"Growing up in the Deep South, Natasha Trethewey was never told that in her hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi, black soldiers had played a pivotal role in the Civil War. Off the coast, on Ship Island, stood a fort that had once been a Union prison housing Confederate captives. Protecting the fort was the second regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards-- one of the Union's first official black units. Trethewey's new book of poems pays homage to the soldiers who served and whose voices have reverberated through her own life. The title poem imagines the life of a former slave stationed at the fort, who is charged with writing letters home for the illiterate or invalid POWs and his fellow soldiers. Just as he becomes the guard of Ship Island's memory, so Trethewey recalls her own childhood as the daughter of a black woman and a white man. Her parents' marriage was still illegal in 1966 Mississippi. The racial legacy of the Civil War echoes through elegiac poems that honor her mother and the

Provides analysis of the most frequently studied poems in literature courses. Each entry contains author biography (if attributed), poem text, poem summary, themes, style, historical context, critical overview, and criticism.

Until now, Union army colonel Nathan W. Daniels (1832-1867) has been a forgotten man with a forgotten regiment. The white commanding officer of the 2nd Louisiana Native Guard Volunteers, a black regiment, he was removed with his men from mainland military activity and confined to obscure duty on Ship Island, ten miles off the coast of Mississippi. However, as Daniels' intriguing diary documents, despite an unrenowned existence that has resulted in little attention from historians, the 2nd Native Guards represent a pioneering stage in the history of black troops at war.

A history of the black soldiers in the Union Army and how they contributed to the victory in the Civil War.