A Voice of Thunder
About the Book
George E. Stephens was the most important Black war correspondent of his era. Stephens served in the famed Black Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment. His letters from the front brilliantly detail two wars: one against the Confederacy and one against the brutal racism within his own Union Army.Stephens chronicled the Black quest for freedom in reports from southern Maryland and eastern Virginia in 1861 and 1862. His writing detailed the Army of the Potomac's initial encounter with slavery, the heroism of fugitive enslaved people, and the brutality both Southerners and Union troops inflicted on them. As the Fifty-fourth’s voice, Stephen described the unit’s struggle against slavery and its quest to win the same pay as the white troops they fought beside. Stephens's commentary on the Lincoln administration’s wartime policy and his conviction that race and slavery stood at the center of American life add to his legacy as a major social critic.
Intimate and authoritative, A Voice of Thunder spotlights an array of issues while anticipating modern assessments of the Black role in the Civil War.
About the Author
George E. Stephens (1832?-1888) served in Army of the Potomac's 26th Regiment and in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment while working as a war correspondent for the New York Weekly Anglo-African. Donald Yacovone is an associate at The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the coauthor of The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.Related Titles
