General Order No. 143 was an 1863 military directive of theUnited States War Department which authorized the establishment of a bureau regulating the recruitment, training and organization of theU.S. Army's first regiments composed entirely ofAfrican-American soldiers.^[1] While state-raised units like the1st South Carolina Volunteers and the54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment had already begun recruitment and training, the order issued May 22, 1863, directly created a new designation among regular U.S. Army regiments:United States Colored Troops.

• Cornish, Dudley Taylor.The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861–1865. New York: W.W. Norton, 1965.

• Images of the official order at Ourdocuments.gov

• General orders
• American Civil War documents
• African-American history between emancipation and the civil rights movement
• 1863 in American law
• 1863 in the American Civil War
• 1863 documents

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