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On the Altar of Freedom: A Black Soldier's Civil War Letters from the Front
Describes what the Civil War was like for a Black soldier
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First published September 1, 1991
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February 13, 2026
On the battlefields of the American Civil War, Corporal James Henry Gooding fought for Union and freedom – “for honor, duty, and liberty,” as he once put it. Corporal Gooding was a member of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first regiment of African-American soldiers to fight for the Union cause, and he and his fellow soldiers fundamentally changed the basis upon which the Civil War was fought. And because Corporal Gooding also happened to be an eloquent writer as well as a brave soldier, his wartime letters, as published in the New Bedford Mercury, have come down to us, as collected here in a volume titled On the Altar of Freedom.
This collection of A Black Soldier’s Civil War Letters from the Front (the book’s subtitle) gives the reader an insider’s perspective of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry’s heroic combat history. Corporal Gooding, posting his letters to the New Bedford Mercury under the pen name of “Monitor,” is indeed a monitor – watching closely all that goes on before him, with his mind squarely on the question of whether the United States of America might emerge from the bloodshed and horror of civil war as a nation where all people could be free.
Corporal Gooding also possessed a keen sense of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry’s historic role. From Beaufort, South Carolina, on 8 June 1863, shortly after the regiment’s arrival in the war-torn South, he wrote that
The 54th has already won the reputation here of being a first class regiment, both in drill, discipline and physical condition. When the 54th marched through the streets of this town, the citizens and soldiers lined the walks, to get a look at the first black regiment from the North. The contrabands did not believe we were coming; one of them said, ‘I nebber bleeve black Yankee come here help culer men.’ They think now the kingdom is coming sure enough. (pp. 26-27)
Fellow admirers of the film Glory (1989), director Edward Zwick’s brilliant recounting of the saga of the 54th Massachusetts, will recall that one of the key moments in the life of the regiment was the 54th’s assault against Fort Wagner on the South Carolina coast. The 54th took the lead role in that difficult assault, and fought gallantly, as Corporal Wagner recalls in a letter of 20 July 1863:
You may all know Fort Wagner is the Sebastopol of the rebels; but we went at it, over the ditch and on to the parapet through a deadly fire; but we could not get into the fort. We met the foe on the parapet of Wagner with the bayonet – we were exposed to a murderous fire from the batteries of the fort, from our Monitors and our land batteries, as they did not cease firing soon enough. Mortal men could not stand such a fire, and the assault on Wagner was a failure. (p. 38)
The assault may have been a failure, in strictly tactical terms; the fort remained in Confederate hands, and the Union campaign against Charleston, South Carolina – the campaign of which the Fort Wagner assault had been a key part – did not succeed. But the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts had demonstrated their valor in a way that commanded the attention, and the respect, of friend and foe alike.
It is moving to read Corporal Gooding’s tribute to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the young Bostonian from a socially prominent family who commanded the 54th, and who was killed on the parapet of Fort Wagner while leading the assault. Corporal Gooding writes of his commander that “For one so young, Col. Shaw showed a well-trained mind, and an ability of governing men not possessed by many older and more experienced men. In him, the regiment has lost one of its best and most devoted friends. Requiescat in pace” (p. 51)
As if the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts weren’t facing enough travails already, they also faced the indignity of being paid less than white soldiers – $10.00 per month, rather than $13.00 – for doing the same work of fighting to preserve the Union. On 21 November 1863, at Morris Island, South Carolina, Corporal Gooding responded to the news that Massachusetts Governor was proposing that the state of Massachusetts pay each soldier of the 54th $3.00 per month to make up the difference:
[T]he Governor’s recommendation clearly shows that the General Government don’t mean to pay us, so long as there is a loophole to get out of it, and that is what surprises us….A man who can go on the field counts, whether he be white or black, brown or grey….[W]e as soldiers, cannot call in question the policy of the government, but as men who have families to feed, and clothe, and keep warm, we must say, that the ten dollars by the greatest government in the world is an unjust distinction to men who have only a black skin to merit it. (p. 83)
The 54th Massachusetts was still at Morris Island more than a month later, on 9 January 1864, when Corporal Gooding wrote with a sense of discouragement that “The Union army before Charleston may be justly compared to that of the allied forces in Flanders, in the time of William and Mary. It is here without any definite prospect of accomplishing its mission, at least from the position now held in the front” (p. 101). Corporal Gooding’s gloomy assessment of the campaign was warranted; Charleston would not fall until the following year of 1865, and then only in the context of Union General William T. Sherman’s successful campaigning in Georgia and the Carolinas.
Yet Corporal Gooding’s war was not yet over; for within a month, the 54th Massachusetts had been redeployed to Jacksonville, Florida, in the context of a campaign to liberate Tallahassee and the rest of north Florida from Confederate control. From Jacksonville, on 10 February 1864, Corporal Gooding noted with satisfaction that “Our forces were in motion at 12 M. of the 8th, following the railway, and at 7 P.M., captured a rebel battery of five pieces, the rebels skedaddling, and the 4[0]th Mass. In hot pursuit. The vanguard rushed into a rebel camp last night and captured a whole company under command of a lieutenant” (pp. 113-14).
