Kirjahaku

Almost 200,000 African Americans fought to save the Union, many believing that military service was the pathway to freedom. Yet, even after enlisting, their journeys for liberation continued amid the bloody civil war. They marched across taxing terrain, performed backbreaking labor, and endured corporeal punishment meted out by white officers. They also agonized over families still enslaved and suffered virulent diseases. Many grew disillusioned, disgruntled, or homesick. They fought on bravely, yet thousands also ran. Chafing against restraints and violence reminiscent of slavery, they briefly liberated themselves from onerous army discipline. The men examined in Freedom Soldiers took self-granted breaks--"leaves of freedom"--and, once caught, were tried by the US Army for the military crime of "desertion." In the courts-martial, they justified their unauthorized departures by telling authorities that they left to temporarily help their families, regain their health, and evade violent officers. Army judges nevertheless convicted freedom seekers, sending most to military prisons. From prisons, the convicted deserters wrote petitions to President Abraham Lincoln and Union officials requesting release. These prisoners disputed rulings, offered their continued service to the Union, insisted on the injustice of incarceration, and explained the dire need of kin around the wartime South. Drawing upon transcripts of the nearly 80,000 Civil War courts-martial cases, as well as prisoners' petitions, soldiers' letters, and government reports, Jonathan Lande recovers this subset of soldiers who took leaves of freedom and defended their breaks within the military justice system. In doing so, he reveals how Black men fought for freedom not only against Confederates but also in US Army camps, courts, and prisons.

The story of the Black Civil War soldiers who fought for a nation to respect them as fully human Over 135,000 Black Southerners defended the Union during the Civil War. This book tells the story of these soldiers, who fought their one-time oppressors with grit and gallantry to seize the manhood and honor that was denied them in slavery and to make the South a land of liberty, not bondage. Jonathan Lande describes a fight that went far beyond the assaults and bayonet charges of the battlefield. While serving the nation as warriors, Black Southerners in Union blue also cared for enslaved and recently emancipated family members struggling to find shelter, food, and warmth. They clashed with irregular fighters on the war’s peripheries, chasing Southern guerrillas and liberating captives from slavery. They enforced federal authority on prisoners of war and in Confederate towns. While bivouacked, they took up arms and resisted army officers who treated them as little more than slaves. Amid this civil war within the South, Black soldiers disproved those who dismissed them as unmanly cowards as they fought to recast a republic predicated on inequality and human enslavement. Valiant Men of War transforms the Civil War struggle of freedmen in Union blue into a fight not only for the Union but also for their manhood and control of the South.