Noncombatant Military Laborers in the Civil War

Rejected for command of a volunteer regiment on the grounds that his service as an engineer was needed more, Henry L. Abbot never forgot the perceived slight. Though constantly in the field and once wounded, he had been forced to “suffer for two years the hardship of remaining a subaltern,” he wrote years later.

For Abbot, as for most Civil War soldiers, the gun not the shovel, represented the “ultimate of soldiering” (1). The inferior, dependent, and subordinate status that Abbot associated with noncombat military labor resonated in the complaints of black Union soldiers. “Instead of the musket,” they were forced to wield “the spad and the Wheelbarrow and the Axe” (2). Yet the defeat of the Confederacy was due in no small measure to the men and women who wielded spades, wheelbarrows, axes, pots, and needles.

Though rarely acknowledged, much less celebrated, the work of hundreds of thousands of noncombatant military laborers—men and women who never or rarely picked up a rifle or fired a cannon—could make or break a campaign as Grant famously discovered in the Mississippi Valley. By the end of the war, former slaves constituted a large proportion of the men and women who shouldered this work, and, unlike Abbot, most welcomed noncombatant labor despite the hardships and insults it so often entailed. For them, it was an opportunity to work for their own freedom and for Union victory.

When Union soldiers arrived at the plantation in Alabama where Ann Lewis was enslaved, for example, she immediately hired herself out as a cook (3). Soldiers, guns, and generals won battles but did so on the backs of thousands of noncombatant laborers. Behind the lines, in quartermaster, medical and commissary departments, they built forts, breastworks, and other fortifications and destroyed the enemy’s.

They built long stretches of log roads and bridges over swamps, cane breaks, and lagoons; built and cleared canals to enable the movement of gunboats; dug ditches; dragged guns through stinking and infested bayous; washed and cooked for soldiers; nursed them; and buried their bodies when death came (Figure 1). They drove thousands of transport wagons, artillery carriages, and caissons to haul artillery, and cared for the hundreds of thousands of horses and mules that braced the movement of armies. Additional thousands of men loaded and unloaded millions of tons of quartermaster, ordnance, medical, and other supplies from boats and barges, mules and wagons.

Some 410,000 horses and 125,000 mules were loaded and unloaded on rail lines in the last year of the war alone. An army of 800,000 could easily employ 100,000 such laborers (4). Their ranks included workers skilled in building and repairing wagons, saddles and caissons, and engineers for roads (5).

And, like combat soldiers, many lost their lives on the battlefield. African Americans laborers work on a railroad in northern Virginia as part of the Union army’s military operations between 1862 and 1863. Though rarely highlighted in popular Civil War history, noncombatant military laborers were crucial to the outcome of the war.

Both armies sought to secure a consistent source of hands capable of building and repairing roads, bridges, and railroad tracks, as well as fortifications and transport wagons. As the war dragged on, it became clear to both sides that African American labor was critical to winning the war. (Courtesy of Library of Congress) African Americans laborers work on a railroad in northern Virginia as part of the Union army’s military operations between 1862 and 1863.

Though rarely highlighted in popular Civil War history, noncombatant military laborers were crucial to the outcome of the war. Both armies sought to secure a consistent source of hands capable of building and repairing roads, bridges, and railroad tracks, as well as fortifications and transport wagons. As the war dragged on, it became clear to both sides that African American labor was critical to winning the war.

(Courtesy of Library of Congress) As the Civil War dragged on longer than anyone had anticipated and trench warfare expanded, the need for noncombatant labor grew. Both armies and their governments competed fiercely over access not only to black labor but the labor of white men as well. Neither side had anticipated this outcome.

In 1861, the South assumed the labor of slaves would be a resource it could control and access as needed, and the North deemed slave labor irrelevant to the war it intended to wage. In the end, the Union won the contest in significant measure because it won the battle for the labor of African Americans. Insisting that the war had one aim—the preservation of the Union—President Lincoln and the vast majority of white Northerners initially envisioned no place for free black people or slaves; certainly black men would not be called to fight for Union.

