MAKE WAY FOR LIBERTY: WISCONSIN AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE CIVIL WAR

By Jeff Kannel

Reviewed by Jim Gallen

War History Network members will enjoy this recent Civil War publication of the Wisconsin Historical Society Press focusing on the African American Civil War experience.  In contrast to many white veterans who generally enlisted in their home states and returned there after the war, for the African Americans featured on these pages, the War was a transformative event in their lives, homes and status.  Make Way For Liberty is the story of those having some connection with Wisconsin. 

Their associations with Wisconsin were as diverse as their antebellum stations.  Some, like John J. Valentine, Seventeenth USCI, had settled in the state before the War and enlisted there.  Escaped slaves, such as Henry Sink, Twenty-ninth USCI, had made their way to Wisconsin from which they enrolled.  Others, including Matthew Griffith of the Twenty-ninth, had no prior connection to Wisconsin, but were credited to it upon enlistment elsewhere.  Recruitment restrictions drove some, Edward Diggs of Racine and Caledonia, Wisconsin for one, to offer their service to out of state units, in Diggs’ case the Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts.  Men including Alfred Patterson of the Fifty-Fifth USCI settled in Wisconsin only after the War.

Wisconsin African American troops participated in some well-known battles.  The Twenty-ninth USCI participated in the Battle of the Crater and the Eighteenth USCI performed so at the Battle of Nashville that General George Thomas commented “Gentlemen, the question is settled; Negroes will fight.”

The plight of Wisconsin African American warriors was not easy either before, during or after the War.  Pleas to be allowed to serve came to Governor Alexander Randall from Cornelius Butler of Kenosha offering “I wish to lay before your excellency the hope and desire of the colored men of the state to do something to aid the government at this time.”  Though not acceptable substitutes for draftees during the Second Draft (November 1862), they were accepted in the Third Draft (September-October 1864).  Full acceptance did not come with the return of peace.  Some veterans returned to their homes in Wisconsin, others moved to the West and totally African American communities were formed where they lived their lives.  While not admitted nationally to the Grand Army of the Republic, many did join local posts, with some assuming leadership positions.

 This work is organized into six categories: arrival, recruitment, on the battlefield, postwar life, after Reconstruction and epilogue.  The text is supplemented by appendices listing what is know about individual veterans, their places of residence, age and enlistment dates and post-war residences.

Author Jeff Kannel has crafted a deeply researched account of an often-overlooked category of Civil War veterans.  Not limiting to enlisted men, he documents the services of African American employees of Wisconsin units.  To my observation he has delved deeply into military and real estate records and community newspapers and journals to uncover the lives of his subjects.  World History Network readers will find new perspectives on the War and the men who fought and died in it and who lived in its aftermath.  Although limited to Wisconsin, characters featured in this book undoubtably have counterparts elsewhere who only lack an author to put their sagas into Civil War literature.

Make Way For Liberty: Wisconsin African Americans In The Civil War by Jeff Kannel

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 2020,

ISBN 978-0-87020-946-8