Confederate “Heritage” Month 2020, April 17: Marching Song of the First Arkansas

One of the best Union songs from the Civil War, Marching Song of the First Arkansas, sung to the tune of "John Brown's Body", sung here by Pete Seeger and Bill MacAdoo. The First Arkansas was a U.S. Army regiment composed of African-American soldiers:

Oh, we're the bully soldiers of the First of Arkansas
We are fighting for the Union, we are fighting for the law,
We can hit the Rebel further than the white man ever law,
As we go marching on

From African-Americans Encyclopedia of Arkansas 12/03/2018:

Throughout the American Civil War, thousands of slaves escaped from bondage in Arkansas and made their way to the Union army encampments. The exact number has never been determined, but anecdotal reports indicate that hundreds, perhaps thousands, died from malnutrition and disease in fetid, unsanitary, hastily constructed “shanty towns” and settlements.

The escaped slaves in their midst created a dilemma and a headache for the Union commanders. One obvious and at least partial solution was to enlist able-bodied adult males into the military itself. In April 1863, Brigadier General Lorenzo Thomas, adjutant general of the U.S. Army, issued an appeal to the freedmen to volunteer for service, and many quickly flocked to the colors. The army immediately recruited three black companies in Helena (Phillips County), and they became the nucleus for the First Arkansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment (African Descent) Its new commander was Captain Lindley Miller, an abolitionist from a New York regiment. Eventually, over 5,000 former slaves in Arkansas joined the Union army. [my emphasis]

Miller was a white officer. All the African-American regiments were headed by white Union officers.