African Americans and the Civil War
By Ken Lyftogt
( History lecturer at University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls)
Military service had always given the soldier an effective and legitimate claim on citizenship. A good soldier could be a good citizen and had earned the right to prove it.
African American soldiers in the Civil War knew full well that they were on national display. They would perform in front of a Union that distrusted their potential and a Confederacy that vowed to execute them on the battlefield. But they also knew that they now had an opportunity to earn their birthrights as Americans.
Heroic service in battle in every theater of the war proved the point. Iowa's Governor, Samuel J. Kirkwood, speaking in acknowledgment of the heroism of African American troops at the Battle of Milliken's Bend in June 1863, said this:
'"I thought that by the help of these blacks the enemy had been prevented from boasting a victory for rebel arms, and I thanked God that they had the manliness and the bravery to come forward and help us. I thought it made little difference whether men were white or black or what color they were. Let men be pea green or sky blue, or any other color under the heavens, if they have the manliness and the courage to come up and fight for the old flag, I am ready to say Godspeed to them."
Such acknowledgment was an important step, one part of a long process, by which the descendants of African immigrants were able to lay claim to that which others have had the luxury to take for granted.