Black Men in Navy Blue During the Civil War

At the level of individual vessels, the racial demographics of crews reflected a more complex array of variables, including the type of vessel, its tactical mission within a larger unit of operations, and the personality of the captain, his officers, and the ship's company. The broader cultural biases that associated persons of African descent with menial labor and personal service also influenced these demographic patterns. The disproportionate presence of black sailors on supply ships illustrates this point. During 1863 and 1864, virtually every man attached to USS Vermont, moored at Port Royal and serving as the supply ship for the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, was black.18 At Hampton Roads, where another vintage ship-of-the-line, USS Brandywine, stored supplies for the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, the proportion of black enlisted men ranged between 47 and 57 percent during 1863 and 1864.19

In analogous fashion, black men filled an inordinately large number of the enlisted billets on the barks and schooners that served as colliers and ordnance storeships. Between 67 and 100 percent of the enlisted men serving in Charles Phelps, Fearnot, J. C. Kuhn, Albemarle, Arletta, and Ben Morgan were black.20 In the supply steamers New National (Mississippi Squadron), William Badger (North Atlantic Blockading Squadron), and Donegal (South Atlantic Blockading Squadron), the proportion of black enlisted men ranged from 63 to 100 percent.21 Conversely, black men made up the smallest proportion of men in the sloops of war and other ocean-going warships that were the backbone of the late antebellum navy and the workhorses of the blockading squadrons.

The black enlistees who had been slaves—in many instances down to the time of enlistment—stood apart from the freemen of all colors and nations. Often accepted into service on a supposition of inferiority, stigmatized as "contrabands," and rated and paid at the lowest levels of the rating and pay scales, these men often could not escape the stereotypes cast upon them no matter how creditably they performed their assigned duties. In, but not necessarily of, the crews with which they served, the contrabands performed the manual labor necessary to keep a steam vessel functioning and the busywork that officers considered the foundation of good order and discipline on warships: holystoning, scrubbing, scraping, painting, and polishing. Although black men routinely served on gun crews at general quarters, they stood a far greater chance of serving with small-arms crews, armed with swords, rifles, and pistols, for repelling boarders, and with damage control units, armed with water hoses for dousing fires and battle-axes for cutting away damaged spars and rigging. Small-arms crews consisting of contrabands generally exercised separately from those consisting of white sailors.22

Given the pervasive prejudice among white officers and enlisted men, black men sought out their own company as much as possible. Such a pattern of association derived largely from the rating structure, but enlistment patterns and prewar associations also played a part. A surviving photograph of USS Miami illustrates. Around the time of the photograph, about one-quarter of the approximately one hundred enlisted men were of African descent, nearly all contrabands rated as boys and recently enlisted at Plymouth, North Carolina; a number shared the surnames of Etheridge, Johnson, White, and Wilson.23 In a similar photograph of Hunchback, the cluster of black men to the right invites similar scrutiny. During the middle of 1864, approximately twenty-five of the roughly one hundred enlisted men were of African descent. Fifteen of the men were contrabands from Maryland who had recently been transferred from the army to the navy.24

The practical segregation of contraband sailors on board vessels of the Mississippi Squadron affected the broad spectrum of relations between white officers and enlisted men, on the one hand, and black sailors and civilians on the other. Whereas some officers and enlisted men viewed the plight of escaped slaves sympathetically, others scarcely disguised their contempt. On Lafayette in the Mississippi Squadron, for example, the surviving accounts of two men, Gunner Alexander R. Miller and Captain's Steward Thomas Lyons, demonstrate this range. In June 1864, while on the Red River, both men reported the rescue of several hundred contrabands and the construction of a makeshift shelter for them on a coal barge. Lyons reported that about eight in the morning "a body of colored—I can not say Negro, for many of them were almost white) population appeared on shore, signaling for us to take them away. They seemed to be in great consternation about some thing—There were about 600 in all, both great, and small." After the refugees boarded the vessel, a work party under a picket guard went on shore "to tear an old house down to get lumber" for the shelter. In contrast, Miller simply noted: "Negroes coming on board. We dropped down the river and pulled a Shed down for the purpose of getting some boards to cover a coal Barge to keep the Niggers."25

White sailors typically hazed the fugitives—particularly the men who were shipped for naval service. Although hazing had deep roots in a wide range of work cultures, sailors practiced it with special gusto. At once a means whereby experienced men taught the green hands the ropes, hazing also served to reinforce principles of hierarchy among the crew: those based on race and national origin as well as those based on experience or physical ability. In an exaggerated application of regulations requiring the men to observe cleanly habits, the crew of USS Blackhawk, flagship of the Mississippi Squadron, subjected contrabands to a ritual cleansing, stripping away their filthy clothing and showering them with the ship's fire hoses. Following such a shower in December 1862, a man named Robert Scott contracted pneumonia and died on January 2.26

The stigma of guilt by association with slavery dogged "contraband" sailors even when they served thousands of miles from the scene of bondage. The Maryland men transferred from the army to the navy during the spring of 1864 provide a case in point. Although a number of the nearly eight hundred men had experience working small boats on Chesapeake Bay, what defined them most as a group was their slave past. When navy officials assigned several hundred of the men to the Pacific Squadron, white sailors offered the newcomers a chilly welcome. In a postwar memoir, Edward W. Hammond, the white boatswain of USS St. Mary, recalled the "intense race hatred" that a particularly belligerent segment of the ship's company displayed toward the "contrabands." During the evening dog watches, when sailors customarily relaxed on the main deck, the rowdies made a habit of tossing gun-chocks at any black man who dared venture from below. The flying missiles threatened the peace and safety of the entire crew. Even Hammond and his friends, who used to congregate "about the pumps, or the steerage hatchway, or the open space about the capstan" had "to abandon entirely these exposed positions." "By settling down on deck with our back to the after side of a gun," he explained, "we were comparatively safe" though mightily inconvenienced. On one occasion when the contrabands threatened "resistance in force," Hammond recalled, the captain mustered the guard "with muskets loaded" to avert a "serious riot."27

