Realities of Black Men Joining and Supporting the Confederate Navy

The 1792 Militia Act authorized “every free able-bodied white male citizen” to serve in the army or militia, excluding African Americans.[1] Unlike the army, Black men were allowed to enlist in the antebellum navy, but with strict provisions. Navy regulations stipulated freemen could enlist, though self-liberated enslaved men joined under false names. Regulations also limited Black sailors to no more than 5 percent of a ship’s crew, further requiring special permission “of the commander of the station.”[2] This provision was discarded as the Civil War expanded, and the National Park Service Soldiers and Sailors Database lists 18,000 Black wartime U.S. Navy sailors.

While there have been deep studies of Black soldiers in the U.S. Army and Navy in the Civil War, as well as extensive analysis disproving the idea that Black men served as frontline soldiers in the Confederate Army in large numbers, little has been written about Black men supporting the Confederate Navy.[3]

Just like there have been many statements that thousands of Black men fought in Confederate armies, there is a recurring claim that there were 1,150 Black sailors enlisted in the Confederate Navy – a number Confederate heritage groups jump on as legitimate – though it often is made without a supporting citation.[4] When the number has an original source claim, it is attributed to late Professor Edward Smith, who taught anthropology at American University, but finding his source material is difficult because there is a lack of real access to what he wrote and discussed on the subject, none of which has been through a full double-blind peer review that is the standard of evaluating academic work.[5] Because of this, I determined to see what could be found of Black men joining or supporting the Confederate Navy by exploring archival and government records listing individuals.

From the war’s start, the Confederate Navy’s regulations, just like the Federal counterpart, allowed “free colored persons” to enlist “with the approbation of the commander of the station, or by special order from the department,” but maintained that 5 percent cap of vessel crews.[6] Despite regulations, Black sailors were rarely freemen, but often enslaved men who were hired out, rented to the navy. For example, the “Slave man Jackson Davis” was hired out as CSS Ivy’s cook for at least three months in 1861 at the rate of $24 monthly.[7]

Thanks to their specific expertise of coastal areas, numerous enslaved men served as channel or river pilots. Billy Bugg and Moses Dallas were two of several Black pilots in Savannah, while Robert Smalls served as a pilot for the C.S. Army in Charleston. Paperwork notes that Bugg’s “pay proper, as well as that of all slaves on board, is to be paid to his master.”[8] Dallas was killed in an 1864 raid capturing USS Water Witch, while Smalls famously steamed the army patrol boat and transport Planter out of Charleston to the blockade in 1862.

Black men were occasionally hired, or hired out by enslavers, to provide manpower for vessels behind front lines. In late 1863, Lt. Jonathan Carter penned Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory from Shreveport, Louisiana, that because of manpower shortages he believed it “necessary to employ negroes as firemen and deck hands” on his few vessels.[9] Similarly, in mid-1863, at Little Rock, Arkansas, advertisements were made to local plantations for “50 negro men” to augment CSS Pontchartrain’s crew when Anglo sailors were reassigned to frontline ships.[10]

Commerce raiders occasionally forcibly impressed Black seamen. A “valuable slave” named Ned was hired out to work on CSS Sumter, though he deserted in August, 1861 when the Confederacy’s first raider docked in Suriname.[11] David Henry White, a freeman merchant mariner, was forcibly taken to CSS Alabama from the prize Tonawanda and “enlisted as one of the crew” because Raphael Semmes declared him “a slave, from Delaware.”[12] He drowned when USS Kearsarge engaged and sank Alabama in 1864.

Freeman John Williams was one of at least three Black men who ended up on CSS Shenandoah. Williams was captured on the merchant D. Godfrey in November 1864, and despite claiming to be a U.S. Navy veteran, he was forcibly enlisted on Shenandoah. He deserted in Melbourne, Australia, transmitting intelligence about the raider to the local consul.[13]

When analyzing the question of Black men enlisting in the Confederate Army, it is generally agreed that enslaved men readily marched with Rebel forces, but rarely took up arms themselves. Instead, they worked as cooks, teamsters, and other support roles, while not being regularly enlisted into the military. When it comes to naval forces, things can be a bit more muddled though. Being a cook was an official enlisted rating in the navy, as was being a steward to the officers in the wardroom or the captain of a ship. So, technically, Black men on Confederate ships could be considered regularly enlisted crew members, so long as they signed paperwork to that effect instead of being enslaved men brought to the ship as personal servants or hired out from local enslavers. Determining that distinction can be difficult.

