Book Review Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865

Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865. By Noah Andre Trudeau. 2^nd Edition, Revised and Expanded. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2023. Hardcover, 566 pp. $44.95.

Reviewed by Jonathan Steplyk

Recent decades have seen great strides in chronicling and memorializing the Civil War’s African American soldiers. Across the county, numerous new monuments and statues honoring them and their service are appearing. Multiple books add to a growing historiography offering battle and regimental histories as well as those addressing specific themes relating to the service of Black state regiments and the United States Colored Troops (USCT). Glory (1989) remains one of the best regarded Civil War films. Nevertheless, there is room for frustration that the USCT do not enjoy greater appreciation among Civil War audiences and Americans at large. Amidst such gains and challenges, a new edition of Noah Andre Trudeau’s Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War is most welcome.

First published by Little, Brown and Company in 1998, Like Men of War is now available in a revised, expanded edition through the University Press of Kansas. Then and now, Trudeau’s work represents one of the most modern and comprehensive narrative histories of Black soldiers’ service throughout the Civil War. The new edition documents additional skirmishes and actions not included in the first, as well as a generous number of illustrations, including 60 maps and 41 images interspersed throughout the text. Additionally, Trudeau has made the editorial decision to adopt newer terminology to delegitimize the institution of slavery and emphasize the humanity and agency of African Americans, such as substituting freedom seeker for runaway or fugitive and enslaver for master. For a landmark history of Black Civil War soldiers, it appears entirely fitting and proper to do so.

Explaining the choices of what military actions to include, Trudeau observes in the 1998 preface, “African American troops took part in some 449 separate engagements; only an encyclopedia could have covered all of them” (xv). Still, the comprehensiveness of his work is nearly encyclopedic, chronicling the best-known actions involving Black soldiers—Port Hudson, Milliken’s Bend, Fort Wagner, Olustee, Fort Pillow, Petersburg, New Market Heights, Nashville—as well as more obscure skirmishes and actions that might otherwise go overlooked in Civil War history. As comprehensive as the book is, the coverage of individual campaigns and battles is never dry or by the numbers. Trudeau fully situates each account in the course of the war and chronicles battles and skirmishes in rich detail. Like Men of War follows an essentially chronological history of actions involving Black troops, ranging across the Eastern, Western, and Trans-Mississippi Theaters. As such, readers can benefit from the book as a comprehensive narrative, and return to it as an indispensable reference for Black soldiers’ service.

Trudeau intersperses his narrative history with multiple “interludes” that thematically address significant elements of the African American military life, such as the emergence of schools in USCT camps to promote literacy, the fight for equal pay, desertion, and reactions to Lincoln’s assassination. A recurring theme is Black soldiers’ demand for the ability to advance to commissioned officer roles and to be commanded by Black officers. Black officers were able to retain their ranks when the Louisiana Native Guards received acceptance into US service, but, as Trudeau documents, amidst prevailing opposition to Black commissioned officers, only one such officer in the 2^nd Regiment retained his position by war’s end (48). Still, the loss of White officers to death and disease saw Black NCOs rise to the occasion; as in veteran White regiments, Black sergeants often assumed a lieutenant’s or captain’s role commanding the company when needed. By early 1865, Black soldiers secured a number of hard-won commissions, prompting the 55th Massachusetts’s chaplain to observe, “The ball does move” (365).

Trudeau abundantly documents the unique dangers Black soldiers faced due to the policies and practices of Confederate leaders and soldiers. Although the Lincoln administration successfully forced the Davis government to retreat from a policy of enslaving or executing USCT soldiers and officers, ordinary Rebel soldiers on numerous battlefields adopted a no-prisoners policy toward USCT soldiers. The slaughter of surrendering soldiers at Fort Pillow prompted the recurring battle cry of “Remember Fort Pillow!” among Black soldiers and White officers. Trudeau allows that actions like the storming of Fort Blakely evidence “a small number of Confederate POWs were probably killed by Black soldiers,” but nothing on par with the scale of atrocities against USCTs (394).

Numerous accounts throughout the book document soldiers and civilians proclaiming that such-and-such battle must surely prove that Black soldiers would fight and establish their worth as American citizens. Trudeau’s work engagingly documents the impressive legacy of the Civil War’s Black regiments, one which, as he also observes, was largely omitted from Civil War and military history for a century, a legacy which also sadly “did not linger in the folktales, songs, poetry, fiction, or visual arts of the American Black community” (452). The ball does move, however, and hopefully this new, expanded edition of Like Men of War can help move it toward greater recognition and renown for the Black US soldiers of the Civil War.

Dr. Jonathan M. Steplyk is the author of Fighting Means Killing: Civil War Soldiers and the Nature of Combat, a contributor to the Civil War Campaigns in the West series, and a former historical interpreter at Harpers Ferry and Cedar Creek National Historical Parks. He currently teaches at the University of Texas at Arlington and Tarrant County College.