In summary, contrabands made up a considerable majority of black sailors and, by extension, a significant segment of the navy's entire enlisted force during the Civil War. In addition to providing valuable labor at shore installations, they served in large numbers on many vessels and in the Mississippi Squadron constituted nearly one-third of the men on duty at any given time. Although generally rated and paid at the lowest levels, three men—Contraband Robert Blake from South Carolina, Landsman Wilson Brown from Mississippi, and Landsman Allan Sanderson from North Carolina— received the Medal of Honor for gallantry in battle. Yet the paucity of such accomplishments proves the rule that the contrabands largely served as a negative reference point for most officers and their white shipmates.28

Although the Navy Department did not establish a formal system of racial separation during the Civil War, Secretary Welles's guidelines for recruiting and rating black sailors nearly accomplished exactly that. For wittingly or not, the policy reinforced the prejudices of recruiters, naval officers, and white enlisted men to the effect that black enlistees would contribute to the war effort as laborers and servants rather than as skilled seamen. Of the approximately 17,600 men whose base rating is recorded, more than 14,400 (or 82 percent) were rated as boy or landsman.29 This discounting of black men's seafaring skill at times plagued even the most experienced of men. For several of his many enlistments, James Forten Dunbar, nephew of the prominent Philadelphia sailmaker and abolitionist James Forten, was rated a landsman rather than seaman, to which his three decades of naval service more than entitled him.30

The strength of such prejudice coupled with the clannishness of the naval officer corps created insuperable barriers to a black man's being commissioned an officer during the Civil War. Although navy officials—like their army counterparts—feared the effects that placing black men in command over white men might have on discipline, they had little desire to upset the dynamics of the wardroom. No matter how much officers might depend on black cooks and stewards to prepare their meals and minister to their comforts, they steadfastly opposed sharing a table with black men on a basis of equality. But even deeper prejudices stood between black men and a naval commission during the nineteenth century: the values and traditions of the naval officer corps simply could not accommodate black men in the fraternity. Accordingly, no black man held a regular commission or a warrant as a naval officer during the Civil War.31

The overwhelming majority of black men rated as petty officers were cooks and stewards. Navy officers often favored black cooks and servants, in part due to the common prejudices of the day—which held persons of African descent as naturally subservient—and in part due to their experience with black mess attendants at the U.S. Naval Academy. Academy graduate Lt. Roswell Lamson, for instance, reported to his fiancée that two men tended him on the Nansemond: Charles, "my steward and cook," and James, who "waits on the table and takes care of my room." Claiming that both were "excellent servants," Lamson took special pride in Charles, "a very fine cook" who "has been at sea a good deal, and for some time waited on Admiral Du Pont."32 Volunteer officers who lacked an association with Annapolis quickly learned the conventions of the ward room. When Paymaster William F. Keeler, who before the war had been a manufacturer and merchant in Illinois, reported to USS Monitor and learned that he was entitled to a servant, he meticulously went about "hunting up a contraband." He soon became accustomed to the assorted amenities that his nameless "darkey" furnished, not least of which were "a wash bowl of warm water," "well blacked boots," and breakfast in his room each morning.33

Approximately 8 percent of the black sailors (roughly 1,400 men) were rated as cooks and stewards over the course of the war. Cooks and stewards earned premium pay (twenty-five or thirty dollars a month), and they were technically petty officers, yet as petty officers of the staff they generally lacked the authority over other enlisted men that petty officers of the line possessed.34 Moreover, providing personal service to naval officers posed an array of challenges. The quarters were cramped and the hours long and irregular. Officers routinely barked orders at their stewards, cooks, and cabin boys—one observer noted that "growling and swearing at servants" was a staple of the wardroom—and the more sustained tirades of abuse might reduce a man to tears.35 One officer casually noted to his wife having "blowed . . . up" his black servant for having mislaid a letter from her.36 Teenaged attendants did not sacrifice the fraternity of their fellow youth, but the adult men who served the officers faced snide comments if not outright ostracism from the ship's company.37 The relative freedom that stewards such as Charles B. Fisher of Kearsarge enjoyed as they made daily trips to the market while in port offered but a partial counterweight to the larger burdens the officers' servants bore.

In contrast to the significant presence of black men among petty officers of the staff, they made up an infinitesimally small proportion of petty officers of the line. Over the course of the entire war, barely one hundred black men (or 0.6 percent of all black enlistees) held such ratings. Most also held base ratings of ordinary seaman or seaman, indicating prior nautical experience before enlistment, and all evidently possessed truly impressive leadership qualities to so distinguish themselves from their peers. This scarcity of black petty officers highlights the point that throughout the service for the duration of the war, the senior petty officer command structure was overwhelmingly white. During the third quarter of 1864, for instance, when the navy's enlisted force consisted of approximately 23,200 men, only 13 black men (or 0.05 percent) were rated petty officers of the line.38 The senior petty officers represented a mere 0.3 percent of the 4,200 black sailors in service at the time. By way of contrast, the army's regiments of Colored Troops relied entirely on black men to serve as senior noncommissioned officers. During the fall of 1864, it is likely that between 5 and 10 percent of black enlisted men were company or regimental sergeants. Small wonder that George E. Smith, an ordinary seaman from New York who left his ship in Norfolk to enlist as an orderly sergeant in a black regiment, cited "the general, treatment men of Color receive" as his reason for deserting the navy. His brigade commander interceded with navy authorities, explaining that no "mean motive" animated Smith "as he showed himself anxious to fight for his country under circumstances more hazardous than he would be likely to encounter in the naval service, and where he could find more scope for personal ambition," but to no avail. Smith was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.39

Although the men born free in the northern states and in places outside the United States often found themselves guilty by racial association with the contrabands, several measures also separated them from the men who had recently escaped slavery. Paramount among these was their status as free men, which both officers and enlisted shipmates respected—if at times grudgingly—for its implications of manly independence. The freeborn men also spoke with familiar accents, and their cultural compasses bore reference marks similar to those that oriented white sailors from the northern states and the maritime nations of the north Atlantic basin.

