Five Black Preachers in Army Blue, 1884-1901 the Buffalo Soldier Chaplains

This study fills a void in scholarship. While countless works have been written on the role of the US Army in the Old West, only recently has attention been focused on the role of African-American soldiers who, it turns out, made up nearly one-fifth of the cavalry and one-tenth of the total US Army in the West during the last quarter of the 19th century. These black soldiers served in four regiments: the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, and the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry. In a unique move, Congress assigned a chaplain to each black regiment primarily to serve as teacher for the mostly illiterate new recruits. Lamm’s book examines the contributions of the five black buffalo soldier chaplains together in the context of the regiments in which they served. They played a key role in the transition of African-Americans from slavery to freedom in a crucial period of African-American history.