Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War
By Margaret Humphreys
(October 2008 Civil War News)

Illustrated, index, selected bibliography, 190 pp; 2008. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2715 North Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218-4363, $40 plus shipping.

Reviewer: George Khoury
George Khoury is an adjunct professor at University of Central Florida. He will present a workshop this summer at the Civil War Preservation Trust's Teacher Institute. He has taught the war from a Southern perspective and is the winner of six National Endowment for the Humanities History grants.

Review:
It is one thing to die on a battlefield in combat, but it is another issue to die of disease, neglect, malnourishment, inferior shelter and inadequate medical attention and intentional duties resulting from overly hazardous assignments. This book shines the light of scrutiny upon deeply hidden aspects of the war.

Margaret Humphreys, a professor of history and associate clinical professor of medicine at Duke University, has prepared a landmark study on the treatment of black soldiers.

With the reports and personal notes of Ira Russell, a Civil War physician who worked with the Sanitary Commission as a strong foundation, Humphreys let the research take her into the world of stereotypes, early medical practices, misinformation and medical curiosity as to the anatomy of a black man.

Her results and the conclusions of earlier studies will not find their ways into school textbooks. This book indicts the Union army for deliberate malfeasance in the care of black soldiers and highlights the fact that these soldiers had no advocates or champions to protect them.

We learn that 180,000 black troops wore the blue uniform and that 33,000 were buried wearing it. Of those buried, 4,000 showed bullet wounds while the balance were taken by disease. The skewed mortality rate was likewise buried for years.

I must warn you that this is not a quick read but a well-documented major contribution to the history of the war that fills in gaps in black history. The ghosts of these long ago abused can rest easy — they have found their advocate in Margaret Humphreys.