What difficulties and struggles did the men of the 60th face in organizing and fighting as soldiers? What does such opposition to their existence as soldiers tell us about white Northerners’ perceptions about black people in general? http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1140&context=annals-of-iowa

The article details the many difficulties faced by the African American men of Iowa who offered their military service during the American Civil War. The situation for black people in Iowa in 1861 was highly restrictive in general: the ban against military service for blacks accompanied bans on black people voting, receiving a public education, holding a political office, or being lawyers. As such, the concept of a black soldier ran contrary to Iowan law in the first place. Whites in Iowa, as we can tell from their attitudes towards the black soldiers, generally did not believe black men were either capable or deserving of performing professional duties, and there was an underlying fear of arming them in large groups.
Although black soldiers saw their offer to fight as an offer to participate in the war for their own emancipation, Alexander Clark, on elevating the offer to raise black companies to Governor Samuel Kirkwood, was told that "your color would not be tolerated in one of our regiments." The campaign for black soldiers required the support of many newspapers and white allies, who eventually had to press not the humanitarian argument, but the idea that enlisting black soldiers would be useful for the war effort. By the time the idea of a black soldier was accepted, it was often on racist grounds, such as Senator James Grimes's statement that he "would see a negro shot down in battle rather than the son of a Dubuquer." That is to say, a black man could be used as a soldier because he, unlike whites, was expendable, but this did not mean he would be accorded equal recognition for his service.
Once black men in the field began to be commonplace, some blacks were effectively press-ganged into service, their personal agency unrecognized. Black soldiers received inferior rations, supplies, and medical care to white troops, with the result that they died at higher rates than their white compatriots. This reflects the general treatment of blacks in this era as dispensable and worthy of less attention in all arenas than whites.
The First Iowa Volunteers, or the 60th US Colored Infantry, suffered badly from these inferior conditions and were wracked with disease to the point that half of them were unfit for duty in the summer of '64. They performed uninteresting duties such as scouting, guard duty, fatigue work, and drilling at a higher rate than white soldiers, resulting in general discontent. Eventually, however, they appealed to the white voters of Iowa at a convention in Des Moines for their enfranchisement in recognition of their service.
Ultimately, Iowa did vote to extend the rights of suffrage to black men. There is a suggestion that the views motivating this were still, in many ways, racist. As the war went on and reports of black soldiers' excellent performance were spread, a connection began to be drawn between this martial skill and the idea of according black men political rights: they won their rights through their efforts rather than through any recognition of their inherent worth. However, it reflected a change in attitudes from 1861, when whites had been opposed to, and afraid of, arming black men.