More than any other attribute, however, the prior maritime experience of the free black men distinguished them from the contrabands. Although the amount and range of this experience varied, several broad patterns appear. First, men who lived in the major port cities of the northeast Atlantic coast (and their counterparts in the other seaports of the world) often had commercial maritime experience. Hundreds of men from Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, and Boston fit the profile of James Forten Dunbar even if they could not match his three decades at sea. By the 1840s and 1850s, as packet steamship lines began serving the coastal cities on regular schedules, some men found regular employment on the packets. A number found positions as stewards, cooks, and barbers as well as deck hands.40

A second pattern characterized the men who grew up in the villages that lined the Atlantic coast and its estuaries. Along the shores of Chesapeake and Delaware Bays and Long Island Sound, they were familiar with the variety of small craft used in oystering, crabbing, and fishing the local waters. Some had shipped on a commercial vessel and some—particularly those in the vicinity of the naval installation at Norfolk, Virginia—on a warship.41 Young men from towns and villages of coastal New England typically went on a two- to three-year whaling voyage as a rite of passage to manhood. They returned with a storehouse of knowledge about ships and the sea, and not infrequently with a tattoo of a whale or some other nautical symbol to signify their membership in the seafaring fraternity. More than four hundred of the black men who entered the enlisted ranks during the Civil War bore such tattoos.42

A third pattern of maritime experience characterized the men who lived along the internal waterways of North America, particularly the Ohio, the Missouri, and the Upper Mississippi rivers. Although these men could not claim familiarity with the exotic regions of South Pacific that were the whalemen's bragging rights, they knew the rivers well. In addition to working as deckhands and service workers (stewards, cooks, barbers, and cabin attendants), thousands of African American men gained experience in the engine compartment of the steamboats, both stoking the furnaces and tending the boilers. Hundreds of these men found similar employment in the navy during the Civil War.43

Two sets of naval traditions—one formal and the other informal—offer insights into points at which the Civil War experiences of black sailors overlapped with and diverged from those of white sailors. The formal traditions both expressed the reciprocal relationship between the government and every person serving under arms and governed the responsibilities of each party to the other. For risking their lives on behalf of the nation and subjecting themselves to rigid discipline, the naval volunteers of the Civil War gained the government's protection, an especially significant boon to the men only shortly removed from slavery. In the first place it meant clothing, food, and shelter, the likes of which must have appeared princely to many a former slave. Second, naval service meant access to arms and training in their effective use. Third, naval service promised mobility. Apart from mere acquaintance with new places—nothing to scoff at—this mobility brought black sailors into circumstances in which they might offer assistance and perhaps even protection to persons fleeing, as one termed it, "from the horrible pit of bondage."44 Fourth, wartime service enabled black sailors to take part in the struggle to save the Union and destroy slavery, which in postwar years paid assorted dividends, most notably government pensions. Although black naval veterans appear to have sought such support in significantly lower proportions than either their white comrades or army veterans, black or white, the benefits provided both financial support and a tangible measure of the nation's gratitude in the men's later years.45

For freeborn black men no less than former slaves, navy regulations offered a mixed measure of impartiality and caprice, perhaps the most ambiguous feature of their relationship with the federal government during the Civil War. Because captains of a naval vessel wielded nearly omnipotent power—akin, as many a contemporary noted, to that of slave masters—all sailors faced the risk of arbitrary punishment. By the time of the Civil War, naval reformers had succeeded in reducing the incidence of abuse, though former slaves, by virtue of their past vulnerability, may have been disproportionately subject to the exceptions to that rule.46

The case of USS Ethan Allen, a number of whose black sailors were former slaves from coastal South Carolina and Georgia, serves to illustrate. Master-at-arms Tufton K. Stanley, a white northerner, recoiled at the officers' treatment of several of these men. In one case, Fielding Troupe, who was sentenced to five days in double irons for destruction of government property and disobedience of orders, "had been very badly beaten" by the captain. As Stanley confined him to the brig, Troupe "could hardly help himself as his arms were very sore and lame from the blows." In another case, a "mean, contemptable, lieing set of Officers" confined William Newton and Charles Tyson on trumped-up charges because the two "would not hunt for them every day." "Ships meat cost .30cts per pound," Stanley observed bitterly. "Deer meat cost nothing if Newton killed it for them."47 In not a single one of the scores of cases involving white sailors did Stanley note such excesses.

Despite such blatant discrimination, sailors of every color and nationality appreciated that, for better and worse, regulations prescribed a degree of uniformity over judicial proceedings. Like other stewards, Charles Fisher relished visiting shore for fresh provisions, understanding at the same time that punishment would surely follow any abuse of the privilege. On one occasion when he and several other stewards returned late from marketing, he resigned himself to "Double Darbies [that is, irons on wrists and ankles] for five days on bread and water." The brig awaited any man who flouted orders in such a fashion.48

At the level of infractions, including capital cases, that came before courts of inquiry and general courts-martial, black sailors particularly welcomed the impartiality of the regulations. Take, for instance, the inquiry into the death of James (or Owen) Conlan on USS Pampero in February 1864. The case grew out of a fistfight between Conlan, an Irish sailor, and James Dixon, a contraband. When Conlan leaned against a deck gun for which Dixon claimed to be the captain, the two exchanged insults. According to witnesses, Dixon invited Conlan to "Kiss my ass you Irish son of a bitch," upon which Conlan called Dixon "a damned bastard son of a bitch" and cursed "all his (Dixon's) generation." When words turned to punches, Dixon gained the upper hand, but at one point both men fell to the deck. Conlan struck his head and died instantly. Upon examination, the ship's surgeon concluded that the victim had fractured his skull. The court ruled that because "death was not premeditated by the accused" there was "no necessity for further proceedings."49 In civilian life North or South, a black man in Dixon's shoes would have had a difficult time walking away from such charges.