So far, so good, any friend of the Union might say; but within ten days, the 54th Massachusetts would face the most severe battle-testing of the regiment’s entire career, at the Battle of Olustee near Lake City, Florida. The 54th fought with its customary valor, but the poorly planned and coordinated battle was a Union defeat. Wounded and captured at Olustee, and erroneously reported killed, Corporal Gooding would face one final ordeal – confinement at the Confederacy’s notorious Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp in southwest Georgia.
Virginia Matzke Adams, who edited this volume of Corporal Gooding’s letters, recounts in her introduction how “The poems and letters of James Henry Gooding were rediscovered through a series of happy accidents” (p. xxxv). And those rediscovered letters are indeed a treasure; the eminent Civil War historian James M. McPherson is quite right when he states in a foreword that the letters of Corporal Gooding “are not run-of-the-mill soldier letters. The author…was observant, well informed, a fluent writer, passionately committed to the cause of Union, liberty, and black rights. He also possessed a sense of humor that makes these letters a delight as well as an education to read” (p. xiii).
On the Altar of Freedom gives one a strongly positive sense of Corporal Gooding as a man, as a soldier, and as a writer (the text even includes some of James Henry Gooding’s pre-war poetry, written while he was a sailor). The heroism of Corporal Gooding reminds the reader of the comparable heroism of thousands of other African American soldiers like him – soldiers who made on the battlefield a crucial contribution to Union victory in the Civil War, and to what President Abraham Lincoln spoke of in his Gettysburg Address: “a new birth of freedom.”
This collection of A Black Soldier’s Civil War Letters from the Front (the book’s subtitle) gives the reader an insider’s perspective of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry’s heroic combat history. Corporal Gooding, posting his letters to the New Bedford Mercury under the pen name of “Monitor,” is indeed a monitor – watching closely all that goes on before him, with his mind squarely on the question of whether the United States of America might emerge from the bloodshed and horror of civil war as a nation where all people could be free.
Corporal Gooding also possessed a keen sense of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry’s historic role. From Beaufort, South Carolina, on 8 June 1863, shortly after the regiment’s arrival in the war-torn South, he wrote that
The 54th has already won the reputation here of being a first class regiment, both in drill, discipline and physical condition. When the 54th marched through the streets of this town, the citizens and soldiers lined the walks, to get a look at the first black regiment from the North. The contrabands did not believe we were coming; one of them said, ‘I nebber bleeve black Yankee come here help culer men.’ They think now the kingdom is coming sure enough. (pp. 26-27)
Fellow admirers of the film Glory (1989), director Edward Zwick’s brilliant recounting of the saga of the 54th Massachusetts, will recall that one of the key moments in the life of the regiment was the 54th’s assault against Fort Wagner on the South Carolina coast. The 54th took the lead role in that difficult assault, and fought gallantly, as Corporal Wagner recalls in a letter of 20 July 1863:
You may all know Fort Wagner is the Sebastopol of the rebels; but we went at it, over the ditch and on to the parapet through a deadly fire; but we could not get into the fort. We met the foe on the parapet of Wagner with the bayonet – we were exposed to a murderous fire from the batteries of the fort, from our Monitors and our land batteries, as they did not cease firing soon enough. Mortal men could not stand such a fire, and the assault on Wagner was a failure. (p. 38)
The assault may have been a failure, in strictly tactical terms; the fort remained in Confederate hands, and the Union campaign against Charleston, South Carolina – the campaign of which the Fort Wagner assault had been a key part – did not succeed. But the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts had demonstrated their valor in a way that commanded the attention, and the respect, of friend and foe alike.
It is moving to read Corporal Gooding’s tribute to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the young Bostonian from a socially prominent family who commanded the 54th, and who was killed on the parapet of Fort Wagner while leading the assault. Corporal Gooding writes of his commander that “For one so young, Col. Shaw showed a well-trained mind, and an ability of governing men not possessed by many older and more experienced men. In him, the regiment has lost one of its best and most devoted friends. Requiescat in pace” (p. 51)
As if the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts weren’t facing enough travails already, they also faced the indignity of being paid less than white soldiers – $10.00 per month, rather than $13.00 – for doing the same work of fighting to preserve the Union. On 21 November 1863, at Morris Island, South Carolina, Corporal Gooding responded to the news that Massachusetts Governor was proposing that the state of Massachusetts pay each soldier of the 54th $3.00 per month to make up the difference:
[T]he Governor’s recommendation clearly shows that the General Government don’t mean to pay us, so long as there is a loophole to get out of it, and that is what surprises us….A man who can go on the field counts, whether he be white or black, brown or grey….[W]e as soldiers, cannot call in question the policy of the government, but as men who have families to feed, and clothe, and keep warm, we must say, that the ten dollars by the greatest government in the world is an unjust distinction to men who have only a black skin to merit it. (p. 83)
The 54th Massachusetts was still at Morris Island more than a month later, on 9 January 1864, when Corporal Gooding wrote with a sense of discouragement that “The Union army before Charleston may be justly compared to that of the allied forces in Flanders, in the time of William and Mary. It is here without any definite prospect of accomplishing its mission, at least from the position now held in the front” (p. 101). Corporal Gooding’s gloomy assessment of the campaign was warranted; Charleston would not fall until the following year of 1865, and then only in the context of Union General William T. Sherman’s successful campaigning in Georgia and the Carolinas.
