Campfires of Freedom: The Camp Life of Black Soldiers during the Civil War (review)

In Campfires of Freedom Keith P. Wilson asserts that for those who wish to understand the nature of the emancipation experience in the Civil War, "the army camp is a rich site for historical excavation" (xiii). Indeed, Wilson digs deep into the historical record, looking at more than 200 unpublished manuscript collections in more than sixty archives, not to mention an impressive number of published primary accounts. He uses these resources to describe the soldiers' lives in camp, explore their collective memories of their experiences, and examine the cultural change that took place as the army became the university for earning their degrees in citizenship. All soldiers, whether free northern blacks or freed slaves, brought their cultural traditions to the army where, through constant exposure and interaction with fellow soldiers and military discipline, they modified existing ideas while adopting new ones. In the process, they forged a new identity as a black American citizen.

Wilson adeptly explores the significant divide between black enlisted men and white officers, even those idealistic abolitionist officers who hoped to educate and civilize the black men. Ultimately, he concludes, native black leaders (who were usually noncommissioned officers or chaplains) served as the integral force in black regiments, helping to adapt black culture to military discipline, and serving as mediators with the officers.

Black enlisted men exercised their autonomy whenever possible, and voiced their dissent over oppressive and unfair practices. Nothing caused such vocal and long-lasting protests as the War Department's decision to pay them less than white soldiers. They mounted sustained aggressive campaigns to demand equitable pay, which would signify their equality as soldiers and as men. Wilson skillfully demonstrates how the soldiers modified their practices of slave resistance to fit into the strict world of military discipline, ultimately developing an effective strategy that resulted in the War Department equalizing pay in June 1864.

Through his chapters Wilson analyzes how the soldiers earnestly and unceasingly sought to improve their literacy, adapted their native religious practices to assimilate some northern spiritual ideas, modified songs of the time period to evoke their own personal experience, and reaffirmed their kinship ties by getting married to spouses who were never legally recognized under slavery. Though racism still existed in many overt forms—for instance, black soldiers were much more likely to be executed for rape of white women than white soldiers—and though many white officers maintained either paternalistic or simply superior attitudes to their soldiers, African American soldiers were able to establish their own identity and create their own space within the culture of freedom, and along the way managed to change the racial perceptions of a significant number of whites.

In this collective biography of African American soldiers' camp life, Wilson weaves a wonderful tapestry of African American soldiers' hopes, aspirations, and ambitions. Though Wilson devotes chapters to training and discipline, dissent, pastimes, literacy, black chaplains, religion, music, and gender, this reviewer does wish that Wilson had included one chapter on the experience of combat for the soldiers, and how that influenced not only American perceptions of their abilities but also the soldiers' understanding of freedom, citizenship, and even their own worth as men. Wilson offers brief references to combat in several chapters, but perhaps a chapter analyzing black camps immediately before and after a battle, and the change that took place over those intervening hours, would have enhanced his already splendid book.

Through extensive research, astute analysis, and a creative exploration of potentially mundane activities, Wilson has written a book that deserves to be read by anyone looking to understand the dynamics of the black liberation experience during the Civil War.