Remembering Sacrifice: African American Veterans and the Battlefield of Civil War Memory

Abstract

In the fifty years following American emancipation, African American veterans of the Civil War worked to preserve the memory of their wartime sacrifices in the public consciousness and in the historic record. Furthermore, veterans and their allies often invoked the memory of those sacrifices in demanding the civil rights and material gains that they had earned. African American veterans utilized myriad commemorative outlets to stake out their emancipationist position on the battlefield of Civil War memory: they wrote into black newspapers and wrote books articulating their views. They worked to see their service memorialized, asserted their masculinity in celebrations of Emancipation and other civic celebrations, and organized alongside white veterans in the Grand Army of the Republic. During Reconstruction, they sought to leverage their service into a place in the triumphant Republican coalition. After Reconstruction?s end, they fought against the rising tide of the Lost Cause and demanded dignity amidst growing disfranchisement and segregation. As America entered its racial Nadir, the aging veterans worked vigorously to ensure the memory of their service was preserved for future generations. Thanks to the tireless work of the veterans of the United States Colored Troops, the image of the black soldier in blue marching across Dixie remained a potent image of America?s unfulfilled promises into the twentieth century. This project contributes to a burgeoning literature seeking to explore the historical voices of black Civil War veterans.