ABSTRACT
The blacks. Black men in Union blue, patrolling what remained of the Cotton Kingdom. Black women overseeing the cooking pots of Union camps, washing the shirts of white officers while their children shined boots and ferried messages from one white man to another. Some black men in blue hoisted shovels and hoes under "forcible persuasion": clearing land, laying down railroad track, and other important and necessary tasks of war. Tales of black girls forced into tents and ditches under orders from a white Union man trickled down. Such afamiliar war. And in the humid silence was sameness.
