Voice of Thunder

George E. Stephens, the mostimportant African-American war correspondent of his era, served in thefamed 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 againstthe brutal, debilitating racism within his own Union Army. Together withDonald Yacovone's biographical introduction detailing Stephens's lifeand times, they provide a singular perspective on the greatest crisisin the history of the United States.Stephens chronicled the African-Americanquest for freedom in reports from southern Maryland and eastern Virginiain 1861 and 1862 that detailed, among other issues of the day, the Armyof the Potomac's initial encounter with slavery, the heroism of fugitiveslaves, and the brutality both Southerners and Union troops inflictedon them.From the inception of theFifty-fourth early in 1863 Stephens was the unit's voice, telling of itsstruggle 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 campaignto be paid as much as white troops are gripping accounts of continuedheroism in the face of persistent insult.The Weekly Anglo-Africanwas the preeminent African-American newspaper of its time. Stephens'scorrespondence, intimate and authoritative, takes in an expansive arrayof issues and anticipates nearly all modern assessments of the black rolein the Civil War. His commentary on the Lincoln administration's wartimepolicy and his conviction that the issues of race and slavery were centralto nineteenth-century American life mark him as a major American socialcritic.