African Canadians in Union Blue: Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War
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by Richard M. Reid
University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, 2014
308 pp., illus., $32.95 paperback
To Anderson Abbott, the American Civil War was “a war for humanity,” a battle “between civilization and barbarism.” It was also a struggle that the first Canadian-born black doctor in present-day Ontario felt compelled to join as a surgeon in the Union army.
Abbott was one of almost 2,500 black men from the Maritime colonies and the Province of Canada who volunteered to serve in Northern regiments and aboard Federal warships during the war. In African Canadians in Union Blue, retired University of Guelph history professor Richard Reid documents the little-known story of their role in helping to defeat the South and end slavery
His account, based on a meticulous review of Union military records, explores why so many blacks so far removed from the fighting — recruitment rates in parts of British North America matched or outstripped those of some Northern states — were willing to risk their lives in another country’s bloody civil war.
Many, of course, were freed or escaped slaves who had sought refuge in Canada (Abbott’s parents were free blacks from Alabama). But Reid finds evidence that recruitment bounties and steady pay were as enticing to some as the prospect of striking a blow against the Rebel cause.
Many blacks living north of the border resisted joining the fight until late in the war, when black soldiers received better treatment and higher pay than the first wave of recruits who signed up after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863. But they still faced barriers and prejudice — Abbott was refused the officer’s commission granted to white surgeons — as they fought what a group of Ohio volunteers was told was “a white man’s war.“
Reid concludes that “a spectrum of factors,” from opposition to slavery to “youthful romanticism” and financial hardship, prompted Canadian blacks to volunteer. African Canadians in Union Blue shows that these soldiers and sailors from the British colonies punched above their weight in the struggle between North and South.
— Dean Jobb (Read bio)
Dean Jobb is author of Empire of Deception (HarperCollins Canada), the untold story of 1920s Chicago swindler Leo Koretz and his escape to a life of luxury in Nova Scotia.