In the face of military necessity and the determination of enslaved people to put their freedom on the war’s agenda, the North assented to the enlistment of black soldiers. Still, many Northerners hoped that black soldiers would either take the bullets before white men did or do the grunt work that would let white men do the manly work of fighting. Black soldiers would, indeed, spend more time digging and building fortifications than engaged in armed combat.

White Southerners were far less naive about the significance of black labor from the start. As they contemplated the logistical requirements entailed in raising a nation state and an army simultaneously, white Southerners envisioned a central role for the enslaved. Slave labor would continue to grow the cash crops of cotton, sugar, and rice necessary to feed the people, fund the proslavery nation-state enterprise, and secure diplomatic alliances abroad.

With slavery as its “tower of strength,” the Montgomery Advertiser boasted in 1861, the South could field an army of hundreds of thousands of white men, “and still not leave the material interests of the country in a suffering condition” (6). Black men and women, we know, viewed the matter differently, declining to be the “cornerstone” of a Confederate nation or spectators to a war for the Union. From the onset, they grasped a revolutionary struggle in the making, that Union and emancipation might emerge victorious.

Their flight to Northern lines forced the Union and Confederate governments to reconsider the premises upon which they had gone to war and to compete for the labor of enslaved and freed people. That competition had its historic collision on May 23, 1861 when three enslaved men made their way to Union lines at Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Learning that the men were part of a detachment of slaves who had been put to work building a nearby Confederate battery, General Benjamin F.

Butler famously declared them “contraband of war” and put them to work as laborers for the Union army (7) (Figure 2). It was but one of many ruptures to come in the phalanx of Northern opinion. In January 1863, Maj.

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant renewed an ultimately unsuccessful effort begun in 1862 to build a canal to connect Lake Providence, Louisiana to the Mississippi River.

Grant hoped to use the canal to carry gunboats, transports, and supply vessels around the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg. As depicted in this sketch from the March 28, 1863 issue of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Union soldiers as well as former slaves performed this essential noncombatant labor. (Courtesy of Library of Congress) In January 1863, Maj.

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant renewed an ultimately unsuccessful effort begun in 1862 to build a canal to connect Lake Providence, Louisiana to the Mississippi River.

Grant hoped to use the canal to carry gunboats, transports, and supply vessels around the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg. As depicted in this sketch from the March 28, 1863 issue of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Union soldiers as well as former slaves performed this essential noncombatant labor. (Courtesy of Library of Congress) As Union troops entered the Confederate South with orders not to interfere with slavery, officers eagerly took on escaped slaves as personal servants.

Quartermasters embraced their labor, putting them to work loading and unloading vessels and building fortifications, bridges, and docks (8). Within a year Congress had passed the Militia Act of 1862 authorizing the employment of African Americans as laborers by federal forces (Figure 3). By the end of the war, an estimated 500,000 to one million slaves had fled to Union lines, some 200,000–300,000 of whom would serve as noncombatant laborers, more than twice the number of enslaved men who became soldiers in the Union army (9).

While black laborers played a vital role in both armies, the debate over whether they should be used at all lasted for the duration of the war. In this 1862 photograph, four Union soldiers are waited on by a young black servant at a military camp in Warrenton, Virginia. A year into the war, the Northern government approved the Militia Act of 1862 allowing the use of black labor by Union forces.

By the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of African Americans, including some two hundred thousand former slaves, performed valuable physical labor for the Union that went beyond traditional servile roles. (Courtesy of Library of Congress) In this 1862 photograph, four Union soldiers are waited on by a young black servant at a military camp in Warrenton, Virginia. A year into the war, the Northern government approved the Militia Act of 1862 allowing the use of black labor by Union forces.

By the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of African Americans, including some two hundred thousand former slaves, performed valuable physical labor for the Union that went beyond traditional servile roles. (Courtesy of Library of Congress) Noncombatant laborers constituted a diverse class of men and women—white, black, and Native American—who entered, some willingly and others unwillingly, the ranks of military labor. White enlisted men detailed to noncombatant work often served alongside African American and Irish men and women hired specifically as noncombatant workers.

