Episode 2 of 2

Presidential Signature

When: 13 March 1865
Where: Confederate Capital
Part of: The Confederacy agrees to use African American troops

President Jefferson Davis signed General Order 14 into law, formalizing the authorization for African American enlistment.

Following the legislative vote, President Jefferson Davis signed General Order 14 into law on March 13, 1865. The order authorized up to 300,000 African American slaves as troops, though historical evidence suggests the measure was never fully implemented.

Sources

Confederate States Army Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-06

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.