tion Proclamation Lincoln announced that the freed blacks would be received into the armed service of the United States.... Lincoln planned to tap into a new source of fighting individuals, ...the great available and as yet unavailed of, force for the restoration of the Union.. Lincoln thought this would both weaken the enemy and strengthen the Union. The recruitment of the blacks took laborers from the South and placed "these men in the Union army in places which otherwise must be filled with so many white men. Lincoln also felt that seeing the blacks fighting against the Confederacy would have a psychological effect upon the South. Hattaway and Jones concur with McPherson in describing the Emancipation Proclamation and the importance it had for both the Union and the Confederacy.With the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, freeing the slaves, the North began recruiting black soldiers but, as reported by Batty and Parish, this was a slow recruitment at first. Sewall supports this fact by revealing a letter Lincoln wrote to Vice-President Hamlin just six days after the issuing of the proclamation in which he states that ...troops come forward more slowly than ever... In the Spring of 1863 only two black regiments existed, however, this had grown to sixty by the end of 1863. By 1864 this had expanded to 80 more regiments. Jordan provides a comprehensive account of one of the first black regiments to fight for the Union Army, the 54th Massachusetts Colored Regiment that numbered at least 1,000 soldiers. This all-volunteer regiment, lead by a white colonel, Robert Gould Shaw, helped open the 22- month land and sea assault on Charleston, South Carolina. Leading an unsuccessful hand-to-hand attack on Fort Wagner in Charleston, this regiment engaged in one of the most famous black actions of the Civil War and suffered approximately 44 percent casualties, including Colonel Shaw. Their performance in this battle...
