The United States Colored Troops (USCT) were military regiments organized by the United States Army during the Civil War, composed predominantly of black soldiers and commanded primarily by white officers. Authorized formally by the Bureau of Colored Troops on 22 May 1863 under the authority of the War Department, the USCT eventually comprised approximately 175 infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineer regiments. By the war's end, roughly 180,000 black men had served in USCT units, representing approximately ten percent of the Union Army's total strength. An estimated 40,000 USCT soldiers died in service, from combat and disease combined.

The enlistment of black soldiers in the Union Army developed incrementally. Early in the war, federal policy excluded black men from military service. The First and Second Confiscation Acts (1861, 1862) and the Militia Act of 1862 began to modify this exclusion by authorizing the use of formerly enslaved persons in military roles. The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on 1 January 1863, explicitly declared that freed men of suitable condition would be received into the armed forces of the United States.

Prior to the formal establishment of the USCT, several states and commanders had already organized black regiments independently, including the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry (began recruiting August 1862), the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Volunteers organized under General David Hunter and later Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and the Louisiana Native Guards organized under General Benjamin Butler. The War Department's General Order No. 143 of 22 May 1863 centralized recruiting and standardized organization under the Bureau of Colored Troops, which supervised enlistment, officer examinations, and regimental formation for the remainder of the war.

USCT units served across multiple theaters of the war. Early engagements at Port Hudson, Louisiana (May 1863) and Milliken's Bend, Louisiana (June 1863) brought the combat performance of black soldiers to national attention. The assault on Battery Wagner, South Carolina (July 1863) by the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry - not formally a USCT regiment but organized under similar principles - became among the most widely publicized actions involving black troops during the war.

USCT regiments participated in the Overland Campaign, the siege of Petersburg, and the Army of the James operations in Virginia. The Battle of the Crater (July 1864) involved a large USCT assault following the detonation of a Union mine beneath Confederate lines at Petersburg. USCT units were among the first to enter Richmond, Virginia when Confederate forces evacuated the city on 3 April 1865.

Confederate policy toward captured USCT soldiers was a significant point of contention. The Confederate Congress passed resolutions in 1862 and 1863 declaring that captured black soldiers and their white officers would not be treated as prisoners of war but subject to state laws governing insurrection. The Fort Pillow massacre of April 1864, in which Confederate forces under General Nathan Bedford Forrest killed a substantial number of black Union soldiers after their surrender, prompted congressional investigation and intensified Union resolve regarding prisoner exchange.

Pay disparity was a persistent grievance within the USCT. Black soldiers were initially paid at a lower rate than white soldiers under the Militia Act of 1862. After sustained protest - including the refusal of pay by the 54th Massachusetts - Congress equalized pay retroactively through the Army Appropriations Act of June 1864.

Following the Civil War, several USCT regiments were reorganized into the permanent Regular Army as the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry - units that became known colloquially as the Buffalo Soldiers. Most USCT regiments were mustered out between 1865 and 1867.

The historical significance, memory, and legacy of the USCT have been subjects of ongoing scholarly and public discussion. For a full treatment of the institutional development, see United States Colored Troops - History.

There is broad consensus among military historians regarding the basic facts of USCT organization, size, and participation in Civil War operations. Interpretive questions regarding the war's causes, the meaning of black military service for subsequent civil rights history, and the legacy of Reconstruction-era policy are addressed on linked pages. See United States Civil War - Historical Consensus.

Questions relating to the USCT touch on several contested interpretive debates:

• The significance of black military service to the outcome of the Civil War is addressed at United States Colored Troops - Military Significance Viewpoint.
• The relationship between USCT service and postwar civil and political rights claims is addressed at United States Colored Troops - Civil Rights Legacy Viewpoint.
• The memory and commemoration of USCT service, and its place in Civil War remembrance, is addressed at United States Colored Troops - Memory and Commemoration Viewpoint.

• Emancipation Proclamation
• United States Colored Troops - History
• United States Civil War
• United States Civil War - Historical Consensus
• Reconstruction
• Buffalo Soldiers
• United States Colored Troops - Debate

1. Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm: Black Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (University Press of Kansas, 1956; reprint 1987).
2. Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (Free Press, 1990).
3. War Department, General Order No. 143, 22 May 1863. Reproduced in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series III, Vol. 3 (Government Printing Office, 1899).
4. Noah Andre Trudeau, Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865 (Little, Brown, 1998).
5. Berlin, Ira, et al., eds., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867, Series II: The Black Military Experience (Cambridge University Press, 1982).
6. John David Smith, ed., Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
7. Report of the Congressional Committee on the Fort Pillow Massacre, 38th Congress, 1st Session (1864), available at memory.loc.gov.
8. Army Appropriations Act, 15 June 1864, 38th Congress, 1st Session, providing for equalization of pay for black soldiers.