Speaker
The speaker of the poem is a member of the Louisiana Native Guard, a group of freed slaves guarding prisoners on Ship Island. He expresses a desire to capture the details of his life in a conscious and unembellished fashion. He bears witness to all of the events in his regiment, revealing the way in which racism and cruelty persist even in his new life as a free man. He states at the beginning and end of the sonnet sequence that he feels he must record these moments because they will be forgotten otherwise, and the contribution of Black soldiers like himself will be erased.
Freed slaves
The speaker's regiment is made up of other freed slaves. They suffer a great deal of abuse from their superiors, but, as the speaker notes, they have few other options. In one of the early sections of the poem, the speaker finds camaraderie in working with another freed slave, as they have a shared understanding of the terrible past and difficult present. In other parts of the poem, the speaker is haunted by images of Black soldiers whose lives were thrown away by colonels and generals, whether they were killed by friendly fire or left to be eaten by wild animals on the field of battle.
Confederate prisoners
The speaker is part of a unit that guards imprisoned Confederate soldiers. These soldiers are deeply suspicious of the men, as they are deeply prejudiced and fought for the right to keep slaves. However, as the speaker notes, this is ironic, as they are now the ones without their freedom and rely on him to write their letters home, as many of them are illiterate.
Dumas
Dumas is the speaker's former master. He describes him as "fair," noting that "he taught me to read and write." Though he also says that in Dumas's service he "was a manservant, if not a man." This portrayal shows Dumas to be better than one might expect given his status as a slaveholder.
Colonel
One of the speaker's superiors is a colonel. He refers to the men in the unit with racial slurs and treats them poorly, giving them only half the rations of the white soldiers. He also shows no real reaction to the deaths at Pascagoula. He is portrayed as cruel and detached in his view of the Black soldiers, not markedly different in his prejudiced attitude than many of the Confederate prisoners.
General Banks
The speaker references a general named Banks who refuses to claim any dead in a battle where a group of freed slave infantrymen were massacred. Like the colonel, he is shown as callous and unfeeling about the loss of Black life.
