Free Military School for Applicants for Commands of Colored Troops

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. “Front of school with people standing in front and walking by.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed December 11, 2019.

“From the beginning it was realized that the effectiveness of colored troops would depend largely on the way the regiments were officered, and what would now be called an officer-candidate school was set up in Philadelphia. Non-commissioned officers and privates in the Army of the Potomac could apply for admission to this school, and if recommended by their own officers and approved by an examining board they would get thirty days of training and then would be commissioned to command colored soldiers. The rank and file seems to have been of two minds about this arrangement. Some felt that it was a good idea, that the standards were high and the training thorough–one man said he knew colonels in white regiments who could not get an examining board recommendation for a second lieutenancy–but others believed that the examination and instructions ‘were not practical, but scholastic, and theoretical,’ and that most of the men who were commissioned were not up to their jobs.”
Bruce Catton. A Stillness At Appomattox. New York: Doubleday, 1954, pages 231-232

 

The textbook developed by the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments is online:
Free Military School for Applicants for Commands of Colored Troops, no. 1210 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia : established by the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments, chief preceptor, John H. Taggart, late colonel 12th Regiment Pennsylvania Reserves. by Philadelphia (Pa.). Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments.

 

The Historical Society of Philadelphia has the Abraham Barker collection on the Free Military School for Applicants for the Command of Colored Regiments, Collection 1968

 

You might also be interested in The Role Of Officer Selection And Training On The Successful Formation And Employment Of U.S. Colored Troops In The American Civil War, 1863-1865 by Daniel, V. Van Every, 1999.