Civil War records do list several Black men as officially part of vessel crews. A muster sheet for CSS Morgan in 1865 lists two Black men, First Class Boy Walker Baker and Landsman Brigham Claibourne.[14] In May 1864, two Black men, David Green and Henry Leonard, were sent to CSS Virginia II and were rated landsmen “as part of her crew.”[15] John Miller was a Black man assigned as a landsman attached to Battery Buchanan in late 1864.[16] The same Miller also has discharge paperwork from December 1864 indicating he was enlisted as a landsman on the ironclad floating battery Georgia.[17] Black man Patrick Garity enlisted as a landsman before being assigned as a coal heaver on the river gunboat General Polk in 1861.[18] Johnny Robinson enlisted on the Confederate ironclad Chicora in 1863, claiming to be a freeman. When his superior officers discovered he was instead an enslaved man, he was immediately discharged.[19]

Other Black men were listed as servants on vessel muster rolls. When Surgeon William C. Jones surrendered in 1865, he signed an affidavit that “my servant, Randall Polk (colored) will not hereafter serve in the Navy of the Confederate States.”[20] W.S. Lewis was granted a postwar pension for his time spent as the personal servant of CSMC 1st Lt. James Thurston on CSS Atlanta.[21]

The North Carolina Civil War Sailors Project has done an excellent job of collecting over 12,000 names and service records of Confederate sailors or maritime-adjacent personnel (those in the CSMC, CS Revenue Service, state navies, River Defense Fleet). Among those names, the database lists just 15 Black men. In my own searches, I found records for 37 Black men who were regularly enlisted into the Confederate Navy, worked as servants on ships for officers, or were forcible put on ships as enslaved men – a statistically insignificant number when compared to the 5,213 officers and enlisted men listed in the Confederate Navy in 1864.[22]

Black men did materially support Confederate naval infrastructure in larger numbers. In 1862, Stephen Mallory allowed naval officers to hire out enslaved men to help deliberately sink ships as obstructions on the James River.[23] Richmond’s Tredegar Iron Works forged cannon and ironclad plating. By mid-war Joseph R. Anderson employed over 750 Black men, both freemen and enslaved, “in all his operations” at Tredegar.[24] When the C.S. naval foundry in Selma needed more hands, 50 Black laborers were impressed to assist.[25]

In New Orleans, John Hughes’s shipyards used enslaved men “in construction” of Confederate gunboats.[26] While plating the ironclad Louisiana at the Crescent City in 1862, shipyard superintendents “procured … from neighboring plantations, between two and three hundred” enslaved men “who were worked as a night gang” to speed the project.[27] In 1863, 30 enslaved men from nearby plantations were impressed by Confederates to assist in attempts at raising the sunken Federal ironclad Indianola.[28]

Whether as sailors, pilots, shipyard laborers, or enslaved persons, Black men helped materially augment, outfit, and operate vessels for the Confederate Navy. Whether they did so by choice is another matter, as many Black men whose records exist clearly show they were enslaved while in their capacity on these ships or while working in shipyards or industrial centers. Regardless, just like in Rebel armies, Black men in the Confederate Navy rarely fired weapons and were often relegated to roles as servants, cooks, or laborers.

Those seeking to prove the Confederacy actively recruited and armed Black men into their naval forces on a wide scale, as Professor Smith claimed, will be sorely disappointed because the evidence demonstrates that enslaved men were forced to work supporting Confederate naval infrastructure by the thousands, but that there are just a mere handful of cases of Black men serving on Rebel warships of their own accord.

 

Endnotes:

[1] An act more effectually to provide for the national defence by establishing an uniform militia through the United States. Philadelphia, PA, May 8, 1792, http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.2180120a, Accessed July 1, 2024.

