Army Life in a Black Regiment by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Description

Army Life in a Black Regiment is a book by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, first published in 1870. Higginson’s account is at once a wartime memoir and an observant piece of military history: it records his experiences as colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers (one of the first federally authorized Black regiments) and offers vivid reportage on the training, daily life, courage, and discipline of African American soldiers. The narrative moves between battlefield anecdote and camp detail, preserving songs, dialogues, and incidents that illuminate both the practical challenges of organizing Black troops and the moral urgencies that animated Union abolitionists. This makes the work an important primary source for readers interested in Civil War memoirs, United States Colored Troops history, African American military service, and Reconstruction-era debates about citizenship and justice. Written by an outspoken abolitionist and veteran officer, the book also shaped later popular and scholarly understandings of Black regiments by presenting sympathetic, if sometimes paternal, portraits of enlisted men and junior officers. Higginson’s reflections on leadership, race, and military policy — and his preservation of camp spirituals and dialect speech — have made the volume useful to historians of slavery and emancipation, cultural historians studying Negro spirituals, and general readers seeking firsthand Civil War accounts.

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