Established in response to a demand for more units from Union Army commanders, USCT regiments, which numbered 175 in total by the end of the war in 1865, constituted about one-tenth of the manpower of the army, according to historian Kelly Mezurek, author of For Their Own Cause: The 27th United States Colored Troops (The Kent State University Press, 2016).

[3] The courage displayed by colored troops during the Civil War played an important role in African Americans gaining new rights.

[4]The U.S. Congress passed the Confiscation Act[5] in July 1862, legalizing the practice of Union officers freeing slaves and putting them to work as army laborers.

Congress also passed the Militia Act, which empowered the President to use free blacks and former slaves from the rebel states in any capacity in the army.

At first, Lincoln opposed early efforts to recruit African American soldiers, although he accepted the Army using them as paid workers.

[6] The United States War Department issued General Order Number 143 on May 22, 1863, establishing the Bureau of Colored Troops to facilitate the recruitment of African-American soldiers to fight for the Union Army.

[8] For example, USCT engineers built Fort Pocahontas, a Union supply depot, in Charles City, Virginia.

[11] Notably, their mortality rate was significantly higher than white soldiers: [We] find, according to the revised official data, that of the slightly over two millions troops in the United States Volunteers, over 316,000 died (from all causes), or 15.2%.

[14] Notable members of USCT regiments included Martin Robinson Delany and the sons of abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

[15] Before the USCT was formed, several volunteer regiments were raised from free black men, including freedmen in the South.

Glad to participate in reunions, years later at the age of 95, he marched in a Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) event in 1938.

Their veteran status allowed them to get federal government jobs after the war, from which African Americans had usually been excluded in earlier years.

It was formed in part from the Confederacy's former unit of the same name, which had been made up of property-owning free people of color (gens de couleur libres).

Local commanders, starved for replacements, started equipping volunteer units with cast-off uniforms and obsolete or captured firearms.

The men were treated and paid as auxiliaries, performing guard or picket duties to free up white soldiers for maneuver units.

Despite class differences between free Black people and freedmen, the troops of the new guard served with distinction, including under Captain Andre Cailloux at the Battle of Port Hudson and throughout the South.

The first engagement by African-American soldiers against Confederate forces during the Civil War was at the Battle of Island Mound in Bates County, Missouri on October 28–29, 1862.

U.S. Army General Ulysses S. Grant praised the competent performance and bearing of the USCT, saying at Vicksburg that: Negro troops are easier to preserve discipline among than our white troops ... All that have been tried have fought bravely.USCT soldiers suffered extra violence at the hands of Confederate soldiers, who singled them out for mistreatment.

They were often murdered when captured by Confederate soldiers, as the Confederacy announced that former slaves fighting for the Union were traitors and would be immediately executed.

[33] The African American Civil War Memorial Museum helps to preserve pertinent information from the period.

[34] The motion picture Glory, starring Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, and Matthew Broderick, portrayed the African-American soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment.