Existing comment:
"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth."
-- Abraham Lincoln, December 1, 1862, Second Annual Message to Congress
From the very beginning of the Civil War, free African Americans attempted to join the US Army but were rebuffed, as Lincoln initially feared that slave holding Union states such as Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri would leave the Union and go to the Confederate side if blacks were admitted to the ranks. By July of 1862, the Union was in dire need of soldiers and Congress passed two acts that allowed freed blacks to enlist and for Lincoln "to employ as many persons of African descent as he may deem necessary and proper for the suppression of this rebellion." Within two months of this Act of Congress, the first executive order of the Emancipation Proclamation was issued to take effect in January 1862 and African American soldiers were allowed to enlist in the US Army.
By the end of the Civil War, almost 200,000 African American soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom, but it was not until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that slavery was abolished in the United States. |