This robust tradition of Black seamen extended as far back as the colonial era and throughout the post-Revolutionary antebellum period. The initial source of the Union Navy’s Black recruits sprang from a long maritime tradition of free Afro-Americans serving as seamen on merchant and whaling vessels throughout the port cities of the Northeast and among skilled enslaved workers serving on small vessels throughout the many waterways of the Chesapeake region and the Carolina low country. Accordingly, some researchers may fail to consider federal records associated with this history as a viable source of research. Army during the Civil War.” This clearly indicates that sailors of African descent “constituted a significant segment of naval manpower.” ĭespite this disproportionate representation of Afro-American enlisted men in the Union Navy, much of the American public and the larger popular culture are often unfamiliar with this history-especially when compared to the service of Black soldiers in the US Colored Troops during the Civil War, or the “Buffalo Soldiers” during Reconstruction. Navy at that time, which was “nearly double the proportion of black soldiers who served in the U.S. Reidy, this number represented approximately 20 percent of the enlisted men in the U.S. Today’s post was written by Damani Davis, Archivist at the National Archives in Washington, DC and Subject Matter Expert for records related to the African American experience.ĭuring the Civil War, approximately 17,000 men of African heritage served in the Union Navy.
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