Alan Gan

For a long time the Civil War was declared the "white man's war" given the amount of white

men who had participated as soldiers in it -- the early Union army consisted of 90% white soldiers and

about 10% blacks. The real credit should go to the gallant African American soldiers, despite their

minority status in the military. A subjective association of the Civil War to any group of people shouldn't

draw its reasoning from the members' physical contributions but rather the aura of hope and passion

that each member lends to the whole, which transcends the honor of wielding arms in a battleground.

To say the Civil War was a "black man's war", however, is not entirely accurate, because both black and

white soldiers played key roles in the war. Rather than focusing entirely on the white soldiers when

thinking about Civil War combat, people should acknowledge the significance of the soldiers of African

American descent. Their presence in the war as combaters makes the war much more than just a "white

man's war." The black soldiers in the background deserved more recognition for their valor and patriotic

grit to fight for something deeper than just territorial loyalty.

Unlike their white counterparts, black soldiers did not fight primarily based on which region of

the U.S they lived in. Most black soldiers were once slaves and thus many of them fought for the Union

side. There were also a handful of black soldiers who fought for the Confederate Army in exchange for

their freedom from slavery. Although slavery was a key incentive to fight for African American soldiers

on either side, a lesser known, but widespread, reason they aimed to fight was to prove their patriotism

and gain an acceptance from their white peers. Much to their dismay, most white soldiers typically

ignored the wishes of African American soldiers and designated them to lower jobs such as assistants or

servants in the army. Despite the hostile treatment received from the white soldiers, black soldiers

serving in the war were resilient and resolutely accepted such roles. Some soldiers wound up forming

their own all-black regiments to avoid such discrimination. To a black soldier, it was more than just the

ground upon which he was raised, but more so for the sake of his brothers, his wife, or his children.

During the period of slavery, many black families were separated, children off to one state, mom and

dad to two others. For many black soldiers, everything was at stake; every shot, every move meant the

possibility of freedom for a family member or a close one. In contrast, the mindset of the Union was to

keep Southern states from secession, and the Confederacy fought mainly for the continuation of slavery.

Neither side had as touching a story as black soldiers did. No man could say the he fought for what was

right more than a freed slave fighting for his family.

Sooner or later the inevitable had to happen as the focus of the war shifted onto the topic of

slavery. Lincoln finally passed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 after prior hesitation due to

border state tension. The Proclamation was a turning point for potential black enlisters in that it showed

them what could happen if they joined the side of the Union. With the surge in black enlisters in the

Union army, Confederate soldiers relentlessly targeted the former slaves, sending them back to slavery

in harsher conditions and sometimes even slaughtering them, albeit surrendering. The most notorious

of such events was the Fort Pillow Massacre in which Confederate soldiers, under the orders of a

general, brutally massacred a group of black Union soldiers. This tragic event was not the only one of its

kind; especially in war time, racial segregation reveals its darkest colors. If asked who fought the Civil

War, most would answer the Union and the Confederacy, and the more clueless would reply “the white

people.” Most would say the war was fought on slavery, like a man fights to keep a car from a robber,

the African American slaves being properties of someone who claims to be greater than them. But these

valiant soldiers were more than just machines in the field, and they should not be accredited as such.

With the help of Lincoln’s Proclamation black soldiers really took ownership of the fight and began to

show their independence from the white society.

Regardless of the past, the black soldiers have shown their resilient character in serving in the

Civil War. They had conviction which many soldiers lacked. They had a greater risk of danger on the

battlefield, and it would be bitterly ironic to disregard the soldiers of whose race both sides fought over.

It wasn’t a white man’s war, because there were black soldiers and it was equally theirs as anybody

else’s. It wasn’t a black man’s war; a majority of the army consisted of white soldiers. The heart of the

war, however, lied within the ambitious black soldiers. It lied within each slave’s struggle for freedom,

each slave’s desire for equality, family, and all other virtues valued by white men. The black soldiers

stood out and sedulously fought and sacrificed themselves for their own people, to spare them from

suffering and to engrave a name of strength and willingness for his people in the white man’s book. The

pluck of some black soldiers does not deserve to be drowned out by the War’s misnomer, “the white

man’s war.”