ABSTRACT
African Americans, with an eye to the Civil War's potential to become a war for freedom, were among the first to volunteer to serve in the Union Army in 1861. Black leaders like Frederick Douglass served as recruiting agents, and massive rallies in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia helped spur 186,000 blacks to enlist by the end of the war. Once in combat, black soldiers quickly quashed the racist notion that they wouldn't fight as well as whites. Eight black regiments participated in the assault on Port Hudson in Louisiana, and others bravely defended a Union outpost near Vicksburg called Milliken's Bend. Perhaps most significant was the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the first black regiment raised in the North. The Confederate government reacted to the use of African American troops by declaring that they would take no black prisoners. Unlike white troops, blacks in uniform were often massacred as they surrendered, most famously at Fort Pillow in Tennessee.
