African American Sailors: Their Role In Helping The Union To Win The Civil War

Major Don A. Mills Sr. USMC

• Publisher: Golden Springs Publishing
• Year: 2014
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781782897583
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

Since the very beginning of American history, African Americans have served alongside their white counterparts in virtually every major armed conflict on the high seas. This was especially true during the Civil War. The Union Navy continued to experience a shortage of available manpower to sufficiently man its fleet of 600 plus ships. Life aboard naval vessels was particularly harsh and naval recruiters did not hesitate to enlist African Americans, free and slave, to ensure sufficient manning.
African American sailors saw their service as an opportunity to rise above the status of social discrimination and segregation. Because of the shortage of able-bodied seamen in the Union Navy, African Americans were encouraged to join the naval service at a time when the Army and Marine Corps excluded their service. In an effort to attract African American recruits and to have them reenlist when their terms expired, the Navy tended to treat African American sailors with some degree of equality and respect once at sea. African American sailors were messed and quartered alongside their white counterparts. Per the leadership of the ship's captain, segregation and discrimination were regulated or was less prevalent than in 19th century America.
The accomplishments of the Union Navy had a significant impact on its winning the war. The Union Navy could not have achieved its mission without nearly one-fifth of its total manpower, the African American sailor. Their numbers provided the credible force required to execute the strategic aims of the Anaconda Plan and helped to ensure a Union victory. The service of African American sailors allowed the North to end the war much sooner than it would have without their service, thus preventing an even greater number of loss to human life.

 

CHAPTER 1 — BACKGROUND

African American sailors have served proudly in the defense of our nation since before the American Revolutionary War. Researcher Elizabeth Arnett Fields highlights one important reason why the Navy accepted African Americans within its ranks. Since their earliest arrival in America, “free [African Americans] had chosen seafaring as a way of life, serving either on merchant ships or with the Royal Navy. In addition, slaves belonging to ship’s captains frequently served on board with their masters.”{6} This tradition provided the framework for African Americans to become familiar with life at sea. A second reason was by sheer necessity; the Navy had to continuously increase its manpower strength as new ships were built. African American sailors chose sea life over the land because life at sea offered a greater opportunity for advancement, better pay, and greater security from being captured or placed in bondage.{7}

From the Navy’s inception, African Americans served, usually in the lowest positions such as cooks, coal heavers, firemen, gunners, powder boys, and stewards. In the state navies, they served in more prominent positions of authority such as seamen, coxswains, quartermasters, Marines and even pilots of naval vessels. Privateers received the most number of African Americans mainly because these ships were privately owned and manned. A ship’s captain of a merchant vessel was also less likely to ask probing questions about the status of his crew, as long as they served well. In addition, the financial rewards for work on a privateer were far greater than the pay received on land or in the Navy. The privateer crews were awarded a greater percentage of prize money for seizing enemy vessels, which in most cases, would be divided equally among them. Captains especially desired former slaves as sailors because “when conditions became intolerable, white sailors frequently abandoned ship; [former] slaves, on the other hand, did not have that alternative.”{8}

The Navy’s tradition of acceptance and employment of African Americans made recruitment of them a very viable option. African Americans readily responded to the opportunity for better than average employment and were integrated in the naval forces from the very beginning; there were no segregated ships comprised of an all-African American crew. African Americans and their white contemporaries worked alongside one another while sailing on the coastal waterways. On some ships “[t]here seemed to be an entire absence of prejudice against [African Americans] as messmates among the crew.”{9} While the Navy banned the enlistment of slaves, it readily accepted African American “Freedmen” to serve aboard ship.

In 1792, Congress passed the Militia Act, which required states to enroll all white men between the ages of 18 and 45 into military service. The Army’s interpretation of the Militia Act prevented African American soldiers from serving until the summer of 1862.{10} Navy leadership however, interpreted the Militia Act quite differently. Even after 1840, when official naval regulations limited the number of African Americans to 5 percent of the total enlisted force, the regulation was not enforced.

