296 The American Civil Warreward them for their devotion by
giving them full and equal rights in the
postwar world. Their sense of commitment
sustained them through extensive
discrimination by the Union army and acts
of brutality, such as the Fort Pillow massacre
in Tennessee, by Confederates.
At peak, one in every eight Union
soldiers was black; the percentage of
black sailors was even higher. Black troops
fought on 41 major battlefields and in
449 minor engagements. Sixteen soldiers
and seven sailors received Medals of Honor
for valor. Some 37,000 blacks in an army
uniform gave their lives, and untold
sailors did, too. Lincoln paid them high
compliments when he declared that black
soldiers fought as well as whites, and that
their service was indispensable to victory.
Eventually black soldiers received an opportunity to
prove themselves in combat. It was only on the field
of battle that they could demonstrate their manhood
and earn the postwar rights that they coveted.
(Library of Congress)'Keep it and you can save the Union,' he
wrote. 'Throw it away, and the Union goes
with it.'
Perhaps the greatest tribute to black
soldiers, though, was paid by their
opponents. Desperate for manpower, the
Confederacy narrowly elected to enlist its
own black soldiers in the waning months of
the war. Critical in the adoption of the policy
was a statement from General Robert E. Lee,
in which he argued that the Union had
employed black troops with success and he
believed they would make 'efficient soldiers.'