Image from the Emancipation Proclamation America's reconstruction: Peoples and Politics After the Civil War
Emancipation Black Soldiers Rehearsal for Reconstruction A New birth of Freedom: Reconstruction During the Civil War

Black Soldiers

Black Soldier Black Soldier

Of the Emancipation Proclamation's provisions, few were more radical in their implications than the enrollment of African-Americans into the Union army. By fighting and dying for the Union, black soldiers staked a claim to citizenship in the reconstructed nation that would emerge from the Civil War.

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Before the war, blacks had been excluded from the regular army and militia. In 1861 and 1862, the Lincoln administration had rejected black volunteers, fearing that white soldiers would refuse to serve alongside them.

With the Proclamation, the enlistment of blacks began in earnest. By the year's end, some 200,000 African-Americans had served in the Union army and navy, the large majority of them former slaves.
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