Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War 1862-1865

In The Sable Arm (1956), Dudley Cornish presented a pathbreaking social and political survey of the creation of black Civil War regiments, and in Forged in Battle (1990), Joseph Glatthaar focused on the complex relationship between these troops and their white officers. The story of black troops in combat during the Civil War is told comprehensively for the first time, however, in this remarkable history by Trudeau (Bloody Roads South, etc.), who takes readers into battle with the U.S. Colored Troops. Over a hundred regiments of these troops took part in at least 449 engagements. Ever since, their performance has been shrouded in myths, both negative and positive. Trudeau and his research assistants combed archives and libraries to find the stories of the men, educated or illiterate, born free or whip-scarred, who confronted the racism of their white fellow soldiers in order to face an enemy that regularly denied quarter to black men with rifles. Trudeau eschews the triumphalism often marring current treatments of blacks in the Civil War. Not every African American soldier was a principled volunteer, he explains. Some were cajoled and cozened into uniform from ""contraband camps"" of fugitive slaves. Some donned blue at gunpoint. The USCT saw a disproportionate amount of service as labor and garrison troops, and when committed in the front lines their successes seldom matched their valor. But in an era when standards of manhood were as high as in any other, few whites who saw black troops in action ever again questioned their courage. The legacy was long obscured, but it never disappeared, and its compelling recovery makes this book a major addition to Civil War literature. Eight pages of photos and 60 maps. (Feb.)