Enlisted men drove regimental trains and served in pioneer battalions that cut roads and built and repaired bridges, railroads, and fortifications. Indeed, by the end of the war, one Union soldier recalled, it had become “a principle with us to fight with moveable breast-works,” with “every man … to some extent his own engineer” (10). Many soldiers, however, resented and protested such assignments.

Like soldiers throughout history, white soldiers in the Civil War were expected to dig ditches, move supplies, and clear and build roads and bridges. For Union armies, this expectation did not diminish with the passage of the 1862 Militia Act authorizing the use of black laborers in the Union army. During the Vicksburg campaign, for example, General W.T.

Sherman put hundreds of men from two of his divisions to build canals and clear bayou channels. But Sherman, like other commanders, preferred to spare his men from such chores and, equally, their use as hospital attendants and nurses. Such deployments, he wrote, were “bad policy” (11).

Initially, the North turned to immigrant groups like the Irish and Germans, but these efforts never produced a sufficient number of laborers. Some Union commanders complained that the Irish, though paid nearly three times as much as black workers, were too “crabbed” and insisted on working only so many hours a day. Union efforts also came up increasingly against the fact that the war had made labor dear. despite having a much larger population upon which to draw, the North found it increasingly difficult to attract workers to the front, when jobs that paid more and came with lower risk to life and limb were available at home.

Conscription also took a toll on the potential supply of noncombatant workers. Quartermasters were forced to turn to organize discharged enlisted men into officered regiments to help supply the demand for mechanics, teamsters, and other noncombat labor (12). At Memphis, seven thousand such men entered the ranks (13).

In a society where enslaved people were viewed as the natural hewers of wood, some white Southerners argued that putting white men to such labor represented a “diversion from the legitimate duties of a Volunteer Soldier,” especially when there were “negroes & hirelings enough to do the menial labor” (14). Former Virginia Governor John M. Gregory had opposed the use of slaves as noncombat military labor from the start.

Gregory argued that slave labor “left on the plantations to produce supplies for the army” constituted one of the South’s “most potent elements of strength” (Figure 4). He correctly foresaw that enlisting enslaved peoples as laborers gave the Union “a pretext to interfere with them and to emancipate them.” “Let our soldiers,” he concluded, “build all necessary field works, as the soldiers of every other nation have always done from the beginning of war” (15). On Smith’s Plantation in Beaufort, South Carolina, slaves pose for a photographer in 1862.

Confederate officials initially argued that slaves best served the Southern cause by staying on the plantation. As few white Southerners volunteered for noncombatant military duty, however, the Confederate congress impressed the labor of free blacks and slaves in 1864, angering slaveholders. Slaves also resisted impressment, accelerating the Confederacy’s demise.

(Courtesy of Library of Congress) On Smith’s Plantation in Beaufort, South Carolina, slaves pose for a photographer in 1862. Confederate officials initially argued that slaves best served the Southern cause by staying on the plantation. As few white Southerners volunteered for noncombatant military duty, however, the Confederate congress impressed the labor of free blacks and slaves in 1864, angering slaveholders.

Slaves also resisted impressment, accelerating the Confederacy’s demise. (Courtesy of Library of Congress) D.H. Hill, commander of the Confederate post at Yorktown, agreed.

Men in his regiment, he wrote, who had “never labored a day in their lives,” had “without a murmur” performed backbreaking labor unloading schooners and as blacksmiths, teamsters, and brick masons. Yet he also conceded, the matter was not so straightforward. He had in fact scoured the countryside to obtain slave labor with embarrassing results; the effort had returned only five men (16).

Even as Hill promoted the tradition of using soldiers to tote guns and axes, he had come face to face with the Confederacy’s Achilles’ heel—the disinclination and, more often, outright refusal of black men to labor for the Confederacy and their masters’ refusal to make them. For its part, while officially acknowledging that soldiers sometimes had to do this kind of work, the Confederate War Department nonetheless cautioned against employing soldiers as laborers “except in cases of immediate necessity” (17). “The sanctity of slave property in this war,” admitted Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon, “has operated most injuriously to the Confederacy,” a reality General Robert E.

