Black Soldiers & their Families in the Civil War

As soon as the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter, free Black men in the North rushed to enlist, but they were turned away, as President Lincoln worried that arming Black soldiers would lead to secession by the border states. With the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the dire need for more recruits to the Union Army, Black soldiers were formally welcomed into the armed forces, eventually comprising 10% of the Union Army. It wasn’t just the Black soldiers who fought and sacrificed for their country, though, it was also their families they left behind as they marched off to war. Joining me in this episode s Dr. Holly A. Pinheiro, Jr. , Assistant Professor of African American History at Furman University and author of The Families’ Civil War: Black Soldiers and the Fight for Racial Justice . Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag , composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “ Battle Cry of Freedom ,” written in 1862 by American composer George Frederick Root to support Lincoln’s 1862 call for 300,000 volunteers for the Union Army; this version was performed by Harlan and Stanley in 1907 and is in th…