A Voice of Thunder : A BLACK SOLDIER'S CIVIL WAR

      George E. Stephens, the most         important African-American war correspondent of his era, served in the         famed black Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, subject of the film Glory.         His letters from the front, published in the New York Weekly Anglo-African,         brilliantly detail two wars: one against the Confederacy and one against         the brutal, debilitating racism within his own Union Army. Together with         Donald Yacovone's biographical introduction detailing Stephens's life         and times, they provide a singular perspective on the greatest crisis         in the history of the United States.       Stephens chronicled the African-American         quest for freedom in reports from southern Maryland and eastern Virginia         in 1861 and 1862 that detailed, among other issues of the day, the Army         of the Potomac's initial encounter with slavery, the heroism of fugitive         slaves, and the brutality both Southerners and Union troops inflicted         on them.       From the inception of the         Fifty-fourth early in 1863 Stephens was the unit's voice, telling of its         struggle against slavery and its quest to win the pay it had been promised.         His description of the July 18, 1863, assault on Battery Wagner near Charleston,         South Carolina, and his writings on the unit's eighteen-month campaign         to be paid as much as white troops are gripping accounts of continued         heroism in the face of persistent insult.       The Weekly Anglo-African         was the preeminent African-American newspaper of its time. Stephens's         correspondence, intimate and authoritative, takes in an expansive array         of issues and anticipates nearly all modern assessments of the black role         in the Civil War. His commentary on the Lincoln administration's wartime         policy and his conviction that the issues of race and slavery were central         to nineteenth-century American life mark him as a major American social         critic.