1863, Final Emancipation Proclamation takes effect, Jan. 1. A second black regiment of both free men and ex-slave troops, 1st Kansas Infantry (Colored), musters in at Fort Scott, beginning Jan. 13. Fights five battles before official 1864 induction into Union army; loses 178 officers and men in combat and 165 to disease over course of the war.
Outside Boston, 54th Massachusetts forms in February. Loses 40 percent of its mostly free men in assault on Fort Wagner outside of Charleston, July 18.
Margin of Victory? By war’s end, more than 180,000 blacks have served in Union army, 10 percent of total troops and 20 percent of black male population under 45. They take part in more than 40 major battles. Approximately 20 percent die in combat or of disease (a mortality rate significantly higher than that of whites); 16 are awarded Medal of Honor.
Angry whites rebel against draft.
1863, White mob burns 35 buildings and injures hundreds in Detroit’s black neighborhood. Irish and German immigrants react to draft enrollment law vs. large community of free blacks and refugee slaves, March 6. Yet only two die, one black and one white (deemed an innocent bystander).
Gaunt women hunt for food.
1863, In Richmond, 1,000 women ransack stores in search of food, April 2. They relent only when Pres. Davis threatens to order militia to open fire.
Hunger and privation spread through much of South. Family farms lie fallow as Confederate draft takes virtually all able-bodied men to fight.
Confederate armies begin to suffer as deserters return home to help starving families plant and harvest. Some plantation regions fare better as long as slaves raise vegetables and tend animals. But more slaves leave as Union armies drive deeper into South. Virginia, ravaged by armies on both sides through entire conflict, is particularly devastated.
1863, 1st and 3rd Louisiana Native Guards attack well-fortified Port Hudson on the Mississippi in an early test of black troops, May 27. Nearly 200 are killed or wounded. The assault fails, but convinces Union commanders they can rely on the new regiments.
Eleven days later, Confederate assault on Milliken’s Bend, downriver from Vicksburg, is turned back by three previously untested black regiments in hand-to-hand fighting; 9th Louisiana (African Descent) suffers more than 45% killed, said to be the highest mortality rate of any Union unit in one fight.
1863, Informed by Grant that Confederacy is threatening captured black troops with enslavement or execution, Lincoln issues order, July 31, that for every U.S. soldier killed “in violation of rules of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed” and for every U.S. soldier “sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor.”
It’s not clear how many captured blacks might have been enslaved by the Confederacy, but few are executed. However, many black soldiers and some of their white officers are killed “trying to escape.”
When the Confederacy excludes blacks captured at Fort Wagner in a prisoner exchange, the Union generals end all large-scale exchanges until last weeks of fighting, which leads to massive enlargement of prisoner populations at Selma, AL, and Andersonville, GA, in the South, and Camp Douglas (Chicago) and Elmira Prison in the North, among others.
Hundreds of slaves are rescued.
1863, Harriet Tubman helps guide 300 black soldiers and a company of Rhode Island artillerymen aboard three small gunboats from Union base at Beaufort, SC, to raid Cumbahee river plantations, June 1-3. They seize much contraband, burn plantation structures and mills, and return with more than 750 freed men, women and children; no casualties.
1863, West Virginia admitted into the Union, June 20. But slaves are not freed here until state legislature approves state emancipation at the same time that it ratifies the 13th amendment, Feb. 3, 1865.
Whites violently protest draft.
1863, Riots break out in New York with implementation of first draft, July 13-16. Working-class whites, including many Irish immigrants, resent that wealthy can buy their way out of the draft and resent blacks competing for jobs. At least 120 die, 2,000 hurt with blacks targeted. Troops arrive on second day to find scores of public buildings ransacked or burned, plus two churches and many homes of abolitionists destroyed.
Ends in final showdown with mob near Gramercy Park. Thousands of blacks later move across East River to Brooklyn.
Worst scene: Burning of Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth at 44th Street, although children are removed safely as flames rise.
Lincoln at Gettysburg address.
1863, Lincoln reiterates that the U.S. is “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” at Nov. 19 dedication of Union cemetery at Gettysburg.
He concludes: “...that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Lee's and Grant's armies fight.
1863, Gettysburg, bloodiest battle of the war, halts last intrusion into North by Lee’s army, July 1-3. Stats: Of 94,000 Union troops, 23,000 are casualties; 3,100 killed; of 71,000 Confederates, 28,000 are casualties, 3,900 killed.
