he importance of black soldiers, so did the South. The readiness to which these slaves responded to the call of fighting for the confederacy is explained by the fact that the failure of Nat Turner, among others, was held up to them as their fate, should they attempt to free themselves from their masters.

The recruitment of the blacks took laborers from the South and placed "these men in the Union army in places which otherwise must be filled with so many white men." Lincoln also felt that seeing the blacks fighting against the Confederacy would have a psychological effect upon the South. With the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, freeing the slaves, the North began recruiting black soldiers but, as reported by Batty and Parish, this was a slow recruitment at first. In the spring of 1863 only two black regiments existed, however, this had grown to sixty by the end of 1863. By 1864 this had expanded to 80 more regiments. Jordan provides a comprehensive account of one of the first black regiments to fight for the Union Army, the 54th Massachusetts Colored Regiment that numbered at least 1,000 soldiers, this all-volunteer regiment, lead by a white colonel, Robert Gould Shaw, helped open the 22 month land and sea assault on Charleston, South Carolina. Leading an unsucce!

The soldiers fought in segregated companies with white commanders. The Blacks were not equal to the whites as they received lower pay, performed fatigue duty and menial labor, such as cleaning quarters, laundering clothing, cleaning boots and cooking. Black soldiers, regardless of their rank, earned $10 a month minus $3 for clothing, while white privates earned $13 a month plus clothing. Ex-slaves could not advance into the ranks of commissioned officers until the end of the war. Batty and Parish note that less than 100 ever became officers and none ranked higher than captain. McPherson, who agrees with other historians that the blacks were considered second-class soldiers, cites statistics to support this theory. He shows the contrast in the number of white and black soldiers killed in action and in the rate of death from diseases among the white and black soldiers.

Some topics in this essay:
Civil War, Batty Parish, McPherson Wilson, Frederick Douglas, Eli Whitney, Underground Railroad, Confederate Army, Navy Stokesbury, Foner Mahoney, Bedford Forrest's, black soldiers, civil war, union army, batty parish, foner mahoney, emancipation proclamation, blacks fighting, outright rebellion, black regiments, institution slavery, outright rebellion individual, individual acts defiance, white black soldiers, war batty parish, january 1 1863,