Born in the South, Edwin Leonard was one of many black men who wanted to fight for his freedom and his country during the Civil War.
Leonard enlisted with the Union Army as a corporal in the 54th Massachusetts, likely the most well-known regiment of black soldiers during the war, in part because it was profiled in the 1989 movie "Glory."
The 54th Massachusetts led an assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold near Charleston, S.C., in July 1863. The regiment suffered heavy casualties before it had to withdraw, but the men's efforts showed skeptics that black soldiers were courageous and ready for battle.
"That helped fuel the fire for them," Civil War researcher Matthew Strobel said of black soldiers across the country. "It helped them want to be a part of this."
Little else is known of Leonard, whose first name is also recorded as Edward.
He survived the war and died of a heart attack at 86, according to Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center records. He was a coal dealer and is buried in McPherson Cemetery in Clyde.
But the general treatment of blacks -- and Union soldiers -- at the time indicates what life might have been like for Leonard and the 22 other known black soldiers linked to Sandusky County during the war. Although conditions in the North were better for blacks, they still faced rampant discrimination.
At the beginning of the war, blacks who volunteered to fight were turned away.
Often, they were not trained in military tactics, said Strobel, the AmeriCorps member assigned to the Hayes Center as part of the Ohio History Service AmeriCorps Civil War Leadership program.
A 1792 law forbade blacks from serving in the U.S. Army, although they had already fought in the Revolutionary War and War of 1812, according to information from the National Archives.
Some Union officials didn't think extra manpower was needed, Strobel said.
"It was just a general belief among white leaders that the war wouldn't last more than 100 days," he said.
Still, blacks helped the Union effort by serving as cooks and in other support positions, he said.
Escaped slaves from the South also assisted in preparing for battle in enemy territory, he said.
"They were a great aid to the Union soldiers because a lot of them knew the South," he said. "Some of them served as spies."
After President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, blacks were allowed to join Union forces.
They were paid less than white soldiers, Strobel said. Black Union soldiers earned $10 a month and had to pay $3 of that for a clothing allowance, while whites earned $13 a month with no clothing deduction, he said.
Only whites were allowed to command black regiments.
"It was still very much a struggle for them," he said. "Doing their part, and helping the cause -- they were more respected, to a point."
Some of the local men's obituaries from the late 1800s and early 1900s illustrate Strobel's point.
The obituary for Milton Holt, who served in a company based in Sandusky County, said Holt was "very highly respected notwithstanding his color."
It is possible some blacks fought for the Confederacy, Strobel said. But Confederates likely were against giving ammunition to a group of people they had enslaved, he said.
After the war, some former slaves returned to plantations where they had been forced to work and took over farming operations and their masters' former homes, he said. However, this was not a common practice, he said.
"A lot of them, once they got up there and were fighting for the North, wanted to stay there," he said.
By the end of the war, black soldiers accounted for an estimated 10 percent -- or 179,000 -- of the Union Army, according to information from the National Archives.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Sunday, February 13th 2011 at 2:38PM
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