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On another debate forum, a person made the statement:

Not really true. The USCT (and we've counted the white officers BTW) had surprisingly few volunteers from the south. The Union did effectively press gang blacks from conquered territories though.

I have listened to a series of lectures on the American Civil War and this appears to directly contradict what I listened to. I did a bit of searching but my google-fu seems to be failing.

What is he talking about? Who Southern territories turned against their traitorous bretheran- West Virginia is a well known example, with the Federation of the Johnes (almost certainly spelled wrong) being another case. In Texas they annihilated groups of German settelers because they were pro-Union and the border states were half and half- some joined the South, others the North.

As for press gang blacks

Sherman had the problem that his army was being followed by contrabands- freed slaves who stuck with the Union forces to ensure they stayed free. His attempts to dump them were unsuccessful. In addition, the Union army did not accept blacks in their ranks until after Anihem- they didn't think they would make good soldiers.

This seems to be a classic case of Confederate Apologism.

Quite a few tens of thousands of freed slaves did join the ranks, but the number was a bit on the small side to the total number of freed slaves. However the army and Lincoln is as much to blame for this as anything else since it wouldn’t form black combat units until late 1862, and before the confiscation act was passed captured slaves were essentially army slaves, abet we did pay them to work as laborers. That meant a lot of manpower that could have been mobilized just got pissed off at the Union army. Some wore uniforms while working as laborers, but only because of the unavailability of civilian cloths close to the frontline.

The number of black volunteers from the north however was quite high in proportion to the total free black population in comparison to the proportion of the white population mobilized.

I known it is Wiki, but assuming the numbers hold up, more black soldiers were recruited in the South than in the North.

What I wanted to know was if there was any heavy press ganging of the men into colored union units?

It seems ridiculous to think that you would have to press gang a slave to fight his former masters. Quite the opposite-too many of them presents a logistical and training problem. As a previous Poster said, Sherman had more blacks following him than he wanted or needed.

I vaugly recall hearing that Sherman's army grew as it marched through Georgia, though I'll admit I don't have a source on hand.

The Romulan Republic wrote:I vaugly recall hearing that Sherman's army grew as it marched through Georgia, though I'll admit I don't have a source on hand.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12690