At the start of the Civil War, most white Americans wanted to limit the war to the question of secession. Slaves and free blacks, however, knew that the conflict had slavery as its root cause, and they acted with energy, courage and resolution to turn the struggle into a war for freedom
THE MARCH OUT OF SLAVERY As federal armies penetrated rebel states, slaves responded by fleeing to Union camps. Not wanting to lose the support of slave owners who were loyal to the North. Lincoln initially discouraged the slaves from coming, but nothing could stem the tide. By the spring of 1863, hundreds of thousands of fugitive slaves had either reached or were on the march toward Union lines. It was one of the greatest movements of people in our nation's history.
Faced with an avalanche of impoverished humanity, Union commanders responded by employing adult slaves as laborers, guides and scouts, and setting up refugee camps for their families. Black women worked as cooks and nurses. The men built fortifications and did they heavy work of hauling supplies, building roads and "slopping out" latrines. Thousands of others were paid subsistence wages to work abandoned cotton plantations. Deep within the Confederacy, moreover, those slaves too far from Union lines to run away simply stopped acting like slaves. They refused to take orders, resisted attempts to be relocated or sold, fled to the swamps and woods by the thousands, and shed their submissive behavior to await the "Day of Jubilee." As a result of their actions, the institution of southern slavery was so weakened that hundreds of slave masters deserted the Confederate army to deal with the insubordination at home.
As the number of Union dead increased, it seemed logical to many northern whites -- both abolitionists and moderates alike--that blacks should be used as fighting men, but resistance to the idea was great. To arm fugitive slaves and free blacks would be telling the South and loyal slave owners in the border states that the war had become more than a fight to preserve the Union. It would have become a war of liberation.
ABOLITIONIST ARGUMENTS Black and white abolitionists, led by Frederick Douglass, argued persuasively for letting fugitive slaves serve as Union soldiers in the hope that the slaves' claim to immediate emancipation, and then to citizenship at the end of the war, would be strengthened by their valor in war. Lincoln, who had all along resisted such a step, began to yield to the pace of events by the summer of 1862. The imminent collapse of slavery as an institution, the growing public sentiment in favor of arming blacks, and the international diplomatic advantages of freeing the slaves persuaded Lincoln to emancipate those slaves within areas controlled by the Confederacy and to begin recruiting black soldiers. In all, nearly 189,000 blacks--of whom 155,000 were former slaves--served in the Union Army and in the US Navy. The black army regiments were strictly segregated and commanded by white officers.