For Their Own Cause: The 27th United States Colored Troops by Kelly D. Mezurek (review)

By the war's end, 178,975 African Americans, constituting roughly one-twelfth of all the soldiers who fought for the United States, had filled 145 infantry regiments, seven cavalry units, thirteen artillery groups, and one engineering battalion. An astonishing 74 percent of northern black men of military age enlisted to fight for a nation that denied them citizenship. Despite this, the black soldiers who donned blue have been curiously understudied. Classic studies by Benjamin Quarles and Dudley Taylor Cornish are now more than half a century old, while important recent studies by Joseph Glatthaar and John David Smith examine black soldiers within the context of their relationship with white officers or their commander in chief. Very few studies focus on a single black unit.

Kelly Mezurek's impressively documented and clearly written study of the 27th USCT does far more, however, than merely address that unfortunate omission. Unlike the fabled 54th Massachusetts, the 27th was neither a pioneering unit nor did it see a good deal of action (although several of its companies played a supporting role in the disastrous Battle of the Crater). Whereas 140,313 of the USCT soldiers were black southerners born into slavery, the Ohioans who volunteered for the 27th had been free for all or most of their lives. It was not even the first Ohio-based USCT regiment, an honor that went to the 5th. But its wartime experience, Mezurek demonstrates, was in many ways far more typical of life in the USCT than that of more celebrated regiments. Its soldiers did more than their share of fatigue duty, and when they returned home no grand parade welcomed their return. No bronze relief sculpture was erected in their memory. A good many volumes explain why white soldiers, both North and South, fought for their respective nations. Mezurek's study does that as well, but it also chronicles what these soldiers' lives were like.

During the antebellum years, midwestern whites were especially hostile to black residents and immigrants and had little interest in supporting black enlistments if that might lead to voting rights and citizenship. Governor William Dennison, an antislavery Republican, rejected black volunteers in the days after Sumter, and when African Americans forged ahead and set up a recruiting station in Cincinnati, a mob tore down their American flag. They reported the incident to a policeman, who snapped, "We want you damned niggers to keep out of this; this is a white man's war" (29). His 1862 successor, David Tod, a National Union man, was not much better, and as a result, black men who wished to serve had to catch the train for Massachusetts, where so many joined the 54th and 55th that they comprised the third largest contingent in the former and the largest state group in the latter.

Only after a declining number of white volunteers forced Tod's hand did the governor reluctantly agree to black enlistments. The average age of those who signed on was just under twenty-five years, similar to northern white enlistees and other USCT units. A majority of soldiers in the 27th resided in rural areas or small towns. But while only 27 percent of them were born in Ohio—compared to 60 percent of whites—a far higher percent of them were American-born than were white troops. Only five men in the regiment were foreign-born, and then only in nearby Canada. Most had lived in the state for years, and after their regiment was mustered out in September 1865, they returned to and remained in the Buckeye State.

The 27th began its service in April 1864, two months before Congress equalized pay for soldiers regardless of race. Rural men who served as farm laborers at best earned $1 per day, and there was rarely any guarantee of a steady income. As a result, many...