ABSTRACT
In 1866, the Regular Army of the United States accepted black recruits for the first time. Small numbers of black men had served in the Revolution, the War of 1812, some Indian conflicts; many more had worn Union blue during the Civil War. Their race was denied, though, admission into the standing professional peacetime force that often expanded in times of war and contracted afterward. The change in Army manpower policy in 1866 was part of a major turning point that came after the defeat of the southern Confederacy and abolition of slavery, with the new status of black people as free people, citizens, and voters institutionalized by three postwar amendments to the Constitution. Black regulars joined an Army that for a generation would be mainly involved in settlement of the West and dispossession of the tribes that lived in the region. They became participants in the climactic Indian wars of the post-Civil War quarter century.
