Army Life in a Black Regiment

Description

Written by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a Union colonel and the man in charge of the first regiment of troops recruited from the volunteer free slave population of the Carolinas, Army Life in a Black Regiment provides an accurate and detailed account of what life was really like in the front zone during the Civil War.

The book starts with an account of how the idea of establishing a Black Regiment became reality and of how the soldiers were recruited and trained, then quickly moves on to describe day to day life in the army. The accounts range from sketches that describe the natural environment in the area the army was stationed in on the Sea Islands off the Carolinas, to action-packed sequences about how the colonel escaped cannon fire. During the campaign, the regiment was moving up the Saint Mary and the Saint John River to reach the Confederate lines and the book is a faithful description of the numerous hardships they encountered.

Higginson was an experienced and prolific writer by the time he wrote Army Life in the Black Regiment in 1870. He was admitted to Harvard College at the age of 13, then after graduation he worked as a headmaster. He went on to study theology at Harvard, but he abandoned his studies after the first year to promote the abolitionist cause. He wrote anti-war poems and he got actively engaged in the anti-war movement, drafting petitions and going from door to door, gathering signatures for the petitions, and later he helped in the protection of fugitive slaves as well. During the Civil War, he was first a captain in the 51st Massachusetts Infantry and then colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the black regimen he wrote about in this book. After the War, he dedicated most of his time to writing, collecting books and promoting equal rights for women.
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