Lee confronted with increasing dismay (18). Indeed, Lee hoped to see white men replaced by slaves everywhere possible, in mines and factories and other non–War Department employment, as well as on the battlefield. He wanted impressment “extended far enough to provide a corps of laborers for the army, to prevent the necessity of those temporary details that are now made, to cut wood, work on roads, etc.” But not even the stature of Lee was sufficient to move enough slaveholders to put their slaves on the line to slavery, even though in to war, they had done so For his part, Lee only two thousand of the five thousand laborers he hundred of whom immediately At the of the war, some up in the of their own in 1861 was volunteered their slaves to help the war for When the slaves they to the returned or or not at their for them in proportion With over one million slaves in Alabama and Mississippi and nearly one hundred thousand a hundred of for example, Confederate commanders were only to secure a of the five hundred they for the of the in Even in the face of Confederate commanders often had to for help or when at the of military laborers at when Confederate commanders orders to take every slave man in the of their or when impressment made their own with enslaved men, the of slaveholders The issue of slave property a of alliances and of slaves and free black and protested impressment that their When out in a the slaveholders the of slaves they had hired out to the Some went and took them Confederate the for most of the war, gave by the Confederate Congress to secure the necessary labor while slaveholders and of slaves did to the In the Confederate Congress the use of slaves and free black people and, the the impressment of slaves Yet this on the produced the or the by 1864, the Confederacy’s military in that only an of the labor of free and would the in some would be The 1862 while for the use of slaves as teamsters, and for other no for or free blacks or the of white black people did not their the Confederacy to use its armies them from the of the While the Union of and them to a of their to their or armies In the face of slave flight to Union lines, the enlistment of black men as soldiers in the Union army, white to and that produced in the number of white men available for duty, the Confederate Congress in the of the by the employment of free and people of some between the of and were now to labor with to be by enslaved men four years as the South at the there had been and to either free blacks or them in the of a consistent proslavery With too few Southern white men to supply or their slaves, the employment of white men as now a and the to turn slaves and free black people into a military labor even as The Confederate effort to black men and women as laborers arrived in the and the larger Confederate in all its Slaves impressment by or to the front, they or returned armed with to defeat slavery from more of the use of slaves in noncombatant The Confederacy’s to black labor to its produced one more of the most that to the Union commanders or fortifications built by slave labor were increasingly to slaves Confederate slave labor Even the to the ranks of its noncombatant including a to for black laborers.

A for five thousand laborers at than two thousand Union soldiers to be detailed from the ranks as to cut roads and bridges and in other for the and In the of the in 1863, over thousand white soldiers were to duty, corps and and the of and fortifications. black laborers, the would the of the army by or by one hundred thousand men as military laborers into with around their were Union and, so too were those men and women who no of service Though they played a vital role in the of the war, women the of Union and Confederate military much the Confederate Congress the of in 1862 to the work of soldiers, especially soldiers detailed as hospital workers. They came for the most part from the ranks of and enslaved and immigrant women In to they as camp and Many of these women never on military and were sometimes to them or were before them. who to the front, like Irish of men of the as and for free women, as were as by both and to and menial labor as well as to the work of Northern women also served as hospital and for example, took of Union at and in 1863 In the end, the South lost the it had gone to war to slavery were many to Confederate from on the to and of the of the of the government in deemed and more or than the of the enslaved to the of slaveholders that they would a on the side of the by the hundreds of black people gave their labor and to the Union. By the end, slaveholders were Confederate commanders to take their slaves to prevent them from to work for the and their own The war had also and the that the Union could fight a war against the Confederacy while slave property in war, Lincoln to as as 1864, was the preservation of the Union. long as he be on for the of the he this the use of emancipation and every other to the and physical forces of the It was a of the role the enslaved and freed people now played in Union By the end of the Civil over two million men had served in the Union forces and an estimated in Confederate armies. and for enlisting had the ranks of both armies, the on noncombatant military labor to their and The Confederate of 1862 as as it have to people at the It the of Confederate General Department of Mississippi and to in and to supply slaves for work on fortifications and to day to their was one of many of the Confederacy at war with that would in the years to come as labor” took its place in this revolutionary struggle