helped to make the blacks more acceptable in the Union army. One of its soldiers won the Congressional Medal of Honor. Eventually twenty-three other black soldiers earned this honor. Sewell, in A House Divided, concurs on the gallantry of the black soldiers, but he reports that 17 black soldiers and 4 black sailors received the nations highest honor. The reports of the tenacity of the blacks at Fort Wagner plus engagements at Port Hudson, Louisiana, Fort Pillow and Millikens Bend helped to fuel the fire of black enlistment. Historians differ in the actual number of blacks in the Union Army. Foner and Mahoney reported that by the end of the war approximately 190,000 blacks had served in the Union Army and Navy, while Stokesbury notes that there were 300,000 black soldiers and 166 regiments. Sewell, in contrast, places this number at 500,00. Wilson explains the discrepancy in the numbers of black soldiers as he describes a practice of putting a live Negro in a dead ones place. If a black solder died in the war the commanding officers would simply put another man in his place and have him answer to the dead mans name. Sewell notes the causalities among black troops amounted to 68,178. Batty and Parish call the raising of the black regiments one of the most remarkable, even revolutionary, developments of the whole war. Sewell agrees with Batty and Parish, McPherson and Wilson that even though these soldiers were fighting for the North and trying to escape the bonds of slavery and gain freedom, discrimination still existed in the Army. The soldiers fought in segregated companies with white commanders. The Blacks were not equal to the whites as they received lower pay, performed fatigue duty and menial labor, such as cleaning quarters, laundering clothing, cleaning boots and cooking. Black soldiers, regardless of their rank, earned $10 a month minus $3 for clothing, while white privates earned $13 a month plus clothing. ...
