Customer Reviews

A Voice of Thunder: A BLACK SOLDIER'S CIVIL WAR (Blacks in the New World)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Most books and reports on Civil War events come from white writers and voice white viewpoints. This one speaks with a black voice, as George E. Stephens wrote as correspondent for the (New York) "Weekly Anglo-African," from the events of John Brown's rebellion (Nov. 1859) through September, 1864. Along the way he shifted from member of the press to acting patriot-soldier, recruiting and then enlisting in the Massachusetts 54th, that leader among black regiments depicted in the movie "Glory." Donald Yacovone provides not only notes for the letters but also information on Stephens' family background. After the 54th disbanded Yacovone follows Stephens' ongoing struggles to educate freed slaves in Virginia; the story of many black patriots' efforts to move their people upward by finally granting them some education is not widely told or appreciated. These chapters fill a need today. So the life taken as a whole is both glorious and tragic: it's distressing to follow Stephens' hopes, from fresh optimism through disillusionment to despair, time and time again from the events of Fort Wagner to the last anguished efforts of his life. At its end he had to sue the government he'd served all his life to obtain the commission denied to him because of his race (though illegally), and provide for his wife with a higher pension. He never lived to receive it, dying in 1888 before the promotion came through. In this Stephens is typical of black men of his time, and it's deeply saddening.This is not a happy, but it is a useful, book, and a corrective for many cheap heroics about how well we treated our black veterans. We need to ponder its message today.