The second set of naval traditions, the informal ones governing recreation and relaxation on board warships, adds additional perspective on the comparative experience of black and white sailors. During the evening dog watches, men customarily read mail and newspapers from home, played games, told tales, sang and danced, even if on some vessels they also had to beware of flying gun chocks. Charles Fisher recalled that in a season of "cold cruising . . . the only comfort a fellow has is his hot coffee in the morning and then at night sit on the berth deck and sing or spin cuffers to your messmates."50 Although the men but shortly removed from slavery may have lacked the reading and writing skills to communicate with families or learn the news of the day firsthand, literate black men from the northern states subscribed to such African American newspapers as the New York Anglo African and the African Methodist Episcopal Church's Christian Recorder, passing copies among the literate and reading the news aloud for the benefit of those who could not read. Even absent the Anglo or the Recorder, black sailors had access to other northern newspapers and periodicals, copies of which arrived with each mail and circulated among the crew until they were reduced to tatters.51

Musical diversions ranged from the plaintive guitar ballads that touched the men's heart strings to the raucous harmonies of pipes, fiddles, and banjos that set their feet in motion. The widespread practice of minstrelsy provides an especially fascinating window into the culture of shipboard rest and relaxation. Widely popular in the mid-nineteenth-century United States, minstrel performances meshed neatly with shipboard practices common on merchant as well as naval vessels throughout the world. By the time of the Civil War, sailors had ready access to mass-produced as well as handcrafted musical instruments for their personal enjoyment and collective entertainment. Sailors valued the musicianship of their shipmates, and men with command over instruments prided themselves in that expertise, as witnessed by the presence of a banjo player—in one case black and in another white—in the photographs of Hunchback and Miami. On some vessels, ensembles of musicians provided accompaniment for minstrel shows, in which elaborate costumes and props aided the players in impersonating female, African American, and Irish characters. Fresh drafts of recruits from the urban centers of the Northeast guaranteed fresh supplies of material from current minstrel shows.52

The convergence of civilian and naval tradition around such performances obscures the fact that, given the dynamics of interactions on board any single ship and the mix of personalities that fate cast together, only a thin line may have separated voluntary from involuntary participation in the ritualized merriment. On USS Minnesota, for instance, when the officers determined that a number of the "plantation darkies" on board could "sing and dance," "[al]most every night their services were brought into requisition and the roars of laughter that greeted their comical efforts could be heard" from one end of the ship to the other.53 On vessels such as USS Brazileira, where a regular "Theatrical Company" staged elaborate productions, "contrabands" were relegated to the "Colored Gallery" to observe the performances. Given the pervasiveness of racial stereotypes in the entire genre of minstrel material, Henry G. Thayer, ship's yeoman and one of the prime movers behind the company, could not resist casting "all our darkies" in a scene of "Bombastes Furioso" wherein they impersonated a squad of soldiers "armed with broomsticks." White officers and sailors, some doubtless in blackface, seem to have played all the parts in "Nigger in the Daguerreotype Saloon."54

Despite the demeaning character of the minstrel stereotypes, black sailors often experienced a degree of ambivalence toward minstrelsy, whose tunes and lyrics might strike sentimental rather than strictly demeaning chords. Upon his transfer to Brazileira, Stephen B. Wales brought from New York not only proficiency in the guitar and the banjo but also familiarity with the latest tunes. Although Thayer looked down upon Wales as a "darkey" or a "'Cullie'" ("a very civil & well behaved" one, to be sure), the impresario readily subordinated himself to hours of instruction at the hands of this "Colored preceptor."55

The steward Charles B. Fisher, who had been born free in Alexandria, Virginia, took a leading part in the "band of minstrels" aboard Kearsarge. His diary records the "gay time" that he and two of his shipmates enjoyed in Cadiz, Spain, purchasing instruments—"guitars, violin cello, violin, accordian, Tambour, triangle, & c."—for the band's use.56 Fisher's observations about specific performances further illustrate the place of minstrelsy in the lives of black Civil War sailors. In the fall of 1862, for instance, at Fayal in the Azores, the musicians performed a two-and-one-half-hour concert "for the benefit of the poor of these Islands." Of all the entertainers, the audience especially favored George Williams (a.k.a. "Hamfat"), Fisher's good friend and fellow African American steward, who "brought down the house: he was in his element and sang 'Round De Home' and danced the 'Essence of Old Virginny' better than ever before. Everytime he appeared on the stage roars of laughter greeted him from every part of the house and his Spiritual Rapping was encored, indeed he was the creme of the performance and the observed of all observers."57

Nearly a year later while at Algeciras, the "Kearsarge Minstrels" entertained their shipmates on the quarterdeck with "sketches from Othello—Spiritual Rappings—songs—dance and instrumental solos—duets—trios." Fisher noted an impending battle of the bands with their counterparts from Tuscarora when "we will try for who can win the most praise and give the best concert." Besides the honor of such bragging rights, the minstrels provided both "amusement" and relief from the "tediousness of the blockade."58 When William Gowan, a white man whom Fisher described as "the leader of the minstrels," succumbed to wounds sustained in the battle with Alabama in June 1864, his death "cast a deep gloom over the whole ships company."59 On naval warships, like playhouses on shore, minstrelsy provided much more than simply a stage for reinforcing racial stereotypes. It held the power to bridge racial and ethnic divisions by transporting both performers and auditors home, removed from harm's way and surrounded by loved ones.60

In conclusion, the experience of black men in the Union navy not only adds a new chapter to the history of the Civil War but also suggests a need to revise the narrative of the African American military experience during that era, much of which is presently cast as an heroic struggle against the dual enemies of slavery and discrimination. Implicitly at least, men bear the major burden, fighting for the "manhood rights" of freedom and equality. Having its origins in antebellum abolitionism, the struggle contended mightily against long odds early in the war, reached a turning point with the Emancipation Proclamation, and began winning victory after victory with the enlistment of black men in the army, the successful tests at arms at Fort Wagner and elsewhere, and the achievement of equal pay. Although the war ended on a somewhat discordant note with the exclusion of black units from the victory procession after Appomattox, Reconstruction assuaged that disappointment.

The naval experience requires another narrative that, while not denying the significant contribution that persons of African descent made to the struggles against slavery and for equality, begins on a more optimistic note and ends on a less romantic one than the heroic saga chronicles. Its plot moves not in a direct line from exclusion and repression to participation and fair treatment but rather in circles, with numerous arcs that overlap or run counter to others and some that proceed in tangents to inconclusive ends. Among other things, the revised framework must accommodate discrimination within a structure of nominal impartiality and the contribution of backbreaking labor rather than brave assaults against overwhelming odds of success. The fact that black women served and that large numbers of men performed duties often denominated women's work on shore reinforces the sense that the narrative of manly struggle will not suffice. In this, as in many other particulars, the heroic framework simply breaks down or cannot accommodate the evidence from the black naval experience. The new explanation must emphasize ambiguity rather than clear definition and struggles lost as well as won. To the extent that it succeeds, it may just come close to capturing the messy lives that people actually live rather than the neat ones that historians are inclined to construct.61

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Joseph P. Reidy has taught U.S. history at Howard University since 1984 and for the past three years has also served as the Associate Dean of the Graduate School. He has published widely on slavery, the Civil War, and slave emancipation in both scholarly and popular journals. At present he directs the African-American Sailors Project at Howard University, from which work the present article derives.

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Notes

Earlier versions of this article benefited from comments by a number of persons at the Great Lakes Regional Naval History Symposium in Chicago and at the History Department Seminar at the Pennsylvania State University. I am grateful to Scott Forsythe and Glenn Longacre in Chicago and Nan Woodruff, William Blair, and Benjamin DeGrow in State College for their hospitality and insightful comments. I owe special thanks to Christopher McKee of Grinnell College and Michael J. Bennett of St. Louis University for particularly careful readings of the manuscript. The research was made possible through a partnership among Howard University, the U.S. Department of the Navy, and the U.S. National Park Service under Cooperative Agreement No. 1443CA000192030.

I am grateful to Rebecca Livingston, Richard Peuser, and Michael Musick at the National Archives, and to the following students and graduates of Howard University for research assistance: Roger A. Davidson Jr., Homer Fleetwood II, Joy P. Jackson, Barbara P. Josiah, Lisa Y. King, Learie B. Luke, Sharon Pierre-Luke, Wanda R. Porter, Craig A. Schiffert, Michael A. Southwood, James Peckham Stephens, Robert T. Vinson, Bennie Visher III, and Yohuru R. Williams. Thanks also to the National Endowment for the Humanities for support through a fellowship for university teachers.

1. Exceptions to this rule are the publications of William Still, Jr., particularly "The Civil War's Uncommon Man: The Common Sailor. Pt. 1: Yankee Bluejackets; Pt. 2: Confederate Tars." Civil War Times Illustrated (February 1983): 24–39; (Mar. 1983): 12–19, 36–39; and James M. Merrill, "Men, Monotony, and Mouldy Beans—Life on Board Civil War Blockaders," American Neptune 16 (January 1956): 49–59. See also Dennis J. Ringle, Life in Mr. Lincoln's Navy (1998). Michael J. Bennett's recently completed study, "Union Jacks: The Common Yankee Sailor of the American Civil War, 1861–1865" (Ph.D. diss., St. Louis University) departs radically from traditional interpretations of Civil War sailors. Wiley's classics are The Life of Johnny Reb (1947), and The Life of Billy Yank (1952).

2. See Herbert Aptheker, "The Negro in the Union Navy," Journal of Negro History 32 (April 1947): 179.

3. David L. Valuska, "The Negro in the Union Navy, 1861–1865" (Ph.D. diss., Lehigh University, 1973), which was published in slightly modified form as The African American in the Union Navy: 1861–1865 (1993). See also Aptheker, "The Negro in the Union Navy"; Aptheker, "Negro Casualties in the Civil War" Journal of Negro History 32 (January 1947): 10–80; and Harold D. Langley, "The Negro in the Navy and Merchant Service, 1798–1860" Journal of Negro History 52 (October 1967): 273–286. Other studies include Michael H. Goodman, "The Black Tar: Negro Seamen in the Union Navy, 1861–1865" (Ph.D. diss.: University of Nottingham, 1975), and Steven John Ramold, "Valuable Men for Certain Kinds of Duty: African Americans in the Civil War Navy" (Ph.D. diss., University of Nebraska, 1999).

4. For descriptions of the project, see Joseph P. Reidy, "Black Jack: African American Sailors in the Civil War Navy," in New Interpretations in Naval History: Selected Papers from the Twelfth Naval History Symposium Held at the United States Naval Academy, 26–27 October 1995, ed. William B. Cogar (1997), pp. 213–220; and "The African-American Sailors' Project: The Hidden History of the Civil War" CRM: Cultural Resource Management 20 (1997): 31–33, 43.

5. This figure was determined by examining surviving naval enlistment records and quarterly muster rolls of vessels. See, respectively, the Weekly Returns of Enlistments from Recruitment Rendezvous (known as Rendezvous Reports), Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel, Record Group (RG) 24, National Archives Building (NAB), Washington, DC; Muster Rolls of Vessels, RG 24, NAB. The names, along with other personal information about each, may be found on the Internet web site for the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System maintained by the National Park Service: www.nps.gov/civilwar/soldiers-and-sailors-database.htm.

A brief comment on the vexed question of numbers and percentages is in order here. The fact that Valuska's estimate of the number of black men based upon the rendezvous reports overlooks nearly an equivalent number of men who either enlisted directly on board a vessel or who simply were not recorded on the rendezvous reports suggests that the navy's estimate of 118,044 enlistments probably errs on the low side, but probably in the range of 10 to 20 percent rather than 100 percent. Although thousands of black men recently escaped from slavery in the Confederacy sought refuge on naval vessels and ultimately enlisted in the navy, comparatively few white Confederate refugees followed a similar path into the naval service. Assuming that the 118,044 recorded enlistments represented approximately 75,000 men (discounting for reenlistments) and that the latter figure is inflated by 20 percent to account for underreporting, then the total number of enlisted men is 90,000. The 18,000 black men represented 20 percent of that total. See Donald L. Canney, Lincoln's Navy: The Ships, Men and Organization, 1861–65 (1998), pp. 117–118, 138, and (for the estimate of 75,000 total men) 216. Given the nature of surviving official documentation, these estimates are likely to remain conjectural. For a treatment of the enlisted women, with particular emphasis on the remarkable career of Ann Stokes, see Lisa Y. King, "In Search of Women of African Descent Who Served in the Civil War Union Navy," Journal of Negro History 83 (Fall 1998): 302–309.

