Despite their service in the Northern army, the United States Colored Troops were not entirely “Northern” the sense that about 75% of the men were former slaves from the South who fled North to join the War effort, or who joined US regiments in the South.

      The black soldiers were older than their white counterparts, possibly due to policies implemented in the North that encouraged the freeing of slaves. The age at enlistment for black soldiers peaks at 18 and 21, while white enlistment peaks at age 18 only. The fraction of white soldiers enlisting after age 25 is markedly larger than the fraction of black recruits enlisting after age 25.

      It is also important that the war was more deadly for the black soldiers than it was for white soldiers. The fraction of recruits who died during the war is higher for blacks than for whites, despite the fact that the blacks rarely had combat-related injuries. In the medical data, black veterans tend not to present diarrheal symptoms in the same proportion as whites, suggesting some kind of resistance to conditions associated with diarrhea that white Northern soldiers lacked. But, the fraction of black recruits who died after 1900 is much lower, suggesting lower black life expectancies.

      Still, the black recruits sample has much in common with the UA sample. Both black and white soldiers applied for pensions at roughly the same ages. The samples also have similar distributions of pension applications and similar numbers of pensions awarded, even though the amounts awarded are slightly lower for blacks. This may not be due to discriminatory pension practices, as the pension tended to favor wounded soldiers.

      While there are few differences in the sampling procedure between the USCT sample and the UA sample there are many unique qualities to the data.  Most of the 6,000 soldiers were former slaves and for many of them we have information on their owners.  Owing in part to the antebellum slave culture, we have less detailed early life information on the black sample.  We are unable to link them to the 1850and 1860 censuses as was done for the UA sample.