Dobak William A. Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862-1867 (ENG)

Center of Military History United States Army, 2011 - 574 p. ISBN: 1780394616

The impetus for Freedom by the Sword came from Brig. Gen. (Ret.) John S. Brown, the U.S. Army’s Chief of Military History from 1998 until his retirement in 2005. William A. Dobak, an authority on the history of black soldiers in the nineteenth century and an award-winning historian at the Center of Military History, took charge of the project beginning in 2003. The years since then have seen the U.S. invasion of Iraq and our country’s subsequent involvement there and in Afghanistan. These events, as well as a year that Dobak spent drafting chapters for a book in the Center’s Vietnam series, helped to shape his view of the Civil War, the importance of guerrilla operations in that conflict, and the role of the U.S. Colored Troops in it. This is primarily an operational history of the Colored Troops in action. Other works have dealt with such subjects as the Colored Troops and racial discrimination, the soldiers’ lives in camp and at their homes, and how these men fared as veterans during Reconstruction and afterward. Instead, Freedom by the Sword tells what they did as soldiers during the war. This book is about American soldiers, fighting under the flag of the Union to preserve that Union and to free their enslaved brothers and sisters. Despite formidable obstacles of poor leadership and deep prejudices against the very idea of African Americans being armed and sent into battle, these men rallied to the colors in large numbers and fought. It is thus a quintessentially American story. It is also perhaps the only book to examine the Colored Troops’ formation, training, and operations during the entire span of their service, and in every theater of the war in which they served. By doing so, it underscores the unique nature of their contributions both to Union victory and to their own liberation. That there are lessons here for the mode soldier goes without saying, for however much the technology of war evolves, its essence changes little.

Richard W. Stewart, Chief Historian.