The fall of besieged Vicksburg to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, July 4, and of Port Hudson, July 9, gives Union full control of Mississippi. Both Gettysburg and the Mississippi victories are turning points.
1863, Black troops of 2nd North Carolina Colored Infantry and 55th Massachusetts pursue Confederate guerrillas along eastern edge of Great Dismal Swamp, Dec. 3. They free 2,000 slaves and encounter maroon communities; many sign up for the Union army.
1863, Pres. Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction offers a pardon and restoration of property—except slaves—to Confederates who swear allegiance to the Union and accept emancipation, Dec. 8. But it requires no more than 10 percent of a state’s voters to take the pledge before readmission process can begin. Louisiana, much of it Union-occupied, is the first state to undergo process.
1863, Cotton production soars in Egypt’s Nile Delta thanks to new irrigation canals and high prices in Europe. Egypt, much closer to big mills of Britain and the Continent, more than doubles high-quality exports in two years, making up for much of lost U.S. cotton.
1863, French forces enter Mexico City, June 10, and appoint a junta, which invites Ferdinand Maxmilian of Austria to be its emperor. Despite guerrilla opposition, French expand area under their control, taking San Luis Potosí, Dec. 22.
1863, Dutch abolish slavery in Surinam and Dutch Antilles (Curaçao, Aruba, Sint Maarten, Sint Eustatius, Klein Bonaire, Saba), July. But slaves must continue plantation work on paid “contract” basis for another 10 years. Slave masters reimbursed 200 guilders per slave. Many newly freed men become tenant farmers.
By 1873, workforce includes many Chinese contract workers, especially in Surinam. After 1873, most laborers are imported from India and Java.
1863, Fighting breaks out when a large Ashanti force crosses the Pra river to threaten British holdings. Widespread disease on both sides ends fighting the following year.
1864, Maximilian is crowned emperor of Mexico in Mexico City, April 10. French and Mexican allies control most of the nation. But Republican forces keep up the fight in numerous skirmishes.
1864, Congress’s Wade Hampton Bill would require allegiance of a majority of state voters, restrict many former Confederates from office, and require not just freedom, but equality before the law, for blacks. Lincoln declines to sign the bill, killing it, July.
1864, Confederate soldiers under Nathan Bedford Forrest kill 300 black Union soldiers after their surrender at Fort Pillow, TN, April 12. Circumstances disputed. Union threatens retaliation; Confederacy quietly begins to treat black prisoners as soldiers, not as slaves in insurrection.
1864, Congress officially repeals Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, June. Grant’s army grinds out offensive through Virginia to Petersburg, May 5-June 24.
1864, Congress grants equal pay to black troops and makes it retroactive; equal rations, supplies and medical care also directed, June 15.
Newspaper article on Crater Battle.
1864, Battle of the Crater, in which seven black regiments suffer severe casualties in mismanaged attack. That follows explosion of a massive Union mine under a Confederate strong point defending Petersburg, July 30.
1864, Voters of Maryland, a slave state that stayed in the Union, ratify new state constitution abolishing slavery, Oct. 13.
1864, Reconstruction begins in Union-occupied Louisiana, which meets Lincoln’s lenient amnesty requirement that only 10 percent of state’s voters declare allegiance to the U.S.
The New Orleans Tribune, first daily newspaper published by blacks, founded by Louis Charles Roudanez, a Creole physician whose mother was a free woman of color.
Lincoln gets Union nomination.
1864, Adm. David Farragut takes Mobile Bay, Aug. 5. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman takes Atlanta, Sept. 2, and drives through Georgia to Savannah, Dec. 21.
Lincoln easily re-elected on Union ticket, Nov. 8, with pro-Union Democrat Andrew Johnson (Tennessee) as vice president. Vote is close in New York State, where Lincoln wins only 1.9 percent more votes than Democrat George McClellan, a previous commander of Union armies.
1864, More than 4,500 black troops spearhead a Union thrust ordered by Gen. Grant against strong Confederate defenses, southeast of Richmond, Sept. 29. Gains at New Market Heights are few against withering fire; casualties are severe.
Fourteen of the Colored Troops engaged will receive Medal of Honor for continuing to press forward, leading troops when colors fall and white officers are killed.
Fighting in South America.
1864, Brutal, six-year Paraguayan War breaks out, November, between Paraguay on one side and the Triple Alliance of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Brazil’s black slaves and Paraguay’s Indian population play central roles, suffer significant casualties and gain politically within their respective countries.