6. See Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, The Black Military Experience. Series II of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867 (1982), p. 733.

7. Rendezvous Reports, vols. 13 - 15, RG 24, NAB. Although over the course of the entire war the rendezvous reports that recorded men's enlistment data reported the years of prior naval service irregularly— in some cases omitting it or in other cases including time at sea in civilian vessels— at the start of the war, when prior service was recorded, the service credited was years of naval service as such and not simply years of experience at sea. In any case, the reports of prior service significantly underestimate the amount of sea experience the recruits brought into the navy.

8. These summary data derive from the nearly 5,000 surviving quarterly muster rolls examined by the researchers of the Black Sailors Research Project. Note that comparatively few muster rolls survive for 1861 and 1862; by 1863, thanks in part to the stricter enforcement of traditional reporting regulations, commanders of vessels dutifully forwarded their muster rolls to the Bureau of Navigation at the end of each quarter, even though not all these muster rolls survive in the naval records at the National Archives. Note, too, that the extant muster rolls from 1861 do not usually identify men by physical description, but by tracking men from later musters (on which physical descriptions appear) backward to the earlier musters, it has been possible to identify numerous men of African descent who served during the first year of the war. Given the limitations of this method, these estimates are certainly low.

9. See Rendezvous Reports, Baltimore, week ending April 30, 1864, Vol. 33, p. 296 1/2, RG 24, NAB. Another 480 men native to the District of Columbia enlisted.

10. These figures, like those in the preceding paragraph, derive from the database of names and descriptive information described in n. 5 above.

11. See Adele Logan Alexander, Homelands and Waterways: The American Journey of the Bond Family, 1846–1926 (1999), p. 46.

12. Order of Sept. 25, 1861, file NR—Naval Personnel, Recruitment and Enlistments, 1860–1870, Subject File, U.S. Navy, 1775–1910, Naval Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library, RG 45, NAB. In December 1862 Welles removed the restriction that contraband enlistees be rated exclusively as boys. On the evolution of official policy regarding the enlistment of black sailors, see Valuska, The African American, chap. 2.

13. See Roger A. Davidson, "A Question of Loyalty: The Potomac Flotilla and Civil Insurrection in the Chesapeake Region" (Ph.D. diss., Howard University, 2000). See also Robert M. Browning, From Cape Charles to Cape Fear: The North Atlantic Blockading Squadron During the Civil War (1993).

14. General Orders No. 76, July 26, 1863, in Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (ORN), 30 vols. (1894–1922), 25: 327–328.

15. Extant muster rolls of vessels in the Mississippi Squadron provide the clearest indication of this phenomenon. See Muster Rolls, RG 24, NAB. Because most of the men enlisted directly on board the vessels, their enlistment information for the most part does not appear in the enlistment returns of the recruitment rendezvous at Cairo and New Orleans. On black men in the Mississippi Squadron, see Charles C. Brewer, "African American Sailors and the Unvexing of the Mississippi River," Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration 30 (Winter 1998): 278–286; and Steven Louis Roca, "Presence and Precedents: The USS Red Rover during the American Civil War, 1861–1865," Civil War History 44 (June 1998): 91–110.

16. Recruiting poster, "Men Wanted for the Navy," dated Roanoke Island, NC, Dec. 8, 1863, in file NR—Recruiting and Enlistments: Regulations, Posters, Shipping Articles, Subject File, RG 45, NAB.

17. Muster Rolls, RG 24, NAB.

18. See, for instance, Muster Rolls, USS Vermont, Mar. 31, 1863, July 1, 1863, Oct. 1, 1863, Dec. 31, 1863, July 31, 1864, RG 24, NAB. Information about the service of the warships noted in this discussion derives from Paul H. Silverstone, Warships of the Civil War Navies (1989). For additional details on the service of these men and glimpses into their postwar lives, see Lisa Y. King, "Wounds that Bind: A Comparative Study of the Role Played by Civil War Veterans of African Descent in Community Formation in Massachusetts and South Carolina" (Ph.D. diss., Howard University, 1999).

19. See Muster Rolls, USS Brandywine, RG 24, NAB.

20. See Muster Rolls, USS Charles Phelps, USS Fearnot, USS J. C. Kuhn, USS Albemarle, USS Arletta, and USS Ben Morgan, RG 24, NAB.

21. See Muster Rolls, USS New National, USS William Badger, and USS Donegal, RG 24, NAB. On other supply steamers black men formed less than a majority but still more than the aggregate average on all naval vessels. See, for instance, muster rolls of USS Massachusetts, RG 24, NAB.

22. Log book of USS General Sterling Price, Mar. 11, 1864; Log book of Judge Torrence, Nov. 4 & 5, 1863, Log Books of Vessels, RG 24, NAB; Thomas Lyons Journal, Library of Congress (LC), Washington, DC; Alexander R. Miller, "Memorandum Book of the U.S. Str. 'Baron de Kalb' and 'Lafayette'," entry for June 11, 1863, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collection, Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University (LSU), Baton Rouge, LA.

23. Muster rolls, USS Miami, RG 24, NAB. For a detailed study of Plymouth (and Washington County), North Carolina, in the Civil War, see Wayne K. Durrill, War of a Different Kind: A Southern Community in the Great Rebellion (1990).

24. Muster rolls, USS Hunchback, RG 24, NAB.

25. Lyons Journal, pp. 41b–42 (entry for June 11, 1863), LC; Miller, "Memorandum Book," LSU. For fuller treatment of these matters, see Michael J. Bennett, "'Frictions': Shipboard Relations between White Sailors and Contraband Sailors during the American Civil War," Civil War History 47 (June 2001) 118–145. Lyons's fascination with the near whiteness of some of the "colored" refugees is symptomatic of what George Fredrickson describes as "romantic racialism"; see Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (1971), chap. 4.

26. Death Certificate of Robert Scott, died Jan. 2, 1863, Vol. 9, p. 121, Death Certificates and Reports of Medical Surveys, Records of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, RG 52, NAB.

27. "A Personal Reminiscence by Edward W. Hammond, Boatswain, U.S. Navy, of an Incident on board the U.S. Ship St. Mary's in Valparaiso Harbor 1865," dated Wimer, Jackson Co., Oregon, Apr. 5 1894 (pp. 4–5 regarding the flying gun chocks and p. 16 regarding the near riot), in folder "1865: NJ—Attempt by crew members to run the USS St. Mary into the mole," file NJ—Discipline and Minor Delinquencies, Subject File, RG 45, NAB. The dog watches, wherein the port and starboard watches alternated duty on two-hour intervals instead of four, assured that the same group of men would not have the midnight watch night after night. Sailors aboard merchant and whaling ships as well as warships employed the dog watches for recreational purposes.

28. ORN, 15: 191, 197 (Blake); 21: 437 (Brown); 5: 535 (Sanderson). Five other black men were awarded the Medal of Honor for Civil War gallantry: William H. Brown, Clement Deas, John Henry Lawson, James Mifflin, and Joachim Pease.

29. At enlistment a man's rating was fixed as boy, landsman, ordinary seaman, or seaman, depending on his age, experience, and other circumstances. Upon being attached to a vessel, he might, at the pleasure of the captain, be rated as a petty officer. Upon transfer or discharge from a vessel, a man shed his petty-officer rating and assumed his original rating. A man might advance his base rating either by reenlisting or displaying conspicuous valor in combat.

30. Rendezvous Reports, Vol. 7, p. 33; Vol. 9, p. 6; Vol. 13, p. 60; Vol. 18, p. 73; Vol. 26, p. 306; Vol. 26, p. 363, RG 24, NAB. For background information on Forten's Philadelphia, see Julie Winch, Philadelphia's Black Elite: Activism, Accommodation, and the Struggle for Autonomy, 1787–1848 (1988).

31. This general statement requires qualification in one particular. During the war, the navy authorized the commissioning of pilots in certain circumstances; at least one African American, James Taliaferro from North Carolina, was commissioned in this fashion. See Act. Ens. Cmdg. Fred. B. Allen to Rear Adm. D. D. Porter, off Yorktown, Va., Feb. 6, 1865, file NP—Pilots, Individual Cases, Subject File, RG 45, NAB. Despite the fact that before the Civil War dozens of African American seafarers had served as captains and mates of vessels (sometimes owning the vessels as well), the Department of the Navy chose not to tap into this reserve. See Martha S. Putney, Black Sailors: Afro-American Merchant Seaman and Whalemen Prior to the Civil War (1987). On the origins of the naval officer corps, see Christopher McKee, A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794–1815 (1991). Only during World War II were the first black men commissioned as naval officers. See Paul Stillwell, ed., The Golden Thirteen (1996); Dennis D. Nelson, The Integration of the Negro into the U.S. Navy (1951). For the fascinating account of Michael Healy, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service captain of mixed Irish and African American descent, see James M. O'Toole, "Racial Identity and the Case of Captain Michael Healy, USRCS," Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration 29 (Fall 1997): 190–201.

32. Roswell H. Lamson to Kate, Aug. 20, 1863, in Lamson of the Gettysburg: The Civil War Letters of Lieutenant Roswell H. Lamson, U.S. Navy, James M. McPherson and Patricia McPherson, eds. (1997), p. 126. The names of Charles Adams and James R. Frisby appear on the muster rolls of the ships Lamson commanded: see the rolls of USS Nansemond, Aug. 24 and Sept. 30, 1863; USS Gettysburg, May 10, June 30, and Sept. 30, 1864; RG 24, NAB.

33. William F. Keeler to his wife, Feb. 13, 1862, Mar. 4, 1862, Aboard the USS Monitor: 1862: The Letters of Acting Paymaster William Frederick Keeler, U.S. Navy To his Wife, Anna, Robert W. Daly, ed. (1964), pp. 12, 23.

34. Canney, Lincoln's Navy, pp. 128 - 129, and especially Lester B. Tucker, "History of the Petty Officer Grade," Pull Together 32 (Spring/Summer 1993): 1–7. Tucker, "History," table 1, provides a neat synopsis of the respective ratings according to naval regulations of March 12, 1863. Petty officer of the line ratings included boatswain's mate, gunner's mate, captain of the forecastle, quartermaster, quarter gunner, captain of the maintop, captain of the foretop, captain of the hold, captain of the mizzentop, coxswain, and captain of the afterguard. Petty officer of the staff ratings included master-at-arms, yeoman, surgeon's steward, paymaster's steward, master of the band, schoolmaster, ship's corporal, armorer, painter, carpenter's mate, sailmaker's mate, fireman first class, cooper, armorer's mate, steward, and cook.

35. Lamson to Kate, June 4, 1863, Lamson of the Gettysburg, p. 111. Thomas Lyons Journal, p. 5b (entry for Jan. 26, 1863), LC. On a number of other occasions, Lyons, a white sailor from Ohio who served as steward for Capt. Henry Walke, first on USS Carondelet and later on USS Lafayette, frequently recorded his humiliation in the face of Walke's outbursts and reported one day remarkable in that he "Did not get Scolded to-day." See p. 6 (entry for Jan. 28, 1863).

36. Keeler to his wife, Mar. 5, 1862, Aboard the USS Monitor: 1862, p. 24.

37. For a youthful perspective on naval service, see Alvah E. Hunter, A Year on a Monitor and Destruction of Fort Sumter, Craig L. Symonds, ed. (1987); on his relationships with black shipmates, see pp. 9, 40, 65, 76, 91–92, 113–114, 119–120, 145. The full range of demands and rewards that seafarers who served as stewards and cooks experienced is treated in Michael Sokolow, "'What a Miserable Life a Sea Fareing Life Is': The Life and Experiences of Nineteenth-Century Mariner of Color" (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1997), but see also W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (1997); and "To Feel Like a Man: Black Seamen in the Northern States, 1800–1860," Journal of American History 76 (March 1990): 1173–1199.

