1865
These are things which must be accounted for:
slaughter under the white flag of surrender—
black massacre at Fort Pillow; our new name,
the Corps d’Afrique—words that take the
native 130
from our claim; mossbacks and freedmen—
exiles
in their own homeland; the diseased, the
maimed,
every lost limb, and what remains: phantom
ache, memory haunting an empty sleeve;
the hog-eaten at Gettysburg, unmarked 135
in their graves; all the dead letters, unanswered;
untold stories of those that time will render
mute. Beneath battlefields, green again,
the dead molder—a scaffolding of bone
we tread upon, forgetting. Truth be told. 140Poem Summary
November 1862
Trethewey divides her poem ‘‘Native Guard’’
into time frames, beginning with November
- In the first stanza, in the voice of an Afri-
can American soldier, Trethewey provides the
background of this soldier, his life prior to enlist-
ing in the army. The soldier reflects on his life as
a slave. First Trethewey provides a sense of the
physical landscape of a Southern plantation that
sits on the side of a river. The Gulf of Mexico is
mentioned, setting the scene in one of the gulf
states, along the shoreline. The soldier was once
a slave, but he mentions that he was already
freed earlier in 1862. However, he seems to be
so newly freed that he has to remind himself that
he is no longer a slave.
The soldier then recounts some of his mem-
ories of having been a slave ever since being born
into slavery. Marks upon his back, signs of hav-
ing been whipped, are proof of his history. The
soldier makes a reference to Ascension Parish,
located in the southeastern part of Louisiana
(which has parishes instead of counties). The
soldier is thirty-three years old. He compares
the marks on his back, which have recorded his
history up to now, with the marks he will now
make with ink on paper. This is his new form of
history taking, as a power that was once the
slaveholder’s has become his own.
December 1862
A month has passed, and the soldier now men-
tions a sergeant, comparing the sergeant to a
slave master. Both the sergeant and the slave
master have their ways of bringing their men
around to obeying orders. The soldier and his
fellow mates learn to march under the sergeant’s
drills, but instead of being given guns, the black
soldiers are told to dig ditches and work like
mules, carrying supplies. The soldier suggests
that the top officer over the black soldiers uses
derogatory racial slurs when referring to them.
In addition to having to listen to the verbal
abuse, something they became accustomed to
as slaves, the black soldiers are given only half
as much food as their white counterparts are
granted. This too, the soldier says, is a familiar
slave routine. The soldier admits that in order to
supplement their supplies, they steal from aban-
doned homes. This implies that the regiment is
not yet on Ship Island, as there are no homes
there. Not only do the black soldiers take food
from these houses, but also this soldier found in
one the paper and ink that he needed to write his
journal. The journal this soldier found is already
written on, so he crosses out the other person’s
words (suggesting that these are a white person’s
writings) and writes his own thoughts over them.
This provides an image of the black man rewrit-
ing history or possibly just telling it from another
perspective.January 1863
Two sections of this poem have the same date,
that of January 1863. In the first section, the
soldier mentions a ship that has taken him to
Ship Island. The name of the boat and the name
of the fort on Ship Island remind the soldier of
the North, where many black people live free,
the destination of many runaway slaves in the
South. This soldier never dared attempt to take
that road to freedom, and yet, he is delivered to a
place that suggests that journey, at least in name.
Though the environment of Ship Island is not
easy to endure, as it is too hot and the air is filled
with biting insects, the soldier enjoys the open
expanse of the horizons, where he can look out
across the gulf and dream. On the water he sees
the boats that have arrived from the North, filled
with Union soldiers who have come to the South
to help free the slaves. Then he ponders the
question of slavery. Are he and his fellow Afri-
can Americans the only ones who are slaves?
Isn’t everyone bound by fate? At this point in
the poem, the soldier is considering the equalityNative Guard