During the period of its status as a territory, Iowa opened for settlement in 1833 but few Blacks, free or escaped slaves, migrated to the fertile farmlands of Iowa; “the land of the black earth.” By 1840
1 only 188 Black Iowans could be found in residence, a mere 0.4 percent of the territory’s population. On the eve of the Civil War in 1861, the state included between 1,069 and 1,500 Blacks,
2 although this number likely did not include dozens of contraband escaped slaves who fled north to freedom, largely from the slaveholding state of Missouri. While the young states population contained a mix of residents hailing from various European countries, and the eastern US,
3 Iowa’s Black Codes adopted by the territorial legislature at the constitutional convention of 1844 were overtly racially restrictive, reflecting a fear of an influx of cheap black labor. The Black Codes adopted at the second Iowa constitutional convention in May 1846, outlawed chattel slavery, but asserted that only a “white male citizen” could vote, serve as a member of the Iowa General Assembly, be included in the state census of population, or be required to serve in the state militia.
4 Nevertheless, militant Iowa abolitionists, Democrats, Whigs, and finally Republicans, would wage a hotly contested battle over the issue of racial exclusion and the legal status of Blacks well into the Civil War. Unquestionably, the service of the men of the
First Iowa Volunteers of African Descent, later re-designated the
60th Regiment of Infantry, United States Colored Troops, that compelled the Iowa Legislature to officially recognize black male suffrage in 1868; and repeal the Black Codes from state law in 1884. Iowa Governor William M. Stone, raised a Democrat, was for many years averse to the issue of black suffrage in Iowa, even though he later became a Republican. Stone nonetheless came to grudgingly recognize that voting rights could not possibly be lawfully denied Iowans who had spilled blood for the Union.
5 Equality before the law was a principle laid down by the Founding Fathers in 1787 along with slavery, and even moderate Republicans like Governor Stone could not resist the tide of change. He gave a speech after the Civil War, casually referring to the contributions of
Iowa’s 60th Regiment U.S.C.T., stating how those black volunteers credited to Iowa’s wartime manpower quota and had exempted over two thousand white Iowans from the 1864 Draft.
6 Missouri was allotted 200 members of the Regiment to its own manpower quota, but Iowa received credit for the remaining 700 three-year enlistments
7.This sentiment reflected popular opinion in the north, where white Americans appalled by the enormous Union battlefield losse