[2] General Regulations for the Navy and Marine Corps of the United States 1841, (Washington: J. and G.S. Gideon, 1841), 165.

[3] James H. Bruns, Black Sailors in the Civil War: A History of Fugitives, Freemen and Freedmen Aboard Union Vessels (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2023); Kevin M. Levin, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019); Noah Andre Trudeau, Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War 1862-1865 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1998).

[4] John Nevins, “Black Americans in the Confederate Navy & Marine Corps,” accessed May 29, 2025; Black Confederates – Sons of Confederate Veterans, accessed May 29, 2025.

[5] Edward C. Smith, Calico, Black and Gray: Women and Blacks in the Confederacy,” Civil War Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 3; Edward C. Smith, “Blacks in Blue and Gray: The African American Contribution to the Waging of the Civil War,” Gettysburg Seminar Papers, accessed May 29, 2025. Kevin Levin deconstructs much of Smith’s arguments in his Searching for Black Confederates, 156-157.

[6] Regulations for the Navy of the Confederate States. 1862 (Richmond: MacFarlane & Fergusson, 1862), 163, 174.

[7] Hollins to Davis, Oct. 23, 1861, AC: Construction, Subject File of the Confederate States Navy, M1091, Records Group 45, U.S. National Archives (hereafter Subject File).

[8] Kennard to Seymour, Nov. 3, 1863, NP: Pilots, Subject File; See also Maurice Melton, The Best Station of them All: The Savannah Squadron, 1861-1865 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2012), 53-55.

[9] Carter to Mallory, Nov. 4, 1863, Jonathan H. Carter Letterbook. Records Group 45 U.S. National Archives.

[10] Holtzman to Holtzman, Aug. 8, 1863, AR: Repairs, Subject File.

[11] Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat in the War Between the States (Baltimore, MD: Kelly Piet & Co, 1869), 210.

[12] Oct. 9, 1862, Logbook kept by Raphael Semmes while he served as commanding officer aboard the C.S.S. Alabama, Semmes Family Papers, LPR43, Alabama Department of Archives and History. See also Andrew Sillen, Kidnapped at Sea: The Civil War Voyage of David Henry White, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024, 37-52, 111=119.

[13] Tom Chaffin, Sea of Gray: The Around the World Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), 99.

[14] Joseph Fry Muster for CSS Morgan, May 10, 1865, NA: Complements, Subject File.

[15] Michell to Pegram, May 10, 1864, NA: Complements, Subject File; Muster roll of CSS Virginia II, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series 2, Vol. 1, 311.

[16] Muster roll of men sent to Battery Buchanan, December 30, 1864, NA: Complements, Subject File.

[17] W.W. Hunter, Monthly Return of Discharges, December 1864, NN: Commissions, Subject File.

[18] J.W. Nixon, Payment Schedule, October 2, 1861, NN: Commissions, Subject File;

Carter to Nixon, December 4, 1861, NA: Complements, Subject File.

[19] CSS Chicora Pay and Muster Roll, January – March 1863, Reel 166, T-829, U.S. National Archives.

[20] W.C. Jones Affidavit, May 11, 1865, RL: Paroles, Subject File.

[21] Pension Application of W.S. Lewis, April 9, 1923, South Carolina Pensioning Indexing of Confederate Veterans, South Carolina Department of Archives and History.

[22] Mitchell to Mallory, April 28, 1864, ORN, Series 2, Vol, 2, 640.

[23] Mallory to Eggleston, May 14, 1862, ORN, Series 1, Vol. 7, 800.

[24] Kathleen Bruce, Virginia Iron Manufacturing in the Slave Era (New York: The Century Company, 1930), 247-248.

[25] Jones to Maury, June 16, 1864, ORN, Series 1, Vol. 21, 908.

[26] Carter to Shaw, Nov. 7, 1861, AC: Construction, Subject File.

[27] Nelson Tift Testimony, June 12, 1863, Proceedings of the Court of Inquiry Relative to the Fall of New Orleans (Richmond: R.M. Smith, 1864), 111.

[28] Linn Tanner, “The Capture of the Indianola,” Miscellaneous Papers Related to the Confederacy, Confederate States of America Records, 1856-1915, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.