Slaves, Sailors, Citizens: African Americans in the Union Navy (review)

During the past thirteen years, Civil War studies have been enriched by a steady stream of monographs on the black military experience between 1861 and 1865. These titles include broad overviews, such as Joseph T. Glatthaar's Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers and solid unit histories, including The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience during the Civil War by James G. Hollandsworth Jr. and The Black Civil War Soldiers of Illinois: The Story of the Twenty-ninth U.S. Colored Infantry by Edward A. Miller Jr. These works, like most others on black service in the Civil War, focus on the African Americans who served in the Union Army. The black people who composed 16 percent of the Union Navy have received comparatively little attention—until now.

Steven J. Ramold, an assistant professor at Virginia State University, breaks considerable new ground with his first book, Slaves, Sailors, Citizens: African Americans in the Union Navy. In doing so, he challenges standard assumptions about the treatment that Afro-Americans received under Federal auspices by demonstrating that black sailors suffered far less from discrimination than their brothers in the Union Army. In fact, Ramold goes so far as to claim that the Union Navy "conducted a unique experiment in social equality" (182).

Because trained seamen were a rare commodity in antebellum America, the U.S. Navy could not afford to observe racial taboos in filling its ranks. Black sailors became a common fixture aboard American naval vessels long before the Civil War. Consequently, the Navy Department exhibited no hesitation in recruiting them for service from the very outset of hostilities with the Confederacy. Indeed, the rapid expansion of the Union fleet created such a severe manpower crunch that the Navy Department had to encourage the recruitment of both free blacks and runaway slaves ("contrabands") to man its ships.

Because Union crews were integrated, blacks enjoyed the same food, living accommodations, and health care as their white comrades. The Navy Department initially confined contrabands to the lowest enlisted rank ("boy") and pay ($10.00), but these restrictions were soon rescinded. Black sailors could rise in rank according to their skills, and they received the same pay as white sailors with the same rating. Some African Americans even managed to attain semi-officer status by becoming ship pilots. While the Union Army's judicial system dealt more harshly with black than white soldiers, the navy ensured that black sailors received fair trials and equal justice. The navy also applied discipline to black crewmen in an evenhanded manner. Finally, Union ships seemed to operate free of the racial tensions and violence that sometimes resulted when white and black soldiers came into contact with each other. In Ramold's opinion the Union Navy was, "for the nineteenth century, a reasonably egalitarian institution." (165).

Ramold supports his largely favorable portrait of the Union Navy with statistical samples and anecdotal evidence drawn from an impressive array of published sources, naval records, and the personal papers of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and other white officials. He makes judicious use of this evidence, and he writes with unaffected clarity and grace.

If there is any noticeable weakness in Slaves, Sailors, Citizens it is the lack of black voices telling the story. "With a few small exceptions," Ramold claims, "first-hand accounts by black sailors of their experiences are virtually unknown." (166). Ramold might have discovered additional black testimony had he conducted a more thorough search of period newspapers, especially those published in Northern seaports, and those catering to black readers like the Christian Recorder and the National Tribune, the postwar voice of Union veterans. This minor criticism, however, should not obscure the fact that Ramold has made a valuable contribution to the historiography of black participation in the Civil War and the...