The 54th Massachusetts Regiment was one of the first African American regiments from a Northern state. Commanded by white Union officer Robert Gould Shaw, the 54th Massachusetts attacked Confederate forces at Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863. The effort proved the bravery and dedication of black soldiers. Almost half the regiment, including Shaw, was killed in the fight.
The American Colonization Society was established in 1816 by Presbyterian minister Robert Finley and others. The organization’s members believed that free blacks and whites could not live in an integrated society. Instead, they planned to purchase land in Liberia on the west coast of Africa to relocate free blacks there. Many abolitionists opposed colonization, arguing that its aim was only to remove free blacks from America rather than end slavery itself. Before the end of the Civil War, the Society settled about 10,000 black Americans in...
United States Colored Troops (USCT) were regiments formed after the Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was enacted in 1863. Members of the USCT were former slaves and free Northern African Americans recruited by Union officials and organized into segregated regiments. During the Civil War, about 180,000 African Americans enlisted in Union armies and more than 20,000 served in the Navy. Though they often proved their mettle in battle, USCT were subjected to discrimination by their white counterparts. They were paid less and were...
A writer, reformer, and peace advocate best known as the author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) was also an ardent abolitionist and suffragist. She helped form the New England Woman Suffrage Association in 1868, and served as its first president from 1868 to 1877 and returned to the office again from 1893 to 1910. Howe was also instrumental in founding the New England Women’s Club (1868), becoming its president in 1871. A guiding force in the American Woman Suffrage Association, she helped launch its house...
Sojourner Truth (ca. 1797–1883) was an evangelist, abolitionist, and women’s rights advocate. She was born into slavery under the name Isabella Baumfree in New York. In 1826, just before slavery was abolished in New York, she escaped her owner and eventually made her way to New York City, where she associated with a group of zealous evangelicals. In 1843, Isabella felt called to God’s service and took the name Sojourner Truth. She left New York and traveled to Northampton, Massachusetts. There she met reformers such as William Lloyd...
Henry Highland Garnet (1815–1882) was a black abolitionist and clergyman. Garnet escaped from slavery with his family as a boy and settled in New York City. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church in 1841 and soon became a well-known anti-slavery advocate. In 1843, he proposed militant slave uprising, putting him at odds with more centrist abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass. During the Civil War, Garnet helped recruit African Americans for the Union Army. He later supported black emigration to Africa, and in 1881 he was appointed...
Robert Smalls (1839–1915) was a slave who became a Union naval hero of the Civil War. Born into slavery, Smalls was hired out to work on the Confederate steamship Planter in 1861. In May 1862, he led a group of African Americans in seizing the ship and piloting it to a Union naval blockade. Smalls turned over the ship and its cargo and documents to the Union, which earned him both admiration and freedom. He was given command of the Planter, making him the first black captain of an American service vessel. During...