38. Muster Rolls, RG 24, NA.

39. George E. Smith to Gen. Wise, U.S. Frigate Minnesota, Jan. 4, 1864, with endorsements (including that of Brig. Gen. Edwd. A. Wild, Jan. 14, 1864), case number 3516, Records of General Courts-Martial and Courts of Inquiry of the Navy Department, 1799–1867 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M273), roll 122, Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Navy), RG 125.

40. For general treatment of black merchant seamen during the pre–Civil War era, see Bolster, Black Jacks; Putney, Black Sailors; and James Barker Farr, Black Odyssey: The Seafaring Tradition of Afro-Americans (1989).

41. George Teamoh, God Made Man, Man Made the Slave: The Autobiography of George Teamoh, ed. F. N. Boney, Richard L. Hume, and Rafia Zafar (1990), pp. 82–84.

42. See affidavit of John T. Handy, County of Bristol, MA, Mar. 31, 1893, pension file of Joshua J. Handy, Pension Records, Records of the Veterans Administration, RG 15, NAB. More generally, see Margaret S. Creighton, Rites and Passages: The Experience of American Whaling, 1830–1870 (1995).

43. The rendezvous reports from Cincinnati suggest the extent of this experience: 179 of 419 men enlisted there (42.7 percent) were rated fireman at the time of enlistment. See Thomas C. Buchanan, "The Slave Mississippi: African-American Steamboat Workers, Networks of Resistance, and the Commercial World of the Western Rivers, 1811–1880" (Ph.D. diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 1998).

44. Letter from George W. Reed, May [14,] 1864, in Edwin S. Redkey, ed., A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (1992), p. 272.

45. Impressionistic sampling of naval veterans' pension applications suggests that not more than half of the eligible black men applied for pensions. This proportion appears to be less than the proportion of white naval veterans who applied and is substantially lower than the estimated 64 percent of eligible black soldiers who applied. The fact that numbers of the men simply left service at the end of the Civil War (rather than having been formally discharged) resulted in their being reported to the Department of the Navy as deserters surely accounts for a portion of the low proportion of applicants. More significant, however, may have been the large percentage of men who enlisted as fugitives from slavery and whose lives may well have remained unsettled for years after the war. For men who continued to pursue maritime employment, the mobility that resulted may have stretched their ties to stable communities and networks of advisers and contacts that would have been necessary to make the pension process work in their favor. It is also likely that numbers of them did not survive long enough after the war to avail themselves of the pension process. While the maritime trades were notoriously dangerous, wartime veterans may have also fallen victim to respiratory and other diseases ultimately traceable at least in part to their naval service. See Donald R. Shaffer, "'I do not suppose that Uncle Sam Looks at the skin': African Americans and the Civil War Pension System, 1865–1934" Civil War History 66 (June 2000): 132–147, esp. 133–134; see also his "Marching On: African-American Civil War Veterans in Postbellum America, 1865–1951" (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, College Park, 1996). More generally, see Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (1992), esp. chap. 2.

46. See Harold D. Langley, Social Reform in the United States Navy, 1789–1862 (1967); and Myra C. Glenn, Campaigns against Corporal Punishment: Prisoners, Sailors, Women, and Children in Antebellum America (1984), esp. chap. 5.

47. See Leon Basile, ed., "Harry Stanley's Mess Book: Offenses and Punishments Aboard the Ethan Allen." Civil War History 23, 1 (March 1977): 79, 78.

48. Diary of Charles B. Fisher, ed. Paul E. Sluby, Sr., and Stanton L. Wormley (1983), p. 72.

49. Court of inquiry into the death of James Conlan, Naval Court of Inquiry No. 4301, Records of General Courts-Martial, M273, roll 167. The best study of the navy's judicial system treats the antebellum period: James E. Valle, Rocks and Shoals: Naval Discipline in the Age of Fighting Sail (1980).

50. Fisher Diary, p. 62 (entry for Feb. 22, 1864).

51. Redkey, Grand Army, p. 277.

52. H. G. Thayer, "Log of the Brazileira," p. 29 (entry for Feb. 23, 1863), p. 44 (entry for Mar. 17, 1863), LC. Sailors often impersonated women in dances, too; see, for instance, John W. Gratton, Under the Blue Pennant: Or Notes of a Naval Officer, Robert J. Schneller Jr., ed. (1999), p. 72. On minstrelsy more generally, see Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (1993); Louis S. Gerteis, "Blackface Minstrelsy and the Construction of Race in Nineteenth-Century America," in Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era, David W. Blight and Brooks D. Simpson eds. (1997), pp. 79–105.

53. Gratton, Under the Blue Pennant, p. 60.

54. Thayer, "Log of the Brazileira," p. 58 (entry for Apr. 13, 1863), p. 7 (entry for Jan. 1, 1863), LC. For a somewhat different treatment of minstrelsy, particularly the incidents on Brazileira, see Valuska, The African American, pp. 86–87. See also Merrill, "Men, Monotony and Mouldy Beans," pp. 199–200.

55. Thayer, "Log of the Brazileira," pp. 50–52 (entry for Mar. 30 - Apr. 2, 1863), LC.

56. Fisher Diary, pp. 9–10.

57. Ibid., p. 24; William Marvel, The Alabama and the Kearsarge: The Sailor's Civil War (1996), p. 90.

58. Fisher Diary, p. 38; Marvel, Alabama and Kearsarge, p. 47.

59. Fisher Diary, p. 92.

60. Lott, Love and Theft, stresses this ambiguous legacy.61. Thanks to William Blair for calling my attention to Edward L. Ayers, "Worrying About the Civil War," in Moral Problems in American Life: New Perspectives on Cultural History, ed. Karen Halttunen and Lewis Perry (1998), pp. 145–165, which views current perspectives on the Civil War through a similar lens.