In distinct contrast to the open-handed recruitment policy of the Navy, the Army and Marine Corps regarded enlistments of African Americans in a very different light. Service in the Marine Corps would prove to be the most difficult among the three. When Congress re-established a separate Marine Corps on July 11, 1798, the new Commandant, Major William Ward Burrows, provided explicit instructions on the subject of African Americans entering the Marine Corps to his recruiting officers. In a letter to Lieutenant John Hall at Charleston, South Carolina, Burrows wrote:

“You may enlist as many Drummers and Fifers as possible, I do not care what [c]ountry the D & Fifers are of but you must be careful not to enlist more [f]oreigners than as one to three natives. You can make use of [African Americans] and Mulattoes [sic] while you recruit, but you cannot enlist them.”{11}

Burrows’ policy virtually erased nearly a century and a half of potential military service by African Americans who desired to serve within the Marine Corps. Burrow’s policy of excluding African Americans would stand until 1942.

These distinct, prevailing attitudes and traditions were highlighted when the Civil War erupted in 1861. No African American would serve in the Marine Corps, and the Army would be slow to opening its recruiting doors, then only in the form of segregated units. The Navy however, would start the war with several hundred African Americans already serving aboard its ships while actively seeking more. The continued recruitment of African Americans would be a vital necessity for the Navy in order to meet the manpower requirements to fight the war.{12} In addition, the initial reluctance by President Lincoln to arm African Americans would indirectly benefit the Navy.

CHAPTER 2 — ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE GREAT QUESTION

The question of arming African Americans to fight for the North was a very tough issue that President Lincoln had to skillfully address during his first two years in office. At the outbreak of the war, abolitionists and African American leaders such as Frederick Douglass tried to pressure Lincoln for the immediate acceptance of African American volunteers. Douglass stated, “Let the black man get upon his person the brass letters U.S.; ... and there is no power on the earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.” Douglass and many others viewed military service “as proof of his [African American] loyalty and as a brief for his claim to full citizenship.”{13} However, Douglass and others soon discovered that Lincoln did not want their services at that time nor did he contemplate using them in the future.{14}

Lincoln supported leaving African American volunteers out of the war; the President and many of his subordinates held to the certainty that the war would not last long. In fact, he initially called for seventy-five thousand volunteers for a short ninety-day enlistment. Lincoln felt it was not necessary to recruit African Americans. He equally feared that to do so in 1861 would push the slaveholding border states (Maryland, Kentucky, Delaware, and Missouri) into the Confederate camp. Lincoln was quoted as stating: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery.”{15} He also said, “To arm the Negro would put 50,000 bayonets that are for us, against us.”{16} Nothing shows this attitude more clearly than Lincoln’s response to African American volunteers who crowded recruiting stations, eager for a chance to fight for the Union and for their freedom. The Lincoln administration thanked the volunteers and sent them home with an understanding that this war was a “white man’s war.”{17}

Other political leaders of the day reinforced similar feelings to Lincoln. Governor David Tod of Ohio warned, “this is a white man’s government; that the white men are able to defend and protect it; and that to enlist a Negro soldier would be to drive every white man out of the service?”{18} An overwhelming number of northern whites at all levels of society did not see African Americans as equals and therefore, were unwilling to sacrifice their lives in the name of slavery, and simply resented the notion of having to fight alongside them.

Resentment of African Americans in the Union Army also reflected the general population of northern society early in the war. The height of this resentment was expressed in the Draft Riots of July 11-13, 1863 in New York ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1 - BACKGROUND
• CHAPTER 2 - ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE GREAT QUESTION
• CHAPTER 3 - ENLISTMENTS
• CHAPTER 4 - THE BLOCKADE AND LIFE AT SEA
• CHAPTER 5 - THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THEIR BRAVERY
• CHAPTER 7 - CONCLUSION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY