Juneteenth may be celebrated later this month, but two years before June 19, 1865, when slaves in Galveston learned of their freedom – Black men in Union blue claimed and won their freedom on the banks of the Mississippi River at a small village called Milliken’s Bend.

For months in early 1863, African Americans held in bondage on cotton plantations in northeast Louisiana had seized their freedom by walking or running away, and many men had enlisted in the Union army, determined to fight for the freedom of their families and their people.

At dawn on June 7, 1863, their moment of testing had come. Many whites, both North and South, doubted the former slaves’ abilities as soldiers. Would they fight, or turn and flee? Milliken’s Bend would lay to rest all these doubts.

A Confederate brigade of Texans attacked the Union outpost and training ground where the new recruits – many just days from the plantation – gave them a hot welcome with lead and steel. Confederate infantrymen were shocked at the resistance they encountered, and the combatants were soon locked into bloody and vicious hand-to-hand combat. “We … turned loose our war dogs, and I tell you … they howled!” recalled Peter Gravis of the 17th Texas Infantry. Colonel Isaac Shepard of the African Brigade wrote: “muskets were clubbed and bayonets used freely”.

Ultimately, the two sides fought to a tactical draw, and both claimed victory. But much of the battle’s significance came in the changed attitudes of skeptical whites. Even their own Yankee officers seemed surprised – and helped spread the word in letters North, like 2nd Lt. Matthew Miller of the 9th Louisiana Infantry, African Descent who wrote his aunt: “I never more wish to hear the expression ‘the [Negroes] won’t fight.'” Even Confederate General Henry McCulloch had admiration for his foe, who declared that the initial charge “was resisted by the negro portion of the enemy’s force with considerable obstinancy.”

Some weeks later, Frederick Douglass issued a recruiting broadside proclaiming the Black men’s courage at Milliken’s Bend in bold print and large letters. A “new birth of Freedom” had begun.

Source: Linda Barnickel, Milliken’s Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory, pp. 91, 92, 94,