Army Life in a Black Regiment [Paperback]

In 1862 military necessity enabled Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to pry from a hesitant President Lincoln the authority to enlist black troops in the Union army. The pioneer regiment of ex-slaves was to secure the beachhead tenously held at Beaufort, off the South Carolina coast. Within a year, Lincoln was to hail the enlistment of black soldiers, which he had earlier resisted as revolutionary, as the heaviest blow yet dealt the rebellion. The abolition of slavery, unthinkable in 1861, was to be inevitable by 1863. One of the great source documents in human history, but one of our greatest Americans. . . . Thrilling reading. Tillie Olsen