BLACKS IN THE UNION ARMY OF TENNESSEE (1861-1866) Black Tennesseans were active participants in the American Civil War. They contributed immeasurably to the Union victory. In 1860, Tennessee had 275,719 slaves, who represented twenty-five percent of the population. Tennessee also had 7,300 free blacks in 1860, but they suffered racial discrimination and second-class citizenship without the right to vote. The slaves were owned by 36,894 persons, less than twenty percent of Tennessee's white families. The majority non-slaveholding whites belonged to the yeoman class (farmers and the poor, landless white class). Many white ( i.e. , East) Tennesseans opposed slavery and wanted it stopped.
After the Civil War hostilities began at Fort Sumter, South Carolina (in April, 1861), Tennessee's radical Democrats, slaveowners, and southern nationalists led a campaign for secession. The voters defeated the first secession ordinance. But in May, 1861, emotions and pressure by the pro-Confederates ran high after Fort Sumter, causing the secession ordinance to pass. Still the Confederates were no more than a vocal minority because white Unionists (thirty-five percent) and blacks (twenty-six percent) outnumbered them. However, the Confederate minority used conscription acts, loyalty requirements, intimidation, racist propaganda, outright oppression, and occupation of East Tennessee to control most Tennessee inhabitants.
The illegal control of Tennessee by the minority Confederates was short-lived. They never had real support among the people in the countryside and could not command the state's resources to effectively prosecute the war. In great paradox, even the slaveowners generally refused to furnish slave labor for the Confederate army. The Confederate General Assembly passed a law to draft free blacks as military laborers in June of 1861. | |
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