Yet Corporal Gooding’s war was not yet over; for within a month, the 54th Massachusetts had been redeployed to Jacksonville, Florida, in the context of a campaign to liberate Tallahassee and the rest of north Florida from Confederate control. From Jacksonville, on 10 February 1864, Corporal Gooding noted with satisfaction that “Our forces were in motion at 12 M. of the 8th, following the railway, and at 7 P.M., captured a rebel battery of five pieces, the rebels skedaddling, and the 4[0]th Mass. In hot pursuit. The vanguard rushed into a rebel camp last night and captured a whole company under command of a lieutenant” (pp. 113-14).
So far, so good, any friend of the Union might say; but within ten days, the 54th Massachusetts would face the most severe battle-testing of the regiment’s entire career, at the Battle of Olustee near Lake City, Florida. The 54th fought with its customary valor, but the poorly planned and coordinated battle was a Union defeat. Wounded and captured at Olustee, and erroneously reported killed, Corporal Gooding would face one final ordeal – confinement at the Confederacy’s notorious Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp in southwest Georgia.
Virginia Matzke Adams, who edited this volume of Corporal Gooding’s letters, recounts in her introduction how “The poems and letters of James Henry Gooding were rediscovered through a series of happy accidents” (p. xxxv). And those rediscovered letters are indeed a treasure; the eminent Civil War historian James M. McPherson is quite right when he states in a foreword that the letters of Corporal Gooding “are not run-of-the-mill soldier letters. The author…was observant, well informed, a fluent writer, passionately committed to the cause of Union, liberty, and black rights. He also possessed a sense of humor that makes these letters a delight as well as an education to read” (p. xiii).
On the Altar of Freedom gives one a strongly positive sense of Corporal Gooding as a man, as a soldier, and as a writer (the text even includes some of James Henry Gooding’s pre-war poetry, written while he was a sailor). The heroism of Corporal Gooding reminds the reader of the comparable heroism of thousands of other African American soldiers like him – soldiers who made on the battlefield a crucial contribution to Union victory in the Civil War, and to what President Abraham Lincoln spoke of in his Gettysburg Address: “a new birth of freedom.”
September 21, 2022
Wonderful collection of letters. Probably my favorite wartime correspondence I’ve read so far. It is so rare to have a black soldier’s letters from the civil war. And Gooding was a great writer, his letters are filled with passion and honest takes on the world around him. A joy to read, and I think even a non history buff would enjoy reading his letters.
July 18, 2022
The reason undergirding why the U.S. Civil War was fought doesn't come to me in debates about states rights, or what this or that general should've done in this or that battle, or theories of industrialized versus agricultural economies. No, for me, the why is encapsulated in a single image. That of a Black Union soldier liberating a Black slave from bondage, with a Southern plantation-style home going up in flames in the background. Interpret what you want out of that image but that's the one I carry with me after finishing "On the Altar of Freedom" a collection of articles written by Corporal James Henry Gooding while serving on the frontline in South Carolina and Florida in the 54th Massachusetts. Gooding's firsthand accounts were, for all intents and purposes, lost until Virginia M. Adams rediscovered them in the New Bedford Free Public Library, then compiled and edited them for publication in 1991. For me, the beating red heart behind why the U.S. Civil War was fought lies in the words of those who fought it. They knew better than anyone what they were fighting for.
January 6, 2019
I've had this book for over a year on my shelf (in my house) and finally decided to read it. This is one of the best books I have ever read! Vivid account of the 54th regiment (surpassing the film Glory) from its beginning. Corporal Gooding, to me shows what it meant to be black , free and to fight for ones people and country.
I salute you for then and now, corporal James Henry Gooding
Spoiler bit:
Reading his writings, especially his poems, if he had lived we would have another Alexander Dumas! Another Paul Lawrence Dunbar!!
I salute you for then and now, corporal James Henry Gooding
Spoiler bit:
Reading his writings, especially his poems, if he had lived we would have another Alexander Dumas! Another Paul Lawrence Dunbar!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 16, 2020
Great for research purposes and education about black Union troops, but almost mind-numbingly tedious in the author’s original commitment to merely reporting what is happening in camp for a newspaper.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews