Summary
The speaker describes his attempts to help Confederate prisoners write letters home, as he takes their dictation about various subjects. He then depicts the deaths of various fellow soldiers in extremely vivid detail, noting that the remaining men eat their share of "hard tack," a dense biscuit made of flour. He also notes a colonel's casual attitude about the death of these men. In the following entry, he says that a general showed even more disregard for the lives of a regiment of Black soldiers, leaving their corpses unclaimed on the battlefield. He envisions them rotting away. In the next section, the speaker remembers his surprisingly benevolent master and his early education in reading and writing, commenting again that his life then and his life now are not so markedly different. The final sonnet hauntingly recounts various images of what is left behind after the war: dead bodies, missing limbs, and unread letters. He says that the past is easily forgotten.
Analysis
"Native Guard" is composed of a sequence of sonnets that show the daily life of a recently freed slave who joins the Union Army, highlighting his gradual disillusionment with the bureaucracy and cruelty of war. In the poem's latter half, the reader finds that the speaker is disturbed by his superiors' lack of concern for the lives of their soldiers, as well as their displays of flagrant racism. Each entry reveals something new that the speaker has experienced, which has shifted his understanding of his new life.
In "March 1863," the speaker describes his efforts to assist the Confederate prisoners with writing letters home to their families. He takes their dictation, as he noted before that many of them are illiterate. At the same time, he understands that there is a great deal left unsaid in the gaps of their speech: "I listen, put down in ink what I know / they labor to say between silences / too big for words." The phrase "too big for words" highlights how difficult the prisoners find it to speak their feelings. He is acting as both a notetaker and a silent translator of their sentiments; writing down what they tell him but knowing they mean to say more. This is an emotionally surprising turn, as he is able to empathize with men who do not view him as a human being. In the next lines he writes about the various things that they discuss. These lines follow a pattern in which the first is about the sentiment that they are trying to verbalize ("worry for beloveds—") and the second is the way it comes out ("My Dearest, how are you getting along—"). Similar descriptions follow, as one soldier asks about the state of a farm ("what has become of their small plots of land— / did you harvest enough food to put by?") while another expresses longing for a loved one ("They long for the comfort of former lives— / I see you as you were, waving goodbye"). These moments tie directly back to the speaker's earlier comments about the power of writing. He is trying to communicate the most pressing messages these men believe they have, while also noticing the divide between the words they find and what they are really trying to say. He also states that some men choose to send photographs, in case "the body can't return." Others still refer to the brutal realities of war: " The hot air carries / the stench of limbs, rotten in the bone pit. / Flies swarm—a black cloud." This image then relates back to the speaker's previous frustrations with their horrible conditions: "We hunger, grow weak. / When men die, we eat their share of hardtack." The use of the pronoun "we" also suggests that despite the fact that this is a prison camp, both the prisoners and the jailers are condemned to suffer in these terrible circumstances.
"April 1863" begins with a repetition of the last line of the previous entry: "When men die, we eat their share of hardtack." The reuse of this line not only highlights the horrible conditions that the speaker is enduring, but also how frequently this situation recurs. Men die so often, and supplies are so scarce, that they are forced to be calculating about things like food. The speaker then describes images of decaying bodies, stating that he is trying to keep them out of his mind: "trying not to recall their hollow sockets, / the worm-stitch of their cheeks." Following this moment, he recounts that they have just finished burying "the last of our dead from / Pascagoula." He refers to the battle scene in which some of the men were killed by friendly fire: "and those who died retreating to our ship— / white sailors in blue firing upon us / as if we were the enemy." He also depicts a man dying beside him with "his arms outstretched as if borne upon the cross" and compares "smoke that rose from each gun" to "a soul departing." These dramatic scenes contrast sharply with the casually dismissive words of the colonel at the section's end: "The Colonel said: / an unfortunate incident; said: / their names shall deck the page of history." The speaker's visceral and gory language serves to make the colonel's lack of concern about these casualties all the more galling. He thinks of them only as "names" in a history book, not as suffering human beings. This comment is even worse given the fact that some of these men died under entirely preventable circumstances, given the friendly fire. These images stay with him for the remainder of the poem.
In the next section, "June 1863," the speaker begins with a grim alteration of the closing of "April 1863": "Some names shall deck the page of history / as it is written on stone. Some will not." As is foreshadowed in the tone of these lines, the speaker is referring to the lack of acknowledgment that the Black soldiers receive. He states that the day before, they were notified of "colored troops, dead / on the battlefield at Port Hudson." He goes on to add that "General Banks was heard to say I have no dead there, and left them, unclaimed." He is then haunted by visions of these soldiers' dead bodies, their eyes "dim, clouded / as the eyes of fish washed ashore" looking directly at him. This dream scene demonstrates how he is continually haunted by the cruel mistreatment of these soldiers, who do not even receive the basic respect of a burial. Shifting focus, he says that "Still, more come today / eager to enlist," referring to recently freed slaves who are excited to join the Union Army. He writes about their "haggard faces, gaunt limbs" as they "they plead for what we do not have to give," referring to the food their unit cannot spare. The cruel irony of this situation is readily apparent: these men want to sign up to make the same entirely thankless sacrifice the dead, unburied soldiers just made. The speaker knows they will receive neither the literal sustenance they need, nor the proper recognition from the army that they are trying to join. The sonnet ends on a note about death as the ultimate equalizer: "Death makes equals of us all: a fair master." This echoes his previous comment about how fate is also everyone's master, while also stating that the only real equality comes in death.
The entry for "April 1864," also takes a fairly unexpected turn. The speaker finally describes his former master, but has a surprisingly positive recollection of him and their time together: "Dumas was a fair master to us all. / He taught me to read and write: I was a man- / servant, if not a man." He was educated by Dumas, working as a "manservant," though he still takes note of the fact that he was "not a man," as he was still enslaved. He paints a picture of a relatively cordial relationship between himself and his former master, but emphasizes that this sort of relationship can never be anything but unequal. He says that he would study the natural world, including plants and various birds that he sketches in this journal: "wren, willet, egret, loon." He adds that, as he worked in the garden, he "thought only to study live things, thought never to know so much about the dead." In contrast, he says that he now spends his day surrounded by death, tending "Ship Island graves" that resemble "mounds like dune." He describes his work, as the collection of details about casualties: "I record names, / send home simple notes, not much more than / how and when—an official duty." These scenes stand in contrast to each other. Before, his literacy was in service of observing and depicting nature, but now it is used to manage the bodies and affairs of the dead. Like his remarks about the letters of the Confederate soldiers, he describes the importance of details: "I'm told / it's best to spare most detail, but I know / there are things which must be accounted for." The "things which must be accounted for" is a reference to the additional material he likely puts, or wants to put, into these notes: personal details that he thinks may provide some passing comfort to the families of the deceased. This also connects to his initial mention, in the first sonnet, of being a faithful witness. He wants to make sure all of the facts have been done justice.
The final sonnet, simply titled "1865," is a summation of what is left behind in the aftermath of the war. The year that gives this section its title is when the Civil War concluded. The speaker calls back to the previous section, taking stock of what now "must be accounted for." He first describes the " slaughter under the white flag of surrender— / black massacre at Fort Pillow," alluding to a battle in which Confederate soldiers viciously fired on surrendering Black soldiers in Tennessee. He then also writes that they have had their name changed from the Louisiana Native Guard to the "Corps d'Afrique," effectively announcing their status as outsiders. He says that this name takes "the native / from our claim" while making them "exiles in their own homeland." These moments all work to show the thankless dismissal of the sacrifices made by the freedmen who joined the Union Army and played an important role in their overall victory. He then depicts the physical and psychological wounds left behind by these battles: " the diseased, the maimed, / every lost limb, and what remains: phantom / ache, memory haunting an empty sleeve; / the hog-eaten at Gettysburg, unmarked / in their graves." These lines further support the speaker's portrait of this injustice. He offers the image of "dead letters, unanswered" to show that the stories of these men will remain untold, given their lack of formal recognition. This only emphasizes the importance of his mission in recording all of these moments, as he is bearing witness to these stories, and is carrying them along. In the closing of the entire sequence, he writes of a grown-over battlefield: "Beneath battlefields, green again, / the dead molder—a scaffolding of bone / we tread upon, forgetting. Truth be told." This final line ties back to the opening of the poem ("Truth be told, I do not want to forget"). In this new context, the speaker is revealing how easy it is—too easy, in fact—to forget the past and bury these tragedies.
