President Lincoln’s order threatened retaliation against Confederate prisoners of war to protect captured Black Union soldiers from being killed or enslaved by the Confederacy. Historians report Mr. Lincoln made a promise that he likely knew he could not fully keep. Upset at news that black Union soldiers, when taken prisoner by Confederates, were treated differently from white POWs, Lincoln ordered that any indignities visited upon Black troops would be replicated on an equal number of Confederate POWs.
“For every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed,” Lincoln wrote. “For every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on the public works, and continued at such labor until the other shall be released and receive the treatment due to a prisoner of war.”
Black Union soldiers faced harsh consequences when captured as POWs, with Confederate policy initially holding that they could be tried as criminal insurrectionists in state courts, and executed as such. The Confederate Congress also threatened to enslave black POWs—even those who had lived as free men in the North before the war.
Often, however, threats to black soldiers were more immediate. Black POWs were abused, forced to labor in the line of fire, and shot after surrendering or while “trying to escape.”
While the concept of eye-for-an-eye punishment might seem medieval, during the Civil War the practice of retaliatory killing was not uncommon. Historian Lonnie Speer has argued that black and white POWs throughout the Civil War were punished or killed to even a score—and this occurred with the knowledge and involvement of military leaders.