Notes

1. The First and Third Regiments of Louisiana Native Guards bravely attacked Port Hudson on May 27, 1863. Some newspaper correspondents mistakenly reported that it was the Second Regiment which had taken part in the assault. In the summer of 1863 Boker's poem circulated in the antislavery press under the title "The Second Louisiana" (see also "The Second Louisiana" in the Christian Recorder, June 13, 1863, and "The Second Louisiana" in the Anglo-African, June 27, 1863). Boker probably wrote the poem in response to early reports, then changed the title to "The Black Regiment" when the mistake became apparent.
    
   "Col. Daniel's Second Louisiana negro regiment distinguished itself . . . especially in charging upon the enemy's siege guns, losing killed and wounded over 600," reported the Boston Daily Evening Transcript of June 6, 1863 (quoted by James G. Hollandsworth, The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience during the Civil War [Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995], 63). "Nobly done, Second Regiment of Louisiana," proclaimed the Liberator a fortnight later. General Nathaniel Banks's official report praised the First and Third Regiments. The Anglo-African of June 13, 1863, brushed aside reporters' confusion as to which Louisiana regiments had taken part in the battle: "It is immaterial which statement is true, so long as the great fact remains; that no such fighting has been seen since the war began."
   
2. Here—and at several other points in the poem—Boker all but quotes Alfred Lord Tennyson's famous "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854). These deliberate references situate the Louisiana soldiers as an African American "Light Brigade" of equal and indisputable bravery. Boker's contemporaries drew the same parallel: a "special" for the Boston Journal reported that "We never saw a more literal rendering of Tennyson's famous 'Charge of the Light Brigade' [than] on the upper works of Port Hudson" (reprinted in the Anglo-African, June 27, 1863).
3. Philadelphian George Henry Boker (1823–1890) gave up the law for a literary life in the 1840s. He wrote several plays, but success on the stage proved elusive; nevertheless, his household included several servants by 1860 (census records list his occupation as "Gent"). When the war broke out, Boker turned from drama to patriotic verse. He also cofounded Philadelphia's Union League in the winter of 1862; in addition to serving as the league's secretary, he used public poetry to promote Unionist sentiment in and beyond the city. His tribute to the "The Second Louisiana" was probably part of this larger mission. The poem was a hit in abolitionist circles. Oliver Wendell Holmes went into ecstasies: "I thank God, dear Mr Boker, that he has disposed you to consecrate your fine gifts to the cause of freedom and humanity" (quoted in Edward Sculley Bradley, George Boker: Poet and Patriot [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1927], 211).