Customer Reviews

Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era

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The book is a collection of essays. While the title and the cover illustration are a poor match, the essays are mostly of high quality. They address Black soldiers in a range of circumstances, including Confederate units. The range of cases and the bibliographic information are of value for students and general readers interested in exploring this still under-studied part of the era. Those who look beyond the cover, those who actually read one or more of the essays will find their time not wasted.

With all due respect to K. Floyd the cover does not refer to Confederate troops. If one bothers to actually read the book he or she will discover a recruitment poster on page 26. It is a poster recruiting Federal troops circa 1963-1865 and is located in the Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library at Duke University. I would assume that a North Carolina university would not be wrong on that account despite what our friend from Florida asserts.

The colorization of the uniforms seems to be a choice made as a result of taking a black and white poster and colorizing it. In the original it is easy to see why the choice was made. Rendered in black and white, the color navy and the skin tone of African Americans is essentially the same. Making the uniform contrast with the skin tone made the poster more visually appealing.

Having actually read the book I found the collection of essays mostly well written and can serve as a jumping off point for new researchers or just to read for fun. The annotations are thorough and will give "fact checkers" all the information they need to consult the original sources.

The cover of this book should tell the reader every thing he or she needs to know about this book. The Black soldiers on the cover are not Union troops but are instead Confederate troops from New Orleans, this particular unit is called the native guard and defended Louisiana from Yankee troops for 1-2 years, they were also the first black troops to fight in the war.

The author is trying to make the reader think that they are Union troops, when they are clearly Confederate.

Do not bother with this book - lies, lies, lies!