on calmly and with folded arms on account of a paltry dollar or two?” This question, raised by a black newspaper, could not be easily dismissed. Yet to submit to these racial distinctions was to confirm their inferiority. The experience of black people in American society afforded certain lessons which a Pennsylvania soldier, stationed in South Carolina, hoped his men would heed: “Our regiment is to be pitied, for we are always ready to take hold of any thing we are ordered to do, and never have we refused to obey orders. This is why we are imposed on; for the horse that draws the most willingly, generally gets the lash the most freely, and the least recompense for it.” Shortly after their arrival in the South, this soldier noted, his unit was notified that they would receive
less pay than the white troops. Immediately, “despair passed over the whole regiment,” and on payday only a few men signed the payroll, “and those who did a great many of us tried to influence to the contrary.”
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Even as the black regiments went into combat, the reaction to unequal pay assumed the form of organized protest. Until Congress recognized the legitimacy of their position, several regiments refused to accept any pay at all. “The enemy is not far off, and we expect an attack every day,” a soldier with the Rhode Island regiment reported, after which he noted that the paymaster had offered them their seven dollars a month “and the boys would not take it.” What was at stake, black troops insisted, was nothing less than their self-respect. Although the protest was largely confined to the northern regiments, Colonel Higginson reported that at least one third of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, “including the best men in the regiment,” had quietly refused to accept the government’s pay. “We’s gib our sogerin’ to de Guv’ment, Cunnel,” one of the men told him, “but we won’t ‘spise ourselves so much for take de seben dollar.” With such convictions, many of the regiments held out, some for as long as eighteen months. “Here we are,” a sergeant with the 54th Massachusetts Regiment reported, “toiling and sweating beneath the burning rays of the sun, for nothing … but our hard tack and salt pork, and a constant attendance of the blues.”
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