How History Unfolds on Paper: Important Americana from the Eric C. Caren Collection, Part X

Alabama, the Carolinas, Louisiana, January 1864-April 1866. Comprising seven printed General Orders. 12mo. Disbound. Comprising:

1. General Orders No. 7, Department of the South, Folly Island, South Carolina, January 15, 1864. Appointing Col. M.S. Littlefield of the 21st Regiment U.S. Colored Troops, General Superintendent of the recruiting service for colored regiments.

2. General Orders, No. 1, Headquarters U.S. Forces Northern Alabama, Montgomery, May 1, 1865. Being a blank appointment form, signed in type by Major General Frederick Steele. During this time Steele led a force of African-American soldiers, officially designated the "Column from Pensacola", in Major General Edward Canby's Army of West Mississippi, between February 18, 1865, and May 18, 1865.

3. General Orders, No. 93, Headquarters Department of North Carolina, Raleigh, July 5, 1865. "To guard against misapprehension...in regard to the legal condition of freedmen, all...are informed that the making of ordinances or other municipal regulations...in violation of the equality of right of the races to personal liberty...will necessitate the resumption of exclusive military control of any city or village in which such right in so disregarded...All laws or regulations...restricting the personal liberty of blacks, and not equally applicable to whites, are void."

4. General Orders, No. 36, Headquarters Department of Louisiana, September 4, 1865. Transferring the duty of providing housing to families of soldiers to the Freedmen's Bureau.

5. General Orders, No. 64, Headquarters Eastern District of Louisiana, November 24, 1865. Printing the charges of murder and manslaughter against Private Columbus Fields, of Company I, 74th U.S. Colored Infantry. Fields was found not guilty of murder, and guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to hard labor.

6. General Orders, No. 74, Headquarters Department of Louisiana, December 16, 1865. Reporting the commuted death sentence of Private Samuel Nickolson, 51st Colored Infantry, for murder; and the indictment, verdict, and sentencing to death of Private Fortune Wright, 96th Colored Infantry, for murder.

7. General Orders, No. 19, Headquarters Eastern District of Louisiana, April 2, 1866. 8 pp. Recording numerous courts martial, including for Black soldiers.

Over the course of the American Civil War approximately 186,097 African-American men joined the Union Army. These soldiers included Northern freedmen and escaped slaves from the South. Though the Confederacy initially considered conscripting slaves for service in the war effort, this idea was not taken seriously until the final weeks of the war, largely due to Confederate fears that arming slaves would lead to an uprising. Enlistment in the Union Army went up following President Abraham Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Many escaped slaves served as scouts and guides through captured Confederate territory. By war's end African-American soldiers had participated in over forty major battles and sixteen had been awarded the Medal of Honor.