Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers by Joseph T. Glatthaar (review)

Shorter Book Reviews 277 Western Free-Soilers and Eastern disunionists shared a vision of the constitution which did not find room for federal action against slavery, except in the greatest crises. At times, however, the non-resistant position i!-. reduced to the writings of Garrison and Henry Wright, and the complexity, especially in religious terms, of their thinking is lost in Gerteis's struggle to unite them with his utilitarians. The real trouble with this book is not, however, in the details (where, it is said, God may reside, but where, I think, historians put too much of their time). The unfortunate fact is that this book is one hard revision away from the kind of excellence its author clearly has in him. The key concept, utilitarianism, is never fully discussed on its own terms, nor is there any attempt to discuss how the ideas of Bentham reached America. Worse yet, there is little in the book to suggest the many ways in which Bentham's initial formulation was rethought, both in England and the Americas. Why did Olmstead choose to dedicate one of his works to Mill? What does this tell us about the trans-Atlantic traffic in ideas? Gerteis leaves us begging for more. Moreover, the writing does not help to clarify key points: it is all too often repetitive, wordy and confusing. Chapters start elliptically, and only after three or four pages is it at all clear what is going on. In short, there are many technical issues in the writing, in the organization and in the presentation, which make this much more difficult slugging than need be. And yet, for students of American studies, interested in what makes the British North American heart tick, this book yields so many fresh insights, so much that is worthy of our best scholarship, that the superficial awkwardness of this book should not deter serious readers from what is ultimately most rewarding work. David T. Bailey Department of History Michigan State University Joseph T. Glatthaar. Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. New York: The Free Press, 1990. xiii + 370 pp. War often produces enormous social transformations within a society. Such was the case with Civil War America, and no group was more permanently affected than black Americans. Enslaved in the South and discriminated 278 Shorter Book Reviews against in the North, they were regarded as equals by few whites. When the war began the Federal government adamantly refused to accept black volunteers into its armies. Four years later, however, over 178,000 black soldiers wore Union uniforms, and they made up a very significant part of the armies in the east. During those years, the Federal administration and much of the Northern population had slowly and grudgingly accepted the need to enlist blacks and to extend to them the same rights as to their white counterparts. A special branch of the army, the United States Colored Troops (USCT), was established but, given the state of American social prejudices, all its officers were white. The special and changing wartime relationship of the black soldiers and their white officers is the focus of Joseph Glatthaar's book. In this meticulously documented study, he traces the emergence and tests the strengths and the limitations of that alliance. An underlying assumption of Forged in Battle is that black military service and significant black casualties were necessary but not sufficient conditions for improved racial attitudes among American whites. Only after war-time exigencies in 1862 had led Lincoln to authorize black service and after black units had been proven in battle, would arguments concerning black equality become even partly accepted by most Americans. This fact placed a special burden on the officers and men of the Colored Troops, especially since some of the former were initially pessimistic themselves about the martial qualities of the black recruits. Such feelings help explain the fragility of the alliance under examination. Further difficulty stemmed from the diverse backgrounds and motives of the men entering this branch of the service. A large majority of the black soldiers, over 140,000, were Southern ex-slaves, overwhelmingly illiterate, unconvinced of white motives but drawn by...