h because of the
             numerous reports of "insubordinate" behavior by slaves.
             Individual acts of defiance ranged from the use of the Underground Railroad - a
             secret, organized network of people who helped fugitive slaves reach the Northern states
             and Canada - to the daily resistance or silent sabotage found on the plantations.
             Stokesbury acknowledges in, A Short History of the Civil War, the existence of the
             Underground Railroad but disagrees with other historians as to its importance. He notes
             that it never became as well organized or as successful as the South believed.
             Even with the groundwork having been laid for resistance, the prevalent racial
             climate in America in 1860 found it unthinkable that blacks would bear arms against white
             Americans. However, by 1865 these black soldiers had proven their value. Wilson writes
             in great detail describing the struggles and achievements of the black soldiers in his book
             The Black Phalanx. McPherson discusses in The Negro's Civil War that widespread
             opposition to the use of blacks as soldiers prevailed among northern whites. Whereas
             McPherson relates the events cumulating in the passage of two laws that aided black
             enlistment, Wilson focuses on the actual enlistment. He notes that the first regiment of
             free blacks came into service at New Orleans in September 1862 through the efforts of
             Butler. Wilson credits Butler's three regiments of blacks as the first officially mustered
             into Union ranks. North Carolina and Kansas also organized additional black units where
             minor skirmishes proved to be successful. Wilson also notes that "Kansas has ... the honor
             of being the first State in the Union to begin the organization of Negroes as soldiers for
             the Federal army." McPherson believes that up to this point President Lincoln had
             opposed the idea of blacks fighting for the Union but after the issuance of the
             Em...