"We are ready and would go." - Part 3

Before the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, escaped slaves were called “contrabands”.  (Dictionary definition: 1. illegal imports and exports; 2. illegal trade; 3. supplies forbidden to warring sides) In November 1861, when the Union Army occupied the islands off the coast of South Carolina, establishing Port Royal as its base of operations, many of these “contrabands” joined the Army as laborers, cooks, teamsters and servants.

In March 1862, Major General David Hunter took command of Port Royal. Hunter had fewer than 20,000 regular troops to defend this Union foothold in the South. He immediately began to recruit contrabands into a separate Black combat unit. Lincoln, however, continued to stand by his decision not to allow Black volunteers to serve as combat soldiers, so Hunter was not authorized to pay his Black troops. The regiment was disbanded.

Surprisingly, only a few months later Lincoln's new Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, authorized the military governor at Port Royal to recruit contrabands to form a combat unit. Because Hunter had tried to experiment with Black troops without the authority of the government, he was not given command over the new unit. The governor, Brigadier General Rufus Saxton, was ordered to "arm, uniform, equip, and receive into the service of the United States such number of volunteers of African descent as you may deem expedient."

Gen. Saxton began to recruit and train a new regiment of Black South Carolina volunteers – the first Black military unit in the Union Army officially approved by the War Department. In November 1862, Gen. Saxton sent some of his Black soldiers with White officers to raid Confederate positions, destroy war supplies, and liberate slaves. Much to the surprise of some of their White officers, the first test of Black troops in combat were extraordinarily successful.