Inspired and informed by the latest research in African-American, military, and social history, the 14 original essays in this book tell the stories of the African-American soldiers who fought for the Union cause.

Let us all be grateful that we have colored troops that will fight /John David Smith -- An ironic route to glory : Louisiana's native guards at Port Hudson / Lawrence Lee Hewitt -- Battle on the levee : the fight at Milliken's Bend / Richard Lowe -- The Battle of Olustee / Arthur W. Bergeron, Jr. -- The Fort Pillow massacre : assessing the evidence / John Cimprich -- From the crater to New Market Heights : a tale of two divisions / William Glenn Robertson -- The Battle of Saltville / Thomas D. Mays -- The USCT in the Confederate heartland, 1864 / Anne J. Bailey -- Lorenzo Thomas and the recruitment of blacks in the Mississippi Valley, 1863-1865 / Michael T. Meier -- Proven themselves in every respect to be men : black cavalry in the Civil War / Noah Andre Trudeau -- In the shadow of John Brown : the military service of colonels Thomas Higginson, James Montgomery, and Robert Shaw in the Department of the South / Keith Wilson -- Henry McNeal Turner : black chaplain in the Union Army / Edwin S. Redkey -- A disturbance in the city : black and white soldiers in postwar Charleston / Robert J. Zalimas, Jr. -- USCT veterans in post-Civil War North